The Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Dismissed as Disinfo on the Basis of Bad Vibes

Perhaps we could all stop talking about Hunter Biden and his laptop if progressives in the press would just admit that the New York Post story about them was censored and discredited on the basis of bad vibes, rather than hard evidence. Perhaps, if they showed the slightest amount of contrition for being egregiously and materially wrong or any sign of learning the right lessons from the imbroglio, we could mostly drop the sordid matter.

But as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, and the embarrassing bulk of the left-leaning Twitter commentariat have demonstrated, there will be no self-reflection, only apologia.

The most common excuse used to explain away the dismissal of the story is also the greatest indictment of the press’s treatment of it. As Marshall put it, Twitter’s decision to censor the Post‘s bombshell report about the future president’s son was justifiable because it had “all the hallmarks of the Russian/Assange/Wikileaks stunt of 2016.”

It’s remarkable that for over two years now, Marshall and those of his mind have been able to submit with a straight face that the story bears “all the hallmarks” of Russian disinformation operation without naming a single one of the supposed tell-tale signs that Vladimir Putin had forced Hunter Biden to engage in shady international business, make record of them on a personal device, and abandon that device at a repair shop where it was recovered by his father’s political opponents. Not one.

The origin for the myth somehow still being propagated by Marshall and others is an October 2020 Politico story by Natasha Bertrand with the not-so-hedgy headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

Bertrand’s “scoop” is full of titles and name-drops (“more than 50 former senior intelligence officials,” five former CIA directors, a smattering of NSA alums, etc.) but contains not a single well-developed argument, much less piece of evidence to back up the claims of these luminaries.

In fact, Bertrand herself admitted that the national security officials “presented no new evidence,” to back up their claims. In an open letter, they offered only that that “their national security experience had made them ‘deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.'”

The retirees laid out their arguments in (slightly) more detail in their letter, but each of their points of suspicion can be easily fisked.

The officials said a Russian operation around the laptop “would be consistent with Russian objectives” because it would harm Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. Under this standard, would any information that harmed Biden’s chances constitute suspected Russian disinformation?

The officials said that a Russian operation around the laptop would be consistent with Russian “methods” because they have previously engaged in cyber-hacking (there is to this day no evidence that the laptop was hacked) and have used both accurate and inaccurate information to their advantage. Under this standard, do all claims, true or not true, constitute suspected Russian disinformation? Does anything that might have originated from any device?

The officials said that a Russian operation around the laptop would be consistent with efforts to provide Rudy Giuliani, the Trump campaign operative who provided the laptop to the Post, with opposition research on Biden. But there never was, and there remains no evidence that a Russian agent was the source of the laptop.

Despite its manifest flaws, the letter became an excuse for the media not to dig further into the underlying story to confirm or refute the Post‘s reporting on its own. Instead, it took comfort in the assurances of the signatories.

Notably, some of the most prominent names associated with the letter, including former CIA directors Michael Hayden (CNN) and John Brennan (NBC/MSNBC), as well as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (CNN), regularly bring their partisan brand of analysis to the airwaves. Several others have also transitioned into media roles. Not only has the press failed to wrestle with its past mistakes, it’s rewarded those most responsible for them.

The only contributing factor that led to the misdiagnosis of the Hunter Biden laptop story, besides wishful thinking, were the bad vibes described by the subjects of Bertrand’s story at the time and parroted to this day by the most incorrigible members of the Fourth Estate.

More troubling than the original infraction is the unwillingness to recognize, much less reckon with its causes. Even now, the faulty explanation for the censorship of the laptop story is being treated as the gospel truth in spite of the story’s acknowledged underlying accuracy. The only difference between October 2020 and the present day is that what could once be counted as a mistake can now only be called a lie.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.