Yesterday The New York Times published a story that quotes emails from a laptop that Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son, abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware. The messages reinforce the impression that Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company that reportedly paid the younger Biden $50,000 a month to serve on its board, expected him to use his influence with his father for the company's benefit—an allegation that figured prominently in the scandal that led to Donald Trump's impeachment for pressuring the Ukrainian government to announce a Biden-Burisma corruption investigation. The messages include evidence that Hunter Biden arranged an April 2015 meeting between his father, then the vice president, and a Burisma executive.
If all that sounds familiar, it's because the New York Post first reported this eyebrow-raising information back in October 2020, a month before the presidential election. Pro-Biden, anti-Trump journalists, including several at the Times, portrayed the Post's story as unsubstantiated at best. Politico reported that "more than 50 former senior intelligence officials" believed the emails had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." Some journalists suggested it was reckless even to acknowledge the Post's report. Twitter, which initially blocked links to the article, seemed to agree. While the Times did not ignore the story, the paper's coverage treated it with skepticism and disdain.
