OPINION

The Hunter Biden leaks

David Yudelman on the story much of the US media is trying to disappear

Something even worse than High Crimes and Misdemeanors

Hunter Biden’s wayward laptop encapsulates a number of truly grave issues of importance for which there is no precedent in the history of the United States.. It provides evidence -- admittedly prima facie, but extraordinarily detailed and convincing -- that his father, due to stand as the Democratic Party candidate for the US’s next President in just xx days -- could quite properly be charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.

And, unlike the case of Donald Trump and the Ukraine impeachment flight of fancy he faced, there is real and voluminous evidence to back up such a charge against Joe Biden.

Where would that leave the US if Joe Biden becomes President before facing the music? There are a number of very major issues that have to be tackled, and very little time to do so. They include

Establishing that the laptop’s hard drive is actually Hunter Biden’s and the contents are genuine. Neither he nor his supporters have even denied this, and the revelations of many of its contents have already established beyond any reasonable doubt that the laptop and hard drive are the real thing. Biden’s supporters have tried to dismiss the unchallenged laptop’s existence as a Russian plot, which has been denied by the FBI.

Establishing that Hunter Biden traded on his father’s name to corruptly grant access and influence to foreign individuals and organizations which damaged the interests of the United States. There is multiple evidence of this in the emails, including details of actual cash transactions.

Establishing that Joe Biden – contrary to his repeated public denials of any knowledge of Hunter’s business activities -- was fully aware of Hunter’s activities, actively collaborated with them, and profited from them at his own insistence. Confirming that he was, in fact, the “big guy” referred to in many of the emails on the hard drive, and was cut in to a major part of the payoffs, amounting to millions of dollars. And, of course, establishing that he, while acting as Vice President of the United States, subordinated the interests of his country to those of foreign organizations and countries for direct personal financial gain.

Establishing whether Biden was aided and abetted in these alleged crimes by others, especially those high in the Obama administration, either directly or via obstruction of justice. For example, questioning why organizations such as the FBI -- which was made aware of the hard drive and its contents as early as the beginning of 2019 -- apparently did nothing to investigate further, and certainly decided not to take any action. Investigation of aiding and abetting would need to be fully open-ended and include questioning the role of President Obama.

Questioning the role of major social media organizations such as Twitter and Facebook, which openly intervened, without any coherent rationale or explanation, to censor and block any dissemination via social media of the New York Post article which broke the news of the exposure of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents.

The above issues are of an unprecedented magnitude and importance in the entire history of the United States. So what could be even worse than such charges of High Crimes and Misdemeanors?

When the Trump administration defended President Trump after his election in 2016 from charges of collusion with foreign powers against the interests of the US, it repeatedly made a point of saying that the responsibility lay entirely with a very small group of rogue leaders. It said 99% of the FBI’s employees were entirely blameless.

Perhaps that was true of the FBI. But it’s certainly not true of the US media today. With a tiny number of exceptions, such as the New York Post and Fox News, the media has been totally complicit with Twitter and Facebook in suppressing any examination of the astounding details emerging from Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Even before the outing of the said laptop there was ample evidence that Hunter Biden had amassed a small fortune by “consulting” though he was a known drug addict and had no specialized knowledge of the topics he was allegedly advising on. There was also the evidence, openly and publicly bragged about by his father on TV that he, Joe Biden, had forced the Ukraine government to fire a prosecutor who it turned out was investigating Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian company he represented. His high profile US audience giggled approvingly at the boast.

These are major sins of omission by the media, but there is worse: its sins of commission. The overwhelming majority of the mainstream media has reacted to the revelations from the laptop by studiously ignoring the entire issue, or by bleating about Russian interference, of which there is no evidence whatsoever. Joe Biden has been interviewed at length since the laptop issue became public by various senior media professionals, and innumerable times in passing, without the topic even being brought up.

Ignoring the issue entirely, as the mainstream media has done for several days, is even worse than if a partisan media had attempted to provide reasoned explanations and justifications for the group or individual they supported.

When almost the entire US media, hitherto famous for its independence and total dedication to aggressively exposing the sins of the powerful, acts as a supine, slavish and sycophantic unit, when it acts directly against the most fundamental values of its profession, we need to really begin to worry about the future of western civilization.

David Yudelman has worked as a journalist in South Africa under Laurence Gandar at the Rand Daily Mail and George Palmer at the Financial Mail. He also worked on the London Times in England. He fervently wishes the New York Times actually contained all the news that’s fit to print, or at least had the grace to stop calling itself a newspaper.