Senators Grassley and Johnson Criticize Mainstream Media, Big Tech for Censoring Biden Email Scandal

Senators Grassley and Johnson Criticize Mainstream Media, Big Tech for Censoring Biden Email Scandal
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Masooma Haq
10/20/2020
Updated:
10/20/2020

Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Chairman of the Finance Committee, criticized the mainstream media and big tech for ignoring and censoring recent developments in the Biden email scandal.

Johnson said the media is ignoring the report (pdf) his committee put out in September and the recent developments with Hunter Biden’s emails.

“What we revealed in our 87-page report is a vast web of connections with Chinese nationals, with people all over the world. Again, trading on the Biden name. But it’s these business dealings—you know, our report raises far more questions than it actually answered,”

Johnson added, “but it raises so [many] troubling issues that the mainstream media is simply not looking at. They are suppressing the information, which is a scandal in and of itself.”

Johnson and Grassley had been conducting an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father Joe Biden was vice president.

The interim report released by the committees showed Hunter Biden engaged in “questionable financial transactions” with associates and foreign individuals, including the wife of the former mayor of Moscow and people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he planned to send the report to the Department of Justice to review it for potential criminal activity.

Top Democrats in Johnson’s committee, including Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), have criticized the investigation as spreading Russian disinformation and have called on Republicans to cease their investigations into the Biden matter.

“The Chairman has diverted our Committee’s time and taxpayer resources away from our mission to protect the health and security of Americans—and instead has generated a partisan, political report that is rooted in Russian disinformation and intended to influence the presidential election,” Senator Peters wrote in a Sept. 23 statement.

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates described the investigation as subsidizing “a foreign attack against the sovereignty of our elections with taxpayer dollars—an attack founded on a long-disproven, hardcore right-wing conspiracy theory that hinges on Sen. [Ron] Johnson himself being corrupt and that the senator has now explicitly stated he is attempting to exploit to bail out Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.”

Grassley countered the Democrats’ argument that the New York Post report spreads Russian disinformation.

“Just today, Director Ratcliffe said that Hunter Biden’s laptop issue isn’t part of a Russian disinformation campaign. You know what actually is fake news?” said Grassley “The Steele Dossier. But I don’t recall reporters and Big Tech censoring the false reporting about President Trump.”

Grassley called the blocking of the New York Post story election interference and a double standard against conservatives, concluding by saying, “Vice President Biden owes the American people answers.”

Last week, The NY Post claimed that they extracted emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop and reported that Hunter Biden allegedly introduced his father, who was the vice president at the time, to a top executive at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company whose board the younger Biden sat on.

Twitter and Facebook censored the report by restricting its distribution so those who wanted to share the story from their accounts could not do so, which got the attention of conservative lawmakers.

Senator Grassley criticized the mainstream media and Big Tech companies for censoring the report about the Biden family’s “questionable dealings.”

“Last week, news broke about Hunter Biden’s questionable financial dealings. That information, allegedly from Hunter Biden’s laptop, appears to show that Joe Biden may have been more aware of his son’s financial deals with foreign despots and criminals than he’s admitted to the American people,” Grassley said on the floor of the Senate Monday.

Joe Biden’s Campaign did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.

Masooma Haq began reporting for The Epoch Times from Pakistan in 2008. She currently covers a variety of topics including U.S. government, culture, and entertainment.
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