EDITOR’S NOTE, February 16, 2024: On February 15, Justice Department Counsel David Weiss indicted FBI informant Alexander Smirnov on two felony counts of making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record for claims made to the bureau. The charges are in relation to June 2020 FD-1023 form alleging President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden received a combined $10 million in a bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma.
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Well of course.
On Thursday, July 20, 2023 there was this seriously major story by New York Post White House reporter Steven Nelson headed as follows:
FAMILY BUSINESS
Biden $10M bribe file released: Burisma chief said he was ‘coerced’ to pay Joe, ‘stupid’ Hunter in bombshell allegations
Ukrainian oligarch allegedly said his dog was “smarter” than Hunter Biden, but that payments needed “so everything will be okay.”
The opening of Nelson’s story was this:
WASHINGTON — A bombshell FBI informant file containing a $10 million bribery allegation against President Biden and his son was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, showing that a Ukrainian oligarch claimed he was “coerced” into making the payoff.
Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings, told the FBI informant in 2016 while meeting at a coffee shop in Vienna, Austria, that “it cost 5 [million] to pay one Biden, and 5 [million] to another Biden,” according to the redacted FD-1023 form.
Big story, right? There is “the owner of natural gas company Burisma Holdings” bluntly telling an FBI informant that while Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden and son Hunter were paid $5 million - each - in a $10 million bribery scheme. That is one decided blockbuster of a news story.
So one would expect this extraordinary news story would be front page news the next day in the “paper of record” that specializes in “All the news that’s fit to print” (The New York Times) and in the paper that says “Democracy Dies in Darkness, (The Washington Post.)
But curiously, the day after this blockbuster story went public, here are the top seven stories I found on each paper's website.
The New York Times:
- Trial in Trump Documents Case Set for May 2024
- A Collision in Court: Trump Grand Jury Proceedings Delay a Jan. 6 Verdict
- Tony Bennett, Champion of the Great American Songbook, Is Dead at 96
- 7 A.I. Companies Agree to Safeguards After Pressure From the White House
- Russia-Ukraine War: Russian Strikes and Naval Drills Unsettle Black Sea as U.N. Meets
- Around the Globe, Searing Heat With No Sign of Relief
- U.S. Investigating Why Delta Passengers Were Kept on Plane in Extreme Heat
And here were the top seven stories of The Washington Post:
- Judge Cannon schedules Trump’s classified documents trial for May 2024
- Investigation finds Commanders hid revenue, Snyder harassed team employee
- Tony Bennett, singing star with an enduring second act, dies at 96
- The outrage over Jason Aldean’s ‘Try That in a Small Town,’ explained
- In the streaming wars, it feels like everybody’s losing
- The germiest spots in your hotel room, according to an inspector
- Skull fragments believed to be Beethoven’s sent from U.S. to Vienna for study
Got that? Go to the search engine of either paper and just put in "Grassley" for the last seven days -- there's no story. As usual, both papers had anti-Trump stories on their front pages Friday. "Biden's Taunts Target Trump, Not Charges" in the Times. "Lawyer for Trump aide quarrels with judge" in the Post.
The President of the United States stands accused by an FBI informant of taking a $10 million bribe, divided in half with son Hunter, and nary a peep at either paper. Talk about “Democracy Dies in Darkness”!
That isn’t journalism. That is unabashed willful blindness, with two of the leading “mainstream” newspapers of our day deliberately, with malice aforethought, pretending the blockbuster story that the President of the United States of their favored political party has been bribed by a foreign entity to manipulate United States foreign policy… simply doesn’t exist.
On top of this, NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck headlined:
Go Figure: Nets Refuse to Cover Devastating FBI Form Alleging Biden Bribery
Curtis writes:
On Thursday, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC kept their viewers in the dark on a major storyline of the 2024 presidential election as Senator Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office released a rumored form from an FBI confidential source alleging the Biden family coerced the Burisma CEO to shovel them millions if then-Vice President Biden could have Ukraine’s top prosecutor fired (which he did).
Let’s hop back into the time capsule and revisit that scandal-filled year of 1998, when, as radio hosts of the Clay and Buck Show observed Friday, Newsweek had the scoop of the day that President Clinton was having a secret affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. And sat on the story.
It took the new-on-the-scene Drudge Report to scoop out the story and go public with the news that a major journalism institution, the then-mighty Newsweek magazine, had the story but wasn’t running it.
And all hell broke loose, winding up famously with Clinton being impeached although not removed from office. Not to mention the country being swamped in almost daily headlines of the drama unfolding in the Clinton White House and on Capitol Hill.
To go back further, can anyone imagine those now legendary youthful journos Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein doing their legendary investigative work at the Washington Post uncovering the Nixon Watergate scandal - and the Post simply refused to publish any of it?
Leaving President Nixon to coast along comfortably in his presidency, leaving not with a resignation amid massive scandal but placidly going on to finish his second term, leaving peacefully and quietly with the entire Watergate scandal deliberately ignored and unsurfaced.
Make no mistake.
What Americans are witnessing in real time is a “mainstream media” that has been so corrupted itself that it will go out of its way to protect a clearly seriously corrupted President of the United States from the real-time news of his corruption, and the massive financial profit he is said to have been gifted with bribes.
The good news -- again -- is that conservative media exists. And operates with the willingness to publish the hard facts of the news of the day wherever they may lead.
Make no mistake. No matter the deafening silence from the Times, Washington Post and Big Three networks of ABC, CBS and NBC, the news of the Biden bribe scandal is getting out.
And yes, Members of Congress are paying attention.
With calls for Biden’s impeachment already out there -- whether the Times, Post and networks report it or not.
