The Hunter Biden story began as a story about Joe Biden’s wayward son. It turned into a story about censoring media. It might yet end up being a story about something much bigger. Or it might not. But it was never a “red herring,” and it’s no joke.
Abe Greenwald, Commentary Magazine "Hunter Biden’s name has become something of a tragicomic buzzword. He’s often invoked as a punchline in jokes about drugs and hookers or as a dig at right-wingers who believe his abandoned laptop holds the encryption key to establishment corruption. He’s a one-man meme machine whose image is captioned and re-captioned for laughs. And he himself has dismissed the investigations into his international business affairs as a “red herring.” But the reality beneath the Hunter Biden spectacle has always been deeply serious, perhaps involving high-level influence peddling and flatly producing a partisan disinformation campaign that suppressed an important news story. This week saw two developments in the case that have the potential to steer us deeper into very unhumorous territory.
"First, on Wednesday, a lawyer for the IRS special agent supervising the Hunter Biden tax probe sent a letter to Congress requesting whistle-blower protection for his client to air allegations that the case has been mishandled and contaminated by political favoritism. As the New York Times reports, the agent claims to have “information that would contradict sworn testimony to Congress from a senior political appointee, an apparent reference to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland,” who had vowed in March that there would be no political interference in the investigation.
"Second, on Thursday, Chair of the House Judiciary Jim Jordan revealed that former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell received a call from Joe Biden’s campaign in October 2020, days after the New York Post broke the laptop story. Morrell testified to the House Judiciary Committee that the call from Antony Blinken, then Biden’s senior campaign official, “triggered” Morrell’s organizing a letter signed by 51 intelligence officials incorrectly characterizing the story as Russian disinformation. That letter itself would become the spine of the American disinformation campaign to exculpate Joe and Hunter Biden and discredit the Post’s reporting. It was cited by online platforms as justification for suppressing the story and by Joe Biden himself in a debate with Donald Trump.". . .
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