The extent of the media’s unprecedented cover-up of former President Joe Biden’s mental illness and his son Hunter Biden’s pre-presidential legal troubles is finally coming to light.
According to a report by Fox News on Saturday, critics of legacy media have long accused news outlets of shielding the 46th president from unfavorable coverage, particularly when it comes to disclosures about his family’s dubious financial practices and his cognitive decline, which were particularly noticeable during last year’s CNN debate and ultimately caused him to withdraw from the 2024 presidential contest.
According to the report, attempts to protect Biden from criticism actually started in May 2019, when the 2020 Democratic primary was still in progress.
A report that Marc Caputo, a former Politico reporter, published last week used opposition research from Biden’s Democratic opponents. According to the report, Biden’s son Hunter has a “tax lien” associated with his employment with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The former vice president was leading other Democratic candidates by a considerable margin at the time.
In an interview with the podcast “Somebody’s Gotta Win,” Caputo stated, “And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail”
“The editors killed that story. Additionally, they offered no justification for that,” Caputo continued.
By October 2020, Biden was narrowly ahead of then-incumbent President Trump in the polls and had won the Democratic nomination. Hunter Biden’s laptop was the subject of the New York Post’s shocking report, which revealed previously unheard-of information regarding his foreign finances and possible ties to his father.
“I recall approaching my editor while covering Biden and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’” “And I was informed by Politico’s upper management that you should not write, discuss, or tweet about the laptop,” Caputo stated.
He recalled Politico’s one and only story about the laptop, which he claimed was published under the “ill-fated headline” that read, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The journalist has since moved on and is currently writing for Axios.
An open letter signed by 51 intelligence officials stating that the laptop’s contents had “all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation” was cited in the report, as was the case with many other reports from the legacy media at the time.
The letter was cited by candidate Biden during his second debate with Trump, when he brushed off The Post’s laptop report as a “Russian plant.”
Hunter Biden’s laptop was allegedly ignored by more than just Politico. Top CNN executives told employees not to cover it, according to a leaked audio recording that Project Veritas was able to obtain.
During a conference call on October 14, the day the NY Post released its initial report on Hunter Biden’s emails, CNN political director David Chalian stated, “Obviously, we’re not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden.”
Tara Palmeri, a former Politico reporter who first reported on Hunter Biden’s gun incident that resulted in charges, claimed her publication was slow-walking her reporting.
“I worked on it for three months, visited the laptop shop, and completed all of the reporting in Delaware. However, it had to be really good—it had to be perfect,” Palmeri admitted to Caputo during the podcast. “You know, I had all the police reports. I’m a reliable journalist. However, I do wonder if it could have, if a different kind of story would have allowed it to be published a bit sooner.
Palmeri continued, “I just believe it would have been published much sooner if it had been a Trump kid.”
Joe Biden’s protection grew to include inquiries about the president’s personal health in addition to his family’s financial situation. White House staff had to deal with Biden’s “good days and bad days” as early as spring 2021, according to a Wall Street Journal story published last month.
However, in just the first few months of his term, there was a hint that the grueling presidential schedule needed to be modified to account for Biden’s advanced age. According to the Journal, administration officials observed that the president would become exhausted after lengthy meetings and would make mistakes.
On condition of anonymity, other reporters told Fox that they had observed early on that Biden appeared “stiff” and “old,” and that his responses to questions were deliberately brief, as though he had been “coached.”
