With News of Hunter Biden’s Criminal Probe, Recall the Media Outlets That Peddled the “Russian Disinformation” Lie

 
by Glenn Greenwald

The revelation that Hunter Biden is being criminally investigated for his business activities in China came on Monday from the investigative target himself, and he predictably and self-servingly depicted it as just a narrow probe about his “tax affairs” by the U.S. Attorney for Delaware. As I wrote last night, that by itself would be significant enough — the documents published in the weeks before the election by The New York Post contained ample information about exactly that matter, yet were widely repressed by a union of mainstream news outlets, the intelligence community and Silicon Valley based on propaganda and lies. But new reporting suggest the investigation has been far broader.

“The federal investigation into President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been more extensive than a statement from Hunter Biden indicates,” Politico reported Monday night. Specifically, “the securities fraud unit in the Southern District of New York also scrutinized Hunter Biden’s finances”; “investigators in Delaware and Washington were also probing potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties”; and “federal authorities in the Western District of Pennsylvania are conducting a criminal investigation of a hospital business in which Joe Biden’s brother James was involved.” CNN’s Shimon Prokupecz added that “at least one of the matters investigators have examined is a 2017 gift of a 2.8-carat diamond that Hunter Biden received from CEFC [China Energy’]’s founder and former chairman Ye Jianming after a Miami business meeting.”

All of these topics are what the large bulk of the U.S. media, working in concert with the intelligence community and Silicon Valley, suppressed prior to the election. One of the first New York Post articles based on materials from Hunter’s laptop, headlined “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm,” described how he “pursued lucrative deals involving China’s largest private energy company — including one that he said would be ‘interesting for me and my family,’” and specifically noted that Hunter “was identified as ‘Chair/Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,’ an apparent reference to the former Shanghai-based conglomerate CEFC China Energy Co.”

That was the same email that referenced ten percent to be “held by H for the big guy” — which one of Hunter’s business partners on the email chain, Tony Bobulinski, stated categorically referred to Joe Biden. The Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel similarly reviewed numerous laptop documents and reported that “records produced by Mr. Bobulinski show that in 2017, Hunter Biden and James Biden were involved in negotiations about a joint venture with a Chinese energy and finance company called CEFC China Energy,” adding that the documents also “make clear that Hunter Biden saw the family name as a valuable asset, angrily citing his ‘family’s brand’ as a reason he is valuable to the proposed venture.”

Email from Hunter Biden’s laptop published by The New York Post on Oct. 15, 2020
 
The pre-election article I wrote and was blocked from publishing by The Intercept, which precipitated my departure from that outlet, extensively discussed these documents’ revelations regarding the attempts by Hunter and Biden’s brother Jim to exploit the former Vice President’s influence in China to generate profit for the Biden family. Among other things, the censored article described “the Biden family’s pursuit of business opportunities in China,” referenced “proposals for lucrative business deals in China that traded on his influence with his father,” discussed the possibility suggested by the emails that “Hunter along with Joe Biden’s brother Jim were planning on including the former Vice President in at least one deal in China,” and argued that these documents raise the critical question of “whether Biden ever knew about business proposals in Ukraine or China being pursued by his son and brother in which Biden was a proposed participant.”

All of these vital facts and questions about Hunter’s activities in China were largely suppressed from the voting population by the bulk of the U.S. media, working in tandem with Silicon Valley (which simply prevented the story from being discussed and shared on its key platforms), and the intelligence community. How was this accomplished? Largely through outright propaganda, a blatant two-pronged lie: that these materials should be ignored because they constitute “Russian disinformation.”

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