The case of the curious omissions

This week the Washington Post published a story on the contents of Hunter Biden’s very real laptop. The FBI have misplaced the laptop, but the Post has possessed the contents since June 2021. Now at least part of the story can be told.

When the New York Post first broke the laptop story in October 2020, a few weeks before the presidential election, the Washington Post was not happy about it. As I noted in defamed and disparaged it. WaPo reporters, WaPo columnists, and an esteemed WaPo fact-checker blasted the other Post’s scoops reporting those contents. Now the WaPo defamers are all but slapping themselves on the back for picking up after the Post.

Having taken part in the Post’s 2020 coverage and followed up with a book on the laptop, Miranda Devine is not impressed. In her Post column yesterday Devine observes the “curious omissions” in the Washington Post story:

[I]t does not mention the $6 million [Chinese energy company] CEFC wired into the business bank account of trusted Biden family friend Rob Walker, a former Clinton administration official whose wife, Betsy Massey Walker, had been Jill Biden’s assistant when she was second lady. On Feb. 23, 2017, and March 1, 2017, two wires, each for $3 million, were sent to Rob Walker from State Energy HK Limited, a Shanghai-based company linked to CEFC.

That money was payment for work done by Hunter and his business partners during the last two years of Joe Biden’s vice presidency in countries from Romania to Russia, using the Biden name to open doors and find acquisitions for CEFC.

Nor does the Washington Post mention the company SinoHawk Holdings, which was set up on May 15, 2017, for a joint venture between CEFC and Hunter and his business partners. This was the deal for which Joe Biden was to get a 10% cut, as cited in an infamous 2017 email on the laptop, “10 [percent] held by H [Hunter] for the big guy.”

Hunter’s former business partner, the CEO of SinoHawk, Tony Bobulinski, has publicly said that Joe Biden is the “big guy.” But the Washington Post curiously does not mention Bobulinski, even though his name is all over the emails and documents on the laptop relating to CEFC, and even though the naval veteran held a press conference spilling the beans on the Bidens in October 2020.

It does not mention that Bobulinski met Joe Biden twice in 2017, to be vetted as CEO of SinoHawk.

Devine comments: “Considering the newspaper says it has had possession of a hard-drive clone of Hunter’s laptop since June 2021, these are curious omissions, which serve to underplay Joe Biden’s role.” See also Francis Menton’s excellent Manhattan Contrarian post “The Rules About Corruption Just Don’t Apply To The Bidens.”

The fundamental things apply as time goes by — don’t they? Unlike the legendary Washington Post reporters of old — as portrayed in the film All the President’s Men, anyway — today’s Washington Post reporters don’t show much interest in following the money, or the obvious intentions behind it.

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