ICYMI | Opinion: Apologies for Hunter Biden’s Laptop

Kimberly Strassel | WSJ Opinion

 

“The list of those owed an apology over the Hunter Biden affair may stretch to the moon and back. Due a position at the front of the line are the two men who first blew the lid off the Biden sleaze and endured a smearing for the ages.

 

“Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Tuesday delivered the latest installment of their yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings—laying out in Senate speeches the complex web of banking transactions tying his companies to entities connected to the Chinese government. Their exposé offered more detail into their September 2020 report about the Biden family’s foreign financial entanglements.

 

“As courageous (and accurate) as the New York Post’s October 2020 reporting on the Hunter laptop was, it came after the Johnson-Grassley bombshell. Only now—18 months late—are mainstream media outlets grudgingly confirming the truth of that Senate report.

 

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“That’s something, though it’s far from the apology the senators deserve from media outlets that spent 2020 helping Democrats slander them as Russian agents.

 

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“Panicked Democrats defaulted to the scurrilous claim that the Republican senators were spreading Russian disinformation. Top Democrats—including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, and Mark Warner and Adam Schiff, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees—in July 2020 publicly released a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation expressing worries that Congress had become ‘the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign.’ Attached to it was classified information, which Democrats immediately leaked to the press, claiming the Grassley-Johnson probe specifically had “become a vehicle for ‘laundering’ a foreign influence campaign” to damage Mr. Biden, as Politico helpfully narrated.

 

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“Mr. Johnson and Mr. Grassley had bluntly refuted the claim, explaining the report was based primarily on U.S. government documents, including Treasury reports.

 

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“The false-flag operation hit its apex just before the report’s release, with Mr. Schumer and Oregon’s Ron Wyden calling it disinformation and introducing a resolution to block its issue. Mr. Wyden on the Senate floor called it an example of ‘the spread of Russian propaganda, and the pathway it’s following from Russian agents through the United States Senate to the American public.’ Upon the report’s release on Sept. 23, Mr. Schiff issued a statement saying: ‘the Kremlin must be very pleased.’

 

“In his floor speech this week, Mr. Grassley asked his Democratic colleagues and the media that has confirmed his report to remind him exactly what parts of it were Russian disinformation.

 

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“Although some Republicans are immediately characterizing all this as ‘corruption,’ the more specific issue (and always the focus of the Johnson-Grassley probe) is national security. Hunter Biden spent years entwining the family in questionable ventures in Ukraine, Russia and China, even as his father’s biggest foreign-policy concerns are Ukraine, Russia and China. This history raises legitimate questions about counterintelligence and extortion, even as it puts a spotlight on how honest President Biden has been in claiming no knowledge of his son’s doings.

 

“At the very least, Messrs. Johnson and Grassley are getting satisfaction. Their continued investigation has confirmed their earlier report and portions of the laptop, thereby adding to the pressure on the media finally to do some digging. Though they’d no doubt take that apology, too.”

 

Read the full opinion piece by clicking HERE.

 

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