CNN Admits that Joe Biden Met With Hunter Biden's Business Partners While Vice President... Citing Hunter Biden's Laptop

Is this CNN's first definite acknowledgment that the laptop is real? I think it is. I know which leftwing media outlets have admitted that the laptop is real -- the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CBS News -- and CNN is not among them.

(Answering my question: Other CNN stories have referenced the laptop but at a distance. I'm not sure if those stories rely on the laptop as genuine and as a foundational source for a story, thereby implicitly acknowledging it is real, as this one does.)

In this article, while they haven't authenticated the laptop themselves (and why the hell not? What is keeping them?), they at least cite it and other media outlets who cite it.

The laptop came to public light just weeks before the 2020 presidential election in a series of sensational stories in the New York Post that trumpeted it as a political scandal involving influence peddling in connection with Hunter Biden's businesses.

Shortly after, dozens of former intelligence officials released a letter stating that the unfolding laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" and that they were "deeply suspicious" of significant Russian involvement -- but had no proof. Twitter and Facebook took steps to temporarily limit the reach of the Post's story before the election. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later acknowledged that decision was a mistake.

Since then, other conservative operatives and right-leaning media outlets like the Daily Mail have mined the laptop and published, among other things, explicit photos and videos of Hunter. Conservatives have embraced Trump's description of the computer as the "laptop from hell."
Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, leaves after the award ceremony of the Presidential Medals of Freedom to seventeen recipients in the East Room at the White House in Washington on July 7, 2022. Photo by Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA(Sipa via AP Images)

Hunter Biden had a high-end income and lavish lifestyle. But he struggled with tax issues for years

Several mainstream news outlets, including CNN and the Washington Post, have forensically authenticated a sampling of emails received by Hunter Biden's accounts. In addition to the verified emails, CNN obtained a much larger batch of emails from the copy of the laptop provided by Maxey. The emails referenced in this story have previously been cited by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee in their interim report, but they have not been independently authenticated by CNN.

Hunter Biden has repeatedly refused to confirm or deny whether the laptop in question was his, and his lawyer declined to comment to CNN. In an interview with CBS in 2021, Hunter Biden offered an equivocal response when asked about the device.

"There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me," he said. "It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the -- that it was Russian intelligence."

The White House has blasted the Republican-led probe as a partisan pursuit chasing conspiracy theories and argued that a focus on Hunter Biden is inappropriate because he is a private citizen.

Still, emails in the laptop show that as he pursued business deals across multiple continents, Hunter Biden arranged meetings between his associates and his father.

Those meetings at times coincided with Joe Biden's foreign trips as vice president. In December 2013, Hunter Biden accompanied Joe Biden on a trip to China, and arranged a handshake between his father and a Chinese business partner, Jonathan Li, in Biden's hotel lobby, the New Yorker reported. Hunter told the magazine he then had a social meeting with Li.

And in February 2016, Hunter hitched a ride on Air Force Two with his father to Mexico City, where he hoped to meet a Mexican businessman he was pursuing business deals with, according to an email that was cited in the House committee's report but that was not independently verified by CNN.

"I have brought every single person you have ever asked me to bring to the F'ing WHite House and the Vice President's house and the inauguration and then you go completely silent," Hunter Biden complained in the email to Mexican businessman Miguel Alemán Magnani, who led an airline company. Hunter Biden wrote that "we have been talking about business deals and partnerships for 7 years," and added, "I want you at the plane when the VP lands with your Mom and Dad." The email was previously reported in news outlets including the New York Post and the Daily Mail.

It's not clear whether any meeting happened at the foot of Air Force Two during the 2016 trip, but Alemán Magnani and his father, Mexican politician Miguel Alemán Velasco, had earlier met Joe Biden at the White House. The two men toured the White House briefing room with the then-vice president and his son in February 2014, an Associated Press photo at the time showed.

Alemán Magnani's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment from CNN.

More of this clip from Benny Johnson, with his commentary. Also skip to 19:30 to see an angry Joe Biden attempt to intimidate Peter Doocy, sticking his finger in his face and straight-up lying about never talking to Hunter Biden about his business dealings, even though we know he routinely met in the White House with Hunter's sketchy foreign business partners:

posted by Ace at 05:07 PM

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