The Hunter Biden Laptop Story - Starring, the Deniers: Joe Biden, Lesley Stahl, Rachel Maddow, Brian Stelter, Nina Jankowicz, Brian Williams, Peter Strzok, James Clapper, Mark Zuckerberg, Stephen Colbert, 51 Intelligence Officials, FBI, NPR, 60 Minutes, CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, Twitter, New York Times,…And Truth Tellers: Trump, Miranda Devine, Tucker Carlson, Greg Gutfeld, Joe Rogan, New York Post and more! …Another Case Against 'Misinformation' Bans.
It's become popular in certain political and media circles to say social media must clamp down harder on false information. Some lawmakers have even threatened tech companies with severe consequences for failing to stop the spread of fake news. But the idea that these companies could ever do this adequately is laughable—something driven home by new reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop.
Back in October 2020, the New York Post first reported on the laptop—allegedly left by President Joe Biden's son at a computer repair shop and containing emails about Hunter's work for Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The emails suggested Burisma was paying Hunter in order to get access to his dad.
The story was quickly panned by prestige media and denounced by Democrats, who characterized it as an attempt to make then-candidate Joe Biden look bad and possibly another attempt by Russians to influence a U.S. presidential election. Even mentioning it to criticize it was frowned upon by some on the left.
This narrative was so pervasive and persuasive that Facebook temporarily limited distribution of the Post story and Twitter briefly blocked users from sharing it entirely. Now, The New York Times—which was critical of the Post story when it came out—has published a piece backing up many of the Post's initial assertions. The story details the U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into Hunter Biden for possible violations of laws surrounding taxes, foreign lobbying, and money laundering.
Federal prosecutors "had examined emails…from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop," the Times reports, before going on to describe the contents of some of these emails. These emails "were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation," it says.
So: A story that initially seemed dubious turned out to have been true all along.
#fakenews #bias #laptopfromhell
