It’s the biggest con ever perpetuated by the national media.
For all of their hysterics over “disinformation” and “collusion,” we know now that they were indisputably the most guilty of both.
Recent reports show how the Washington ruling class, including career intelligence officials, the media and Big Tech, plotted well in advance to suppress and discredit the fully authentic and legitimate Hunter Biden laptop story, solely for the purpose of influencing the 2020 election.
The greatest offense was on behalf of the news media, the constitutionally protected institution charged with holding the powerful to account.
In 2020, they abandoned that mission to do the complete opposite.
Journalist Matt Taibbi laid out in meticulous detail Thursday how the influential left-wing Aspen Institute, with events attended by members of every major news publication, literally coached the media in the months leading up to the election on how to handle materials that would cast the Biden family in a negative light.
No, not just any potential or unnamed political figure, literally the Biden family, specifically with relation to Hunter.
That specific event in the summer of 2020, “Hack-and-Dump Working Group,” was apparently based on a white paper authored by two of the attendees, which advised journalists to “break” precedent established by the publication of the Pentagon Papers.
“Focus on the why in addition to the what,” the paper said.
“Make the disinformation campaign as much a part of the story” as the newsworthy material itself.
Changing the rules
In essence, the fourth estate was instructed to de-emphasize the importance of materials that would politically harm the Bidens and instead elevate the means by which the materials were obtained.
And that’s exactly what they did when they refused to cover the story, or otherwise dismiss it as Russian propaganda.
That has never in the history of American journalism been the standard by which news is reported.
Up until 2020, the standard was — “We got the goods, and for better or worse, here they are.”
All of that changed with the Hunter laptop bombshell.
Suddenly, the story at every major newspaper and network news channel wasn’t that Hunter had abandoned a computer full of unseemly and incriminating info, but that the means by which it was obtained were improper.
It’s laughable.
Every consequential story published by The New York Times and The Washington Post is the result of someone doing something illegal.
Publishing Donald Trump’s private tax information?
Received by illegal means.
James Comey leaks?
Received by illegal means.
Developments of a federal investigation into the campaign of a major party nominee?
Received by illegal means.
In any event, the contents of Hunter’s laptop weren’t even government secrets.
They were sitting on an abandoned piece of hardware at a repair shop.
Otherwise referred to by the intelligence community as “RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION!”
Joe’s ‘talking point’
That was another lie manufactured for the express purpose of protecting the Bidens and without an iota of evidence that would invalidate the Post’s reporting.
The Washington Examiner on Thursday reported on the infamous 2020 “former intelligence officials” letter, authored by Obama-era CIA official Michael Morell.
At the time, Morell had said in an email to former CIA Director John Brennan that he was gathering names of intelligence community members to cast doubt on the Hunter laptop story because “We want to give the VP a talking point to use in response.”
Biden certainly used the talking point gift.
In the second and final 2020 debate, Biden cited the letter, which was first published by Politico.
“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant.”
To recap: Journalists were coached on how to shift the discussion away from newsworthy materials detrimental to a specific person (Biden) and focus instead on the means by which they were obtained.
That’s exactly what they did and the change in reporting standards were expressly made to tilt the election.
Eddie Scarry is a columnist for The Federalist.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
