FEBRUARY 16, 2024 UPDATE: On Feb. 15 the New York Post reported the following: “Special counsel David Weiss on Thursday charged the FBI informant who alleged President Biden and first son Hunter Biden were involved in a $10 million bribery scheme with providing false information to the bureau. Alexander Smirnov, 43, was indicted by a California grand jury on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for statements he made to the FBI referenced in a June 2020 FD-1023 form that House Republicans have used as evidence in Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry.”
CORRECTION: [An earlier version of this article had a total of 491 minutes. That total has been corrected to a total 381 minutes, 19 seconds of Trump indictment coverage over 12 days (June 8-June 21). As of the morning of July 5 the total number of Trump indictment coverage is now 522 minutes, 37 seconds.]
On Tuesday, ABC, CBS and NBC excitedly jumped on the news of Hunter Biden’s plea deal, perhaps presuming this whole horrible ordeal for President Joe Biden and his family would now be whisked away.
However, there were still outstanding questions, particularly with how Hunter used the family name in business deals and was bribery involved?
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer quickly issued a statement, reminding everyone the investigations weren’t over:
Let’s be clear: the Department of Justice’s charges against President Biden’s son Hunter reveal a two-tiered system of justice. Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist when growing evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee reveals the Bidens engaged in a pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery.
There’s also been a “two-tiered system” of network coverage.
Back on June 8, two massive political stories broke, but ONLY one of them got covered by the broadcast networks.
On June 8, former President Donald Trump was indicted by the Special Counsel in the classified documents case. That very same day, it was reported that President Joe Biden had allegedly received $5 million dollars from an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, the same company in which his son Hunter was involved.
UPDATE: Over 26 days (June 8-morning of July 5) the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) broadcast networks crammed their evening, morning and Sunday roundtable shows with a total of 522 minutes of coverage dedicated to the Trump indictment.
But how much did the Biden/Burisma alleged bribery scheme receive?
Zero seconds.
The Burisma scandal story and its ties to Joe “Big Guy” Biden has legs. On June 12, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer claimed the FBI has additional informant documents that link then-Vice President Biden to an alleged multimillion-dollar bribery scheme.
On June 15, Comer “teased that new bank records his panel expects to obtain will reveal that the Biden family has accepted as much as $30 million from foreign nationals.”
As for Hunter’s plea deal? The networks devoted 24 minutes, 8 seconds to it, on their evening and morning shows from June 8 through June 21. ABC News’s chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas lamented: “Republicans have long sought to make Hunter Biden’s troubles and financial dealings, including those in Ukraine and China, a political millstone for his father. Word of Hunter Biden’s deal set off a political firestorm, with Republicans claiming he got preferential treatment.”
The prediction here is — if they follow their familiar and recent patterns — the networks will continue to aggressively track the Trump case, drop the Hunter charges like a hot potato, and resume their censorship of the Biden family scandals.
Special thanks to NewsBusters’ Curtis Houck, Nicholas Fondacaro, Alex Christy and Kevin Tober for contributing to this study.
