NBC News on Thursday published a deep-dive report looking into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s family allegedly blurring the lines “between official government business and domestic or personal matters” — in contrast to its more skeptical coverage of alleged corruption of the Biden family.
NBC News reported on an email where Pompeo’s son Nick had thanked State Department officials for a private tour of the department’s in-house museum for him and his mother and offered to help in any way he could.
“I also want to reinforce my willingness to help your mission in any way I can,” Nick Pompeo wrote in the email, according to NBC News. “We view this as a family endeavor, so if you think there is any place I can add value, don’t hesitate to reach out.”
He also reportedly asked if he or the software company he worked at could be involved in a “data hackathon” the State Department was planning, and asked for dates, times, volunteer opportunities.
The State Department said Pompeo’s company did not join the hackathon, which was an educational event focused on computer programming skills, according to NBC News.
The report also said Susan Pompeo routinely gave instructions to State Department officials from her personal email address regarding travel plans, restaurant reservations, and maintenance requests for the military housing they live at.
The report cites Stephen Gillers, who teaches law and ethics at New York University School of Law, in saying that her use of personal email to carry out social aspects of her role as the secretary’s spouse was “unwise” but that it did not appear to constitute a violation of ethics rules.
“I don’t see that they used the office for financial gain,” he said.
In contrast, the network has called allegations of corruption engulfing former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, “falsehoods,” “a disinformation campaign,” and “rumors” they are “declining to repeat verbatim.”
NBC News’s Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny reported on October 22:
Some of the same people who pushed a false conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton that first emerged in 2016 are now targeting Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, with similar falsehoods. Their online posts are garnering astronomical numbers of shares on social media.
The fantastical rumors, which NBC News is declining to repeat verbatim, echo specific plot points central to “pizzagate,” a viral disinformation campaign that predates QAnon but also falsely alleges a vast conspiracy of child abuse.
The allegations about the Biden family also stem from emails that show Hunter Biden using his connection to his father in business dealings and to negotiate lucrative deals for himself and his family with foreign business leaders.
The emails were first obtained and published by the New York Post, which reportedly obtained them through Rudy Giuliani from the owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware, where Hunter Biden dropped off three laptops and signed a drop-off form. Neither the family nor the Biden campaign have disputed the emails are accurate or that they came from laptops belonging to Hunter.
Since those emails have been published, two former business partners of Hunter Biden — Tony Bobulinski and Bevan Cooney — have come forward to various media outlets, including Breitbart News, to release emails of their own that show Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and the Biden family were engaged in negotiating lucrative business deals based on the Biden family name.
NBC News did say in its October 22 article that the network requested a copy of the hard drive that contained the emails, but that Giuliani had not responded.
Also, to the network’s credit, NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker raised the allegations to Joe Biden during the last presidential debate.
Establishment news outlets have marginally covered the allegations, with some establishment media outlets outright refusing to cover the allegations about the Biden family.
For example, NPR released a statement that said, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”