‘We submit that the Times should publicly answer for these failures in reporting on this pressing issue…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Both Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani answered setbacks in the unfolding Ukraine drama with counterpunches of their own this week.
The former New York mayor has been hot in pursuit of information surrounding the former vice president’s role in a corrupt quid-pro-quo scheme that involved Biden’s son Hunter, a board member with Ukraine’s Burisma energy company.
That investigation has now become central to the latest efforts by partisan Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach President Donald Trump.
While two Ukrainian associates who had met with Giuliani were arrested for alleged campaign finance violations, Giuliani pressed forward with a new bombshell revelation—based on evidence from a Ukrainian member of parliament—that Biden had been paid $900,000 in lobbying fees by Burisma.
“Biden, his son and his brother had a 30-year-long scam to make money, millions, selling his public office,” Giuliani told Fox News host Sean Hannity, according to the New York Post.
The documents Giuliani cited were from Ukrainian official Andriy Derkach, who said Hunter Biden’s consulting firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners, was transferred the substantial fee for “consultative services.”
Whistleblowing the Whistleblower?
If Giuliani’s allegations prove meaningful, they would represent Biden’s second attempt this week to conceal damaging conflicts of interest in the case.
Another revelation on Thursday was that the anonymous whistleblower—whose complaint over a phone call between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, triggered the House probe—had professional ties to Biden.
The Washington Examiner broke the story, based on the account of a retired CIA officer with inside knowledge of the agency where the anti-Trump informant reportedly worked.
“From everything we know about the whistleblower and his work in the executive branch then, there is absolutely no doubt he would have been working with Biden when he was vice president,” said the source.
Democrats have attempted to suppress leaks about the so-called whistleblower and keep much of the testimony in their investigations under tight seal.
That has included closed-door testimony from former Ukrainian envoy Kurt Volker and Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
While Atkinson refused to divulge details about the identity of the accuser to Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, it was revealed that he had changed whistleblower policies to accommodate the individual’s complaint.
Atkinson also facilitated the complaint process by allowing the whistleblower and his left-wing attorneys to coordinate their efforts with Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who is now leading the impeachment probe.
Schiff, after initially denying that he had advance knowledge of the whistleblower complaint, received a four-Pinocchio rating from The Washington Post when it came to light that he had supported the deep-state operation from the outset.
The Examiner also reported Friday that two Schiff aides had worked with the whistleblower at the White House.
Working the Refs
Biden has vigorously fought back against the coverage of his own scandalous conduct by taking a page from Trump’s own playbook—hounding the fake news for having the audacity to report on damaging details.
By and large, mainstream media journalists have fallen in line with Biden and his denials, repeatedly claiming there is “no evidence” of his misconduct in Ukraine but failing to provide the appropriate context on ethical breaches that Biden himself has admitted to.
The erstwhile primary front-runner—now trailing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in many polls—continued to work the refs Thursday, following the publication of a New York Times op-ed by Peter Schweizer.
The conservative investigative journalist has been at the forefront of reporting on Biden’s pay-to-play scandals in Ukraine and China. The March release of his Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends first brought the conspiracies to national attention.
In his Wednesday op-ed, Schweizer noted that Hunter Biden’s agreeing to serve on Burisma’s board for a monthly pittance of $50,000 was not, in and of itself, illegal—even though he was struggling with major drug and and sex addictions at the time and had no relevant experience apart from his family name.
However, Schweizer criticized the elder Biden for engaging in “self dealing” by allowing the conflicts of interest to occur.
After a former prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, began investigating Burisma, Biden threatened to withhold a billion-dollar loan guarantee if the Ukrainian president did not fire Shokin.
In response to Schweizer’s piece, Biden’s campaign accused the Times of engaging in disinformation similar to the false stories propagated by Russian operatives on social media during the 2016 campaign, reported the Washington Examiner.
“Are you truly blind to what you got wrong in 2016, or are you deliberately continuing policies that distort reality for the sake of controversy and the clicks that accompany it?” Biden campaign spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield complained to the Times.
“We submit that the Times should publicly answer for these failures in reporting on this pressing issue fairly, accurately, and in a way that prioritized truth and judiciousness over sensationalism,” she continued, “as well as why, after the glaring mistakes of 2016, the Times has again given an underhanded hack the validation of its platform.”
The Times stood by the reporting as being “fair and accurate.”