The Mainstream Media Is Still in Denial About Hunter Biden's Laptop

Case in point: The Washington Post's Philip Bump.

Hunter Biden, the troubled son of President Joe Biden, was convicted this week of three charges related to illegally purchasing a gun while suffering from drug addiction. It is fair to ask whether prosecutors should have brought these charges in the first place; Reason's Jacob Sullum described the violated law in question as "widely flouted, haphazardly enforced, and constitutionally dubious."

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) wrote on X: "Hunter might deserve to be in jail for something, but purchasing a gun is not it. There are millions of marijuana users who own guns in this country, and none of them should be in jail for purchasing or possessing a firearm against current laws."

One interesting feature of the trial was the delivery mechanism for the evidence used by the state to prove that Hunter Biden was indeed addicted to drugs at the time of the gun purchase. That evidence came from photos and messages that were obtained from his laptop, which he abandoned at a Delaware repair store in April 2019.

The contents of the laptop, readers may recall, fell into the hands of government investigators, Republican operatives, and eventually, the media. On October 14, 2020—just weeks before the presidential election—the New York Post published a story about the laptop's contents, arguing that it demonstrated corruption and influence peddling involving the Biden family.

The rest is history: Mainstream media figures smeared the laptop story as misinformation, national intelligence experts described it as part of a potential Russian influence campaign, and social media sites suppressed it. Joe Biden himself dismissed the story as fake during a debate with then-President Donald Trump, citing the assessments of the intelligence community.

It is notable, then, that years later, the accuracy of the information on the laptop is no longer questioned; claims of Russian malfeasance are utterly unfounded. One can disagree with the New York Post's conclusions about the relevance of the information, but it's abundantly clear that it was Hunter Biden's laptop and it was discarded at a repair shop.

Many conservatives are rightly taking a victory lap. Sean Hannity delivered a thunderous monologue this week: "In other words, you were lied to on a very high level just before an election by numerous people and entire institutions. You were lied to by Hunter Biden himself. You were lied to by his father, your president, Joe Biden. You were lied to by NBC News, fake news CNN, NPR. Well, let's just say pretty much everybody in the media mob."

One can quibble with the term lie—but it's inarguable that the aforementioned institutions and individuals did in fact get the laptop story totally wrong.

 

Never Let Go

Enter The Washington Post's Philip Bump, who somehow thinks the media's conduct is worth defending and conservative critics have gone astray. In a recent column, he stubbornly insists that concerns about the laptop story were valid and chides Hannity et al. for taking a victory lap.

He writes: "The issue at the time of the New York Post report was in part that the material might not be authentic. In part, though, it was that it was authentic—and being released in October 2020 as part of a foreign effort to influence the outcome of the presidential race."

It's unclear why he thinks this helps his case, since both of these points—that the information might be inauthentic or that it might be authentic but Russian-derived—were wrong. The information is authentic, and no evidence has ever surfaced that Russia had something to do with it.

Bump subsequently wastes a great deal of ink explaining why he believes those concerns about Russian intervention were well-founded. Again, this is beside the point. It is now definitively proven that they were not well-founded. Twitter and Facebook—which at the time faced incredible pressure to act—suppressed the story on a fraudulent basis.

He's right that the intelligence officials who proclaimed the laptop had all the "classic earmarks of a Russian misinformation operation" were more cautious in their assessment than the media acknowledged; indeed, it was Politico that ran with the inaccurate headline "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." But nowhere in his column does Bump chide Politico for exaggerating the facts—on the contrary, he is making excuses for exactly this kind of thing.

All has not been well at The Washington Post lately. Management fired top editor Sally Buzbee earlier this month, with Chief Executive Will Lewis admitting candidly that the paper had lost $77 million in 2023 amid a staggering 50 percent audience decline since 2020. In a recent staff meeting, Lewis angered some by bluntly stating: "People are not reading your stuff. I can't sugarcoat it anymore."

If the problem is that the paper has lost its readers' trust, editors might think carefully about why that is the case.

 

This Week on Free Media

I am joined once again by Amber Duke to discuss the media's reaction to the Hunter Biden verdict, why MSNBC thinks Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is "damaged," what's going on with the undercover recording of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, and more.

 

Worth Watching

Sunday is the day! HBO's House of the Dragon finally returns. Expect some live commentary from me on X.