Two former reporters for Politico have confirmed that higher-ups at the far-left website ran interference for Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in 2019 by killing stories about Hunter Biden, notably those on his notorious laptop and a federal tax lien on unreported income.
Marc Caputo of Axios and Tara Palmeri of Puck detailed the unethical behavior at Politico on Palmeri’s podcast. Caputo noted that the website cooperated in the lie from 51 former intelligence officials that the laptop was Russian disinformation.
Politico editors deny they twisted coverage to back Biden.
The latest on the media’s slavish devotion to Team Biden confirms a report in 2022 from a former intelligence official, Cliff Sims, then deputy director of national intelligence for strategy and communications. He told Natasha Bertrand, who concocted the “disinformation” yarn, that it was not “Russian disinformation.”
Laptop Story Killed
Caputo and Palmeri discussed their views on the laptop and other of Hunter Biden’s scandals on her YouTube podcast. Title: “How Politico Suppressed Biden Stories.”
“I mean, Politico, my former employer, and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors,” Caputo said in the interview, which appeared yesterday:
I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, “Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.” And I was told — and this came from on high at Politico — “Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop.” And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.
Bertrand’s story, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” remains proudly published at the website with no correction or clarification. The 51 officials, including James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, and communist John Brenner, former CIA director, said the laptop — uncovered by the New York Post and later confirmed by Hunter himself — “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this,” the 51 Biden cutouts wrote.
That was false, yet Politico and the rest of leftist mainstream media, determined to defeat Trump, ran with it.
Gun Story Suppressed
For her part, Palmeri complained that she spent three months on the Hunter Biden gun story. Hunter’s wife, Hallie, found the Colt Cobra 38SPL in Biden’s truck and tossed it in a dumpster behind a grocery. Palmeri and reporter Ben Schreckinger disclosed that the Secret Service interfered in the local investigation about the gun. The agency tried to seize the form that Biden was required to fill out to buy the firearm. And for good reason. The smartest guy whom Joe Biden knows lied on the federal form to purchase it. He claimed he wasn’t a drug addict.
Noting that the story had to be “100-percent nailed down,” Palmeri suggested that if the story had been about someone else, it would have published:
I had everything, you know, the police reports. … I’m a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have, if it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type of story.
Palmeri told Fox News Digital that Politico bosses only reluctantly published her story about the scandal. And only after she pestered them constantly.
“I certainly had to push very hard to get that reporting published, she said:
Like, it was a constant, “Hey, when are we going to do this? Hey, when are we going to get this out there? Hey, when [are we] going to do this?” Because it was so difficult. Like it was kind of a known feeling that like, it’s gonna be difficult to report stuff that’s really tough on the Biden administration and family. It’s just like a culture.
And I think when the culture is that a reporter has to push so hard that it just creates a feeling that there’s not an interest in that type of reporting. And ultimately, you know, we work to be published and to get our editors to support our work.
Though Palmeri had the goods on Biden’s gunplay in January 2021, Politico editors kept it under wraps until March.
“I just think if it was a Trump kid, it would have been published much sooner,” Palmeri told Fox:
I just had to work really hard. … [Y]ou’re like “Hey, what’s going on with the story? Hey, what’s going on with the story?” … We gave the White House a lot of time, like a week or so to respond. I don’t know if that would have been the case for a Trump story.
Palmeri also said that Politico was obsessed with the Secret Service angle of the story, and that Hunter Biden’s committing a felony wasn’t enough.
“They felt like for it to be worthy of being published, it had to rise to that occasion that a federal department was involved and they misused power, basically,” she told Fox:
Like the crime itself was not important, was not worthy of just running the story on that alone. In fairness, they wanted to make sure the story was buttoned up, but they also felt like it needed to be elevated beyond the crime, the obvious crime which we had from the form. We had to nail down that element of the Secret Service part.
Tax Story Killed
Caputo also complained about the manner in which editors treated his story about the Boy Wonder’s tax problems.
In 2019, a rival Democratic candidate for president told Caputo that the Internal Revenue Service hit Hunter with a tax lien linked to his suspiciously lucrative position with Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company at the center of the Biden-Burisma influence-peddling scheme.
Caputo told Palmeri he wrote a “classic story.” But “that story was killed by the editors. And they gave no explanation.”
Of course they didn’t.
Politico called Caputo’s and Palmeri’s claims “bulls**t” and bragged about its editors’ “rigorous standards.”
Those standards must explain why the original disinformation about Hunter’s laptop’s being Russian disinformation remains at the website.
Skeptics observed that the two only revealed the truth five years after the scandals, when Biden left office.
Reporter Knew “Disinformation” Claim Was a Lie
As for the laptop and Politico’s original false story about it, as The New American reported in 2022, reporter Bertrand knew the 51 intelligence officials had fed her disinformation. Active intelligence officials did not believe the laptop was a Russian plant to hurt Biden. Bertrand knew that because then Deputy DNI Sims told her.
“Oct. 19, then-@politico reporter @NatashBertrand preps a story about 50 former Intel officials claiming the Biden laptop story is Russian disinfo,” former deputy DNI director Sims wrote in a long X thread:
I warn her that it is NOT and point her to Ratcliffe’s statements.
She writes it anyway and gives Democrats the headline they want.
Ratcliffe is John Ratcliffe, then director of national intelligence. Same day, he appeared on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News show to say the laptop was not “Russian disinformation.” Hate-Trump Democrat Adam Schiff of California, House Intelligence Committee chairman, had wrongly said intelligence officials believe as much.
“Let me be clear: the intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that,” Ratcliffe told Bartiromo:
And we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff, or any member of Congress, that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.
It’s simply not true.
So despite Politico’s “rigorous standards,” its reporter ignored a deputy DNI who told her that the story it was about to publish was false.
That story remains, again, at Politico.
