‘Debunked,’ ‘Phony,’ ‘Wild’: Establishment Media Continue Defending Biden Family Business Scandal

The establishment media have continued to defend the Biden family business schemes from House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s (R-KY) probe, calling the findings “debunked,” “phony,” and “wild.”

Comer’s investigation, launched in November, has begun to yield results. This week, Comer revealed the Biden family business received a $3 million wire transfer and subsequent payments from a Chinese energy company between 2015 and 2017 upon receiving Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) from the Treasury and subpoenaed records from Bank of America. The $3 million payment was in turn split between four Biden family members — Hunter, James, Hallie, and an unidentified “Biden” — from State Energy HK Limited. The family members received $1.3 million collectively.

Comer has also caused Hunter to finally admit he made money from China. He had previously denied the evidence provided by the New York Post’s “laptop from hell” reporting by Emma-Jo Morris, as well as reporting by Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer. 

But the establishment media has defended against and diminished Comer’s investigation, claiming it’s a Republican “obsession” and consists of “conspiracies and made-up scandals.”

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin has claimed the whole investigation was already debunked as a “fantastical conspiracy theory … Obviously, there is no legitimate basis for congressional ‘oversight’ of the matter,” Rubin claimed:

Right-wing House Republicans have left little doubt that they want to spend the bulk of their time and energy investigating phony conspiracies and made-up scandals. Their main obsession appears to be Hunter Biden, whose very name has become a buzzword in right-wing media. The contents of one of his laptops, revealed in 2020, have inspired a fantastical conspiracy theory that has been comprehensively debunked by, among others, Asha Rangappa, a senior lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs and former FBI agent.

The New York Times’s Ana Marie Cox, a political reporter and columnist, insisted the investigation is as “wild” as the “accusations against” Hunter and the family. “Of course, cheating on your taxes and lying on a form are nothing compared with the operatic tale of corruption at the highest levels spun out by Tucker Carlson et al,” she said.

“All Republicans want to do is conjure the clingy atmosphere of deviousness that Hillary Clinton never escaped,” Cox added before noting Hunter will never be scathed. “Hunter Biden has endured considerable scrutiny, but he has advantages that most people don’t: No matter what happens, he is unlikely to find himself destitute or without opportunities,” she said.

Vanity Fair’s Caleb Ecarma even downplayed the “suspicious” activity reports as “not necessarily indicative of criminal activity.”

“Tens of thousands of general suspicious activity reports are filed every year,” he wrote, despite the 154 billion transactions processed in 2022 by commercial automated clearinghouses.

U.S. banks have flagged over 150 SARs from Hunter and James Biden that included “large” amounts of money flagged for further review. According to a 2020 Senate report, SARs “often contain evidence of potential criminal activities, such as money laundering and fraud.”

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.