Commentary

'New York Post' Reports Justice Dept. Examining Hunter Biden's Taxes

by December 14, 2020

The sense of vindication practically dripped off the pages of the New York Post last week after President-elect Joe Biden's son admitted that Justice Department prosecutors were looking into his taxes. The tabloid in October had broken the story about emails obtained from a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden.

One email mentioned a meeting the younger Biden had arranged between his dad and an executive from a Ukrainian energy company. Instead of working to verify the provenance of the laptop and its contents, most other press outlets either ignored the story or reported without evidence that the email was part of a Russian disinformation campaign to sway the election.

Twitter initially banned the story, alleging without proof that the NYP was distributing hacked materials, before reversing the decision and apologizing for effectively censoring one of the biggest newspapers in the U.S.

Several NYP editors and contributors last week chided other media outlets for mocking the tabloid's coverage, including op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari. In a column, he blasted CNN reporters Brian Stelter and Alexis Benveniste for their condescending commentary, and NPR news editor Terence Samuel for outdoing all other media outlets in "sheer incuriosity."

Samuel had said in an interview that NPR didn't "want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions. And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was … a politically driven event, and we decided to treat it that way.”

Ahmair also mocked The Atlantic's David Frum, a conservative columnist, for his comment that “the people on the far right and far left who publicized the obviously bogus New York Post story were not dupes. They were accomplices.”

NY Post columnist Miranda Devine also criticized mainstream media outlets, accusing them of "actively suppressing" the Hunter Biden story until his dad had been elected. It's a fair criticism, though it's not clear whether such reporting would have changed the outcome of the election, which was more of a referendum on President Trump's behavior during the pandemic. It's also not clear whether the Justice Department's investigation has anything to do with Hunter Biden's laptop.

At the very least, inaction by the media is a failure to fulfill its role as a public watchdog. It's a shame that other press outlets didn't take the NYP story seriously, because it deserves a more thorough vetting by other journalists.

Now that Hunter Biden has admitted he is being investigated, the news outlets are showing signs of waking up from their self-imposed stupor and asking some real questions about his business dealings and their possible effect on the Biden administration. Politico and The New York Times have reported that investigators in other jurisdictions are looking into Hunter Biden's finances and possible money laundering activity.

Those news outlets need to go beyond reporting leaks from investigators and start interviewing the younger Biden's business associates, who can provide more verifiable facts about his activities. Hunter Biden said the investigation will show no wrongdoing, while his father said he's proud of his son. Those are expected responses. Now, reporters need to do their jobs and dig deeper.

newspapers, politics

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