Michael Goodwin

Michael Goodwin

Politics

The New York Times hates to say The Post told you so

Sometimes a newspaper story is just a story about someone. And sometimes the story inadvertently reveals far more about the newspaper itself.

That’s the case of the New York Times’ Thursday piece on Hunter Biden. What the discerning reader learns about the Times is far more important than anything disclosed about the president’s scheming son.

The one bit of actual news is that Hunter Biden took out a loan to pay the federal government as much as $1 million in back taxes as part of a continuing criminal probe about his business ventures with foreign corporations and individuals.

But that fact, which comes in the very first paragraph, is dwarfed by the Times’ bombshell acknowledgment later on. Much later on. 

It’s not until the 24th paragraph that the story mentions emails involving Hunter Biden and his associates in those deals, followed by these two sentences: “Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.”

Heart be still. It took the Gray Lady nearly 17 months to grudgingly concede even a fraction of what New York Post readers learned in October 2020. Of course, Times readers would have learned all that too if their paper were still in the news business instead of being a running dog for Democrats.

The Post revealed those emails and many, many more after it came into possession of the contents of the same laptop’s hard drive. Post readers also know the Times was part of the Big Government, Big Tech and Big Media cabal that tried to hide those emails from the public during the 2020 presidential election.

The New York Times published a comprehensive report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden’s tax filings and confirmed the existence of his infamous laptop. Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images
Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive contained emails, text messages, photos and financial documents between himself, his family and business associates. Hunter Biden laptop images

The reason for that coverup was simple: Many of the emails to and from Hunter Biden implicated Joe Biden in the international influence-peddling business run by Hunter and Joe’s brother Jim Biden.

If the whole country knew then that Joe Biden was corruptly using his office to help his family cash in, we would now be in the second year of Donald Trump’s second term. That’s a fact because 8% of Biden voters told pollsters they would have supported Trump had they known about the bombshell contents of the laptop.

But the Times, Facebook, Twitter, CNN and the deep state couldn’t let that happen. They had spent four years trying to drive Trump out of office, mostly by falsely alleging he had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. They were determined he would not get four more years.

So as a corollary to their reporting fake news about Trump, when they had real news about Biden family corruption, instead of reporting it and letting users share it on social media, they conspired to bury it. 

Blame them for Joe Biden’s disastrous presidency.

And now the Times has the gall to act as if it did heroic digging by claiming Thursday the emails “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” Oh, please.

Unlike the Times, The Post didn’t rely on anonymous sources, saying openly that Rudy Giuliani gave the paper a copy of the laptop’s hard drive. Giuliani said it came from a repairman in Delaware, whom The Post also interviewed. He said a man who signed his name as Hunter Biden dropped the laptop off for fixes and never retrieved it. 

Many of the emails to and from Hunter Biden implicated Joe Biden in the international influence-peddling business run by Hunter and Joe’s brother Jim. Paul Morigi/Getty Images

(The whole sordid saga is compellingly chronicled in “Laptop from Hell,” written by my Post colleague Miranda Devine.)

The laptop stories, complete with pictures of drug-addled Hunter having sex with prostitutes, were explosive on their own — and that was before Tony Bobulinski entered the picture. The former Penn State wrestler and Navy officer was briefly a partner and CEO of a joint venture Hunter set up with a Chinese Communist who headed an energy conglomerate.

Bobulinski, in the weeks before the November election, publicly authenticated some of the most important emails on the laptop because they had his name on them. Among them was one addressed to himself, Hunter and Jim Biden and two other associates about how the five partners would divide their equity in the new joint venture. 

John Paul Mac Isaac was the Delaware repairman who came into contact with the laptop after Hunter abandoned it in his shop. James Keivom

Four, including Hunter, would each get 20%, while Jim Biden would get 10%. The incriminating email said the additional “10” would be held by H, or Hunter, “for the big guy.”

Bobulinski identified Joe Biden as the big guy. And nobody in the Biden family has ever denied it.

It would be foolish if they did because Bobulinski went to the FBI with his information and turned over all his electronic devices. That is presumably part of the endless probe into Hunter that continues.

The Times looked through the contents of the laptop, which “were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.” DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION/A

Bobulinski also publicly revealed to me and others his meeting in May 2017 with Joe Biden about the Chinese deal and said Joe, who had just left the White House as vice president, was fully informed of the details that had been hammered out over the previous two years. 

What’s the Times going to do about that? Is it now going to spend another 17 months authenticating that set of emails?

Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t it let Ken Vogel, one of three reporters on Thursday’s story, write what he knows. Bobulinski told Vogel the “big guy” email was authentic in October 2020, but the Times has never seen fit to print it.

And what’s the Times going to do about the email where Hunter complains to his daughter that his father takes half of his income from him? Or the one where a partner on other deals, Eric Schwerin, writes that he moves money between Hunter and Joe’s checking accounts?

So maybe the big guy didn’t just lie about never discussing his son’s business. Maybe he was getting a cut all along.

As I have written, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping know everything about these deals, including how many millions were wired from oligarchs and Communist-tied companies to bank accounts controlled by the Bidens. They also know what the Bidens did for the money. 

The only people who don’t know all the facts are Americans. And for that, you can thank the New York Times and its corrupt ­co-conspirators.

White House giving up, not giving answers

White House press secretary Jen Psaki didn’t even bother trying to defend her past claim that The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” after the New York Times belatedly verified emails from the cache.

Psaki deflected, saying she’s a “spokesperson for the United States. (Hunter) doesn’t work for the United States.” REUTERS

Psaki was pressed Thursday at her regular briefing about her own misleading remarks and those of then-candidate Joe Biden.

“The New York Times has authenticated emails that appear to have come from a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden in Delaware,” began RealClearPolitics reporter Philip Wegmannn. “The president previously said that the New York Post story about this was ‘a bunch of garbage’ and that it was a ‘Russian plant.’ Does he stand by that assessment?”

Psaki deflected without answering for Biden’s misinformation.

“I’d point you to the Department of Justice and also to Hunter Biden’s representatives. He doesn’t work in the government,” she said.