Yesterday, the New York Post broke its big story sourced from Hunter Biden’s emails, headlined “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad.” Probably, every regular reader of this blog is already familiar with that story.

I congratulate the Post on getting and breaking this story. The Post has now revealed definitive evidence of criminal conduct that VP Biden has previously denied. But recognize that the new documents that the Post has uncovered aren’t anything that you didn’t already know had to exist. The chance that a Ukrainian oligarch hired Hunter Biden a month after his father took charge of US/Ukraine relations, and then paid Hunter $3+ million just to be friendly, was always exactly zero. So the significance of these new documents is not that they reveal corruption that you didn’t already know about, but rather that they add the additional element of specifically contradicting previous lame attempts at denials by the candidate, which are now demonstrated to be incontrovertibly false.

And then there’s the even bigger story of the corruption of the media, in which I am including both the “mainstream” media like the New York Times and the “social” media like Facebook and Twitter. Yes we already knew that these institutions had committed themselves to becoming part of the Biden campaign. Clearly they were not going to affirmatively promote a story demonstrating definitive criminality of the presidential candidate they are looking to as their savior. But how would they handle this new and completely damning information? An honest approach would be to report the facts straight, but not overly emphasize them. Of course, that’s not what we got. Instead, we have gotten efforts to suppress the story that have been almost comical in their desperation. The progressive media have taken their own corruption to a whole new level.

It was just over a year ago, September 2019, in the context of Congressional hearings on the subject of impeachment, that the details of Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine became a significant news story. On October 2, 2019, President Trump, at a news conference, called the conduct of Joe and Hunter Biden with regard to Ukraine “stone cold crooked.” I decided to investigate that assertion in detail, and wrote a series of five posts, two on October 6 (here and here), and then on October 27, October 29, and November 17.

In the first of those posts, I began by reciting a list of facts then already established in the public record. The facts included these:

• In March 2014, in the wake of a revolution in which prior Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted, Vice President Joe Biden became “point man” for US relations with Ukraine.

• Ukraine gas company Burisma, and its head Mykola Zlochevsky, were obvious prime targets of corruption investigations to be conducted by the new Ukrainian regime of its predecessors.

• One month later, in April 2014, Hunter Biden got a position as a director of Burisma at compensation of at least $600,000 per year. (Other sources have since put the compensation at $1 million per year.)

• In early 2015 Viktor Shokin was named chief prosecutor to investigate corruption in Ukraine. He quickly identified Burisma and Zlochevsky as targets.

• In early 2016 Shokin was seeking to arrange an interview of Hunter Biden as part of his investigation of Burisma and Zlochevsky.

• In March 2016 Joe Biden threatened Ukraine with loss of some $1 billion in US foreign aid unless Shokin was promptly fired. Shokin was then promptly fired. (There is a famous video at this link of Biden admitting to these facts.).

• The investigation of Burisma and Zlochevsky was then dropped.

• Hunter Biden remained on the Board of Burisma into 2017, collecting more than $3 million in total fees.

Go to that post for additional links for the sources of these facts. My conclusion at the time:

The truth is that that list of facts would be, in any courtroom trial, sufficient proof that the Bidens are “stone cold crooked.” Why? Because they are easily sufficient to support an inference of corrupt motive. First, everyone would understand that the hiring of Hunter at a ridiculous premium rate of pay by a company that was almost certain to become a target of the new Ukrainian regime, and immediately after VP Biden took charge of U.S. diplomacy in Ukraine, could only have been because the owners of Burisma viewed it as protection money. And second, as to Joe Biden’s motive, the human instinct to protect and help a son is so universal and so powerful, no one is going to believe Biden when he says that he he didn’t do this for any reason having to do with his son, and he really, really had a different and completely pure motive for his action.

Note that my conclusion that the millions paid to Hunter were obviously “protection money” would be a clear one even in the absence of any direct communications on the subject between and among Joe, Hunter, and Burisma representatives as to the purpose of the payments. Even a slight hint to Joe that Hunter had joined the Board of Burisma and was getting large director’s fees would be more than sufficient to get the message across. And that is undoubtedly the reason that Joe felt a need to deny explicitly that he knew anything whatsoever about Hunter’s dealings in Ukraine. In 2019 Joe told Fox News, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” Later in 2019 Axios’ Mike Allen asked Biden what he knew about what Hunter was doing for an extraordinary amount of money in Ukraine. Biden responded: “I don’t know what he was doing. I know he was on the board. I found out he was on the board after he was on the board, and that was it.” (Video at this link.).

The particular significance of the new emails uncovered by the Post is that they give the lie to these unequivocal statements by Joe Biden in interviews. The most significant of the emails is one from Vadym Pozharskyi, a senior executive of Burisma, to Hunter Biden, dated April 17, 2015. That date is right in the middle of Joe’s time as “point man” for US/Ukraine relations, and is two months after the hiring of Shokin as prosecutor in Ukraine. Key text:

Dear Hunter, Thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”

Suddenly Joe’s claims to have “never spoken to [his] son about his business dealings” and to “not know what he was doing” look patently ridiculous. Indeed, the inference that the $3 million was implicit “protection money” now has been elevated to an explicit payment for access to the Vice President of the United States, from whom a gigantic illicit favor — relief from criminal prosecution — was needed. That favor was then delivered several months later.

Now, I would say that the Post’s reporting on this story has been quite meticulous. Go to the links to see the corroboration that they either have or sought. But of course there always remains a possibility, however slight, that the computer from which the emails are taken could be an elaborate and sophisticated piece of disinformation. In that case, one would expect an immediate and unequivocal statement from the Biden campaign that the emails are forgeries and that the alleged meeting never took place. Instead, the Biden campaign issued this:

“[W]e have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told Politico.

Ridiculous. Obviously, Joe and/or Hunter know if such a meeting took place, and the fact that it does not appear on any “official schedule” is just a dodge. Moreover, where is the assertion that the emails are forgeries? The absence of such an assertion is an admission that they are genuine.

You are likely aware of the efforts at both Facebook and Twitter to suppress this story. From the Wall Street Journal today:

Twitter on Wednesday blocked users from posting links to the articles, initially citing a potential violation of its rules regarding hacked materials. The company later said the articles also violated its policies on displaying private information like email addresses and phone numbers without a person’s permission. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said the company’s failure to give context around its actions was “unacceptable.” Twitter’s move came after Facebook also limited the distribution of the articles on its platform, saying it was awaiting guidance from its third-party fact-checking partners.

But among all the various efforts at suppression, my favorite was in today’s New York Times. I first checked the front page. Sixteen stories appear there today in one form or another. This one is not among the sixteen. I then started going the the paper page by page. Finally, on page A17, down at the bottom, there is this headline: “Dubious Ukraine Report Rejected By Biden Campaign And Social Media Sites.” (Different heading in online version) Well there you go — the story must be wrong because the Biden campaign has “rejected” it. Excerpt:

The Biden campaign on Wednesday rejected a New York Post report about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter that the nation’s leading social media companies deemed so dubious that they limited access to the article on their platforms. The report, appearing just three weeks before the election, was based on material provided by Republican allies of President Trump who have tried for months to tarnish Mr. Biden over his son. 

As I said, the corruption has reached a level that is comical. This from the same people who published at least a thousand pieces promoting the Russian collusion hoax.