Why No Leaks From the Federal Investigation Into Hunter Biden?

Then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in the reviewing stand watch President Barack Obama's inaugural parade in Washington on Jan. 20, 2009. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Commentary

The New York Post newspaper published a story on Oct. 14, 2020, that reported that Hunter Biden had allegedly abandoned a laptop at a computer store in Delaware, and due to the explosive nature of the contents of that laptop, it had ended up in the possession of the FBI and the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, possibly as evidence in ongoing federal investigations.

Later, after the laptop story broke, an unnamed Justice Department official revealed that an FBI investigation into alleged money laundering had begun in 2019. In December 2020, it was disclosed that a federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax affairs was initiated two years earlier.

It is just me, or is anybody else surprised that no details about the federal investigation into Hunter Biden and his business associates have been leaked to the news media since that New York Post story was published?

The marked partisan contrast between the investigation into President Joe Biden’s family versus the investigation into Donald Trump’s family is growing more apparent.

The investigation of one prominent family entailed numerous leaks made to the media. The investigation of the other family progressed for more than two years in complete radio silence—interrupted only by a brief two-week flare-up caused by that New York Post story.

The FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” and we learned this a few months after Trump had been sworn in. At what point are we going to learn what catchy code name has been given to the more-than-two-years-long federal investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings?

Everybody in Washington knows Hunter Biden is a target of a federal investigation and yet it’s becoming increasingly apparent that corporate media is putting no effort into digging into this important story to inform the public about it. They’ve limited their efforts solely to burying the story as a non-issue whenever they’re forced to address it.

‘Russian Disinformation’?

Whenever the subject has been broached, Joe Biden himself has insisted that the federal investigation of his son Hunter and those associated with his business ventures are based on “Russian disinformation.” While that dodge may have worked prior to the election, Biden’s continuing to resort to it as his standard answer since then is telling, especially after Hunter acknowledged that the investigation of his tax affairs is real.

On Dec. 22, 2020, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Biden, “Mr. President-elect, do you still think that the stories from the fall about your son Hunter were Russian disinformation and a smear campaign like you said?”

“Yes, yes, yes. God love you, man. You’re a one-horse pony,” Biden answered as he walked away.

The current president has made it clear what the approved talking point is, when it comes to federal prosecutors digging into his family’s business dealings in Ukraine, China, Russia, and elsewhere. The issue is to be dismissed as a Russian disinformation operation.

A Marked Contrast in New Media Coverage

Contrast the mainstream media’s ignoring of the Hunter Biden scandal with that of their relentless partisan coverage of the Trump family.

The American public had to wait a few months after President Donald J. Trump was sworn in to learn that he and key members of his campaign team had been the targets of federal investigation during the 2016 election. That investigation was the FBI’s counterintelligence probe, dubbed “Crossfire Hurricane,” which quickly morphed into the Mueller special counsel probe.

Even before the formation of the special counsel’s office, leaks abounded from the FBI about the federal government’s investigation into the supposed collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government of Vladimir Putin. And then, throughout the tenure of the Mueller special counsel’s office, a multitude of leaks concerning the special counsel’s work were made to news media organizations.

The public became aware that Hunter Biden was the subject of a federal investigation in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election—despite the best efforts of both corporate media and Big Tech platforms to suppress the story and hide it from voters.

And yet, during a two-year investigation of a member of one of the country’s most powerful political families, not only were there no leaks from the federal investigation before the 2020 election, but there were none following it, either.

That happened even as a key Biden family business associate, Tony Bobulinski, went public as a whistleblower and gave several high-profile media interviews in late October 2020. In those interviews, Bobulinski provided a host of details into how the Bidens allegedly went about setting up potentially shady business deals.

That was in late October; it’s now early February. Where are all the mainstream news media stories about the Hunter Biden investigation?

No such news stories are coming, since it’s becoming increasingly apparent that it won’t be the mainstream media holding the Biden administration accountable.

Far from holding a Biden White House accountable, the corporate media is already strongly signaling how enthusiastically it intends to play cheerleader for the new administration’s agenda. They have no interest in digging into any potential Biden family scandals—even obvious ones.

It will have to be independent news media doing the real journalism that’s required more than ever to hold our government accountable.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Telegram at t.me/drawandstrikechannel.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.