The Journal reporters proved the Bidens weren’t so incompetent.
The Journal reporters proved the Bidens weren’t so incompetent.
D emocratic partisans hoping desperately that the rapidly unfolding story of Biden family corruption will disappear before the election thought they had found their answer in the form of a Wall Street Journal report published late Thursday night.
The report is cautiously written and appears to accurately reflect what we currently know about Hunter Biden’s attempts to capitalize on his family name abroad. But it was quickly presented as a “debunking” of a Journal opinion column written by Kimberley Strassel. The column lays out in great detail recent claims by a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski, who came forward this week to confirm the authenticity of email exchanges between Hunter, his business partners, and representatives of the politically connected Chinese energy firm CEFC.
In one email, on which Bobulinski is listed as a recipient, Biden business partner James Gilliar lays out the terms of a proposed joint investment venture with CEFC in which James and Hunter Biden and their business partners would seek out investment opportunities for the Chinese in the U.S.
The email reads: “10 held by H for the big guy?”
According to Bobulinski, “the big guy” is none other than Joe Biden and “10” refers to a 10 percent equity stake in the venture that would be held by Hunter Biden. (It is worth noting that Biden did not deny being “the big guy” or question the authenticity of the emails when pressed by President Trump during Thursday night’s debate.)
Democratic partisans wishing the story away are hanging their hats on the fact that the Journal reporters were unable to find Joe’s name on any corporate records . . . because of course they couldn’t. A quick read of the above email shows that the Bidens understood the simple truth that when you’re running a cash-for-access scheme, you don’t record the name of the corrupt public figure for the benefit of interested parties who might seek to expose you. And we know the Bidens and their partners were appropriately cautious about concealing Joe’s involvement thanks to text messages that Bobulinski released in which Gilliar admonishes him, “Don’t mention that joe is involved, it’s only when u are face to face, I know you know that but they are paranoid.”
The grasping partisans also made much of the fact that the Journal report notes that Bobulinski’s emails and text messages “show no role” for the former vice president. Why would they? Again, you don’t make the corrupt politician to whom the Chinese want access the CEO of your shady enterprise, for what should be glaringly obvious reasons. That the Journal reporters were unable to find a job title for Joe Biden means next to nothing.
But that didn’t stop a parade of journalists from breathing a sigh of relief that the story they had been studiously ignoring for days had finally been put to bed.
Pretty rare for the news side to debunk the opinion side within hours https://t.co/4UO6hJFi2e
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 23, 2020
Trump was right about WSJ piece. There’s a bombshell here: “Text messages and emails related to the venture that were provided to the Journal by Mr. Bobulinski…don’t show either Hunter Biden or James Biden discussing a role for Joe Biden in the venture.” https://t.co/jQv58V3go7
— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) October 23, 2020
WSJ debunks a WSJ op-ed that ran earlier today:
“The venture…never received proposed funds from the Chinese company or completed any deals, according to people familiar with the matter. Corporate records reviewed by WSJ show no role for Joe Biden.”https://t.co/XAwoCdJUwk
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) October 23, 2020
Hard to imagine as stark of a difference between the news side and opinion side of the Wall Street Journal than the two pieces that will run tomorrow on Hunter Biden’s venture in China. Read them in this order:
NEWS: https://t.co/CsIpO1LUuw
OPINION: https://t.co/aIhCpPWMO1
— Matt Viser (@mviser) October 23, 2020
How it How it’s
started going pic.twitter.com/PdpfxNnTo3— Nathan McDermott (@natemcdermott) October 23, 2020
WHOA. Wall Street Journal's news side just released a debunking of WSJ opinion side. https://t.co/6HnehUtMHR
— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) October 23, 2020
The WSJ news side just shut down the WSJ opinion side with actual reporting.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 23, 2020
While the Journal reporters did good work in proving that the Bidens weren’t so incompetent as to disclose their corruption in corporate filings, their report left much unanswered.
For one thing, it neither confirms nor disproves Bobulinski’s claim that he met with Joe Biden at the Beverly Hotel in Los Angeles in 2017 to discuss “the Biden family business plans with the Chinese, of which [Joe Biden] was plainly familiar at least at a high level.”
“A Biden campaign spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a question about the alleged meeting with Mr. Bobulinski. James Biden and an attorney for Hunter Biden didn’t respond to requests for comment,” the report reads.
If the meeting did occur, it would contradict Joe’s repeated claims to have been totally unaware of any family business dealings, made as recently as Thursday night’s debate.
The report also notes that the joint venture was “set up in 2017 after Mr. Biden left the vice presidency and before his presidential campaign” but doesn’t mention that Hunter Biden’s talks with CEFC began in 2015, while Joe Biden was serving as vice president. It also fails to mention that the most incriminating Bobulinski email was sent the same month that Joe formed a political action committee, which the New York Times called “the most concrete sign yet that he intends to remain active in the Democratic Party and is considering a presidential bid in 2020.”
Some media reporters cast the supposedly contradictory news and opinion articles as a reflection of the rivalrous culture at the Journal. In truth, it looks more like the product of a healthy newspaper in which an enterprising opinion columnist connects the dots for readers while cautious reporters do their due diligence.