President Joe Biden has been a regular recipient of “Pinocchios” by the Washington Post for his false statements on subjects ranging from election laws to abortion protections to deficit reduction.
Biden is undeterred and regularly repeats false stories from his life that have ranged from an invented arrest with Nelson Mandela to a zombie-like train conductor. Undeterred, this week he continued with the false claim about the “Joey, Baby” conductor.
Now, the President has a fresh set of “Four Pinocchios,” but the false claim is far more serious than inventing a conductor or rewriting the history of the Second Amendment.
The Post is admitting that Biden has been lying about how his son Hunter never made money from China. It is the latest indication that the protective media wall surrounding Biden is beginning to crumble under the weight of new evidence in the corruption scandal.
Glenn Kessler wrote yesterday that Biden has repeatedly and categorically maintained that his son did not receive money from China.
“But now, nearly three years later, Biden’s assertions have been directly rebutted by Hunter himself. In court testimony last week, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China — the first official confirmation that this was the case.”
What is curious is that Kessler and the Post waited for Hunter to effectively confess rather than take notice of money transfers and records released by House committees investigating the corruption scandal. The Post and most of the media have taken little observable journalistic interest in independently confirming such payments or benefits. Instead, the media has adopted a largely passive stance and waited for confessions rather than find confirmation.
Nevertheless, as with the laptop, there is some credit to be given for eventually confirming what has long been known.
Kessler noted that these dealings overlapped with the President’s travels and meetings:
“Twelve days after he flew to Beijing, Hunter Biden joined the board of a just-formed investment advisory firm known as BHR (Bohai, Harvest and Rosemont), whose partners included Chinese entities, including the man he introduced to his father. Separately, after Joe Biden left public office, Hunter Biden in 2017 inked a deal with CEFC China Energy, a Chinese energy conglomerate. The Washington Post reported last year that documents, including emails found on a Hunter Biden laptop that emerged during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, showed that over the course of 14 months, the CEFC and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by Hunter Biden and President Biden’s brother, James.”
Nevertheless, the Post emphasized that it “did not find evidence that Joe Biden personally benefited from or knew details about the transactions with CEFC.” Of course, the Post has not been known to be particularly active in independently trying to confirm such benefits . . . absent another Biden admission or confession.
As with the clearly false claims that he had no knowledge or involvement in these dealings, the question is now not whether Joe Biden has been lying but why he has been lying.
