The Real Hunters In This Story Are Not Named Biden
by Jennifer K Puebla
The Real Hunters In This Story Are Not Named Biden
One would think by now that we are all accustomed to partisan reporting agencies taking the same events and coming away with two completely different stories from them.
Usually it’s only in the headlines where the most obscene discrepancies lie, because they know most internet readers do not go beyond that to dive into the meat of the article below, but Right Wing reporting of the Hunter Biden story and the GOP’s concluded probe have looked at past examples of this bias and declared loudly “Hold my beer!”
While NPR, rated one of the most honest and unbiased sources of news, runs the headline “GOP Reports: Hunter Biden’s Ukraine Job ‘Problematic,’ Effect on Policy ‘Unclear’” Fox leads with “Trump says Biden ‘should leave the campaign’ after Senate GOP report on Hunter Biden’s business dealings”
Fox also has “Hannity: Senate GOP’s Hunter Biden report should ‘immediately disqualify’ Joe Biden from presidency” while the New York Times writes, “Republican inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by (Hunter) Biden”
So what is to be believed?
Well Breitbart, despite an ominous headline, admits in their article,
“The GOP investigators found that only two individuals raised concerns to their superiors
at Obama’s State Department — George Kent, currently the deputy assistant secretary of
State for European and Eurasian affairs, and Amos Hochstein, a top Obama-era State official.”
However, they are misrepresenting the testimony of one of their two ‘concerned’ witnesses by never mentioning that he was not concerned in fact of anything but optics.
Crooks and Liars reports,
“Johnson’s star witness was George Kent, a top State Department official. He raised concerns about the appearance of impropriety and conflict of interest, Sargent and Waldman noted,
but he specifically stated there was no actual wrongdoing.”
And they go on to explain:
• Kent debunked the idea that Burisma was protected from investigation, stating that “I did not witness any effort by any U.S. official to shield Burisma from scrutiny.”
• Kent debunked the idea that the U.S. effort to oust the Ukrainian prosecutor was about stopping an investigation into Burisma, flatly stating that it was not.
• Kent confirmed that the quest for that ouster was about purging Ukraine of corruption, noting that “Ukrainian society” wanted the prosecutor gone because he was “protecting corrupt friends.”
• Kent confirmed that the conditioning of aid as leverage had nothing to do with Hunter Biden and that it originated with those involved in formulating “Ukraine policy.”
So we now have only the word of one witness, Horchstein, who is supporting the GOP conspiracy and no one apparently took him seriously.
The GOP of course would have you believe this was because of a cover-up but drawing that conclusion when the only other person who even suspected the appearance of the situation looked bad, and who in fact supports there was no wrongdoing, is more than a small stretch.
But they have been conducting these corruption contortions where Biden is concerned for a while now as Richard Cameron reports here.
The Washington Post reports,
The Senate GOP report suggests that while his father was vice president, companies
associated with Hunter Biden received money from Russian tycoon Yelena Baturina, who
is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and is a member of Kazakhstan’s
political elite.
It is unclear from the report whether those transactions actually involved Hunter Biden
directly or were ventures of his business partner, Devon Archer.”
Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, is on record with the Post that this accusation is “false” and that Biden had no interest in Baturina’s company. Another dead-end for the GOP.
Skip ahead to investments and money from China. Not only do the usual suspects not mention that Hunter’s business dealings in China were carried out after his father left office, and again they are lacking in all but the most tenuous of evidences that even smells of deliberate corruption, the hypocrisy here is astounding.
In an amazing example of ‘I know my audience is an ignorant cult’ Hannity says, “Imagine if this was Donald Trump Jr. or Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump or Barron Trump. Imagine the hysteria,”
not unlike Eric’s own moaning on Fox news on several occasions.
Obviously, well perhaps nothing should be obvious with these people, Barron likely doesn’t have Chinese and questionable foreign investment ties but Ivanka? Jr? Eric?
I’m not sure how he even asked this question without bursting into a fit of laughter or being struck by lightning.
Ivanka has received numerous new trademark approvals in China, and elsewhere, since her father was put into office. CREW has stated,
It raises significant questions about corruption, as it invites the possibility that she could
be benefiting financially from her position and her father’s presidency or that she could
be influenced in her policy work by countries’ treatment of her business.
Jared, whose name Hannity couldn’t even choke out in his list of poor innocent victims, has never stopped from pushing real estate deals across Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere.
One example of conflict was reported by the Guardian.
Donald Trump’s administration is facing new questions about conflicts of interest after
Jared Kushner’s family staged events in China to woo wealthy investors into luxury developments, with the prospect of receiving US green cards in return.
And while the boys perhaps do not have strong ties with China, we do have them bragging regarding their business dealings and loans from Russia. And Trump’s lying about it.
Even the president himself is still profiting from his Chinese investments and is blatantly using his position to influence them.
The Huffington Post writes that China loaned “$500 million to an Indonesian theme park project in which the president is a partner. Chinese banks agreed to loan an additional $500 million to the project.” This was in 2018
And GQ wrote up a tidy collection of some of the many ways the Trump offspring have profited both off of their father’s office and while he’s been in office from foreign interests.
During their father’s tenure as president, Don Jr. and Eric have repeatedly managed to
cash in on their newfound positions of political privilege in their business dealings.
So, too, have their sister Ivanka and brother-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom hold
senior positions in the administration and whose companies and investment portfolios
netted them anywhere between $29 million and $135 million last year, per their financial disclosure forms.
Here are some of the highlights of when the family’s business intertwining with
government affairs constituted the “appearance of impropriety” and “conflict of interest.”
Curiously, the Hannity’s of the right never seem to tire of their braggadocio hypocrisy which they peddle with the zeal and tenacity equal to any corrupt televangelist. Nor does the GOP and their leaders, sworn to protect the nation from enemies within as well as without, ever tire of theirs.
And so, they work tirelessly to sell their propaganda of “the media is the enemy of the people” and “fake news.”
They know that confirmation bias will fall on their side. They are not concerned with drawing people away from far Left bias reporting. They don’t care either about attracting the audiences of moderate news reporting agencies who have reputations for being fact based and fair.
They never could.
They don’t need to.
Reporting like on these Hunter Biden stories, deliberately misleading, even downright dishonest, are for their base and for their base only. They know their “readers” and viewers already want to hate the Bidens, Clintons, and Obamas of the world.
All they need to do is feed them a steady stream of chum to keep them close.
And they are good at that.
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