Tangle - The Hunter Biden story.

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Last week, The New York Times published an update on an ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden (Tangle covered that in December of 2020 here). In it, The Times reported that Biden had paid off a significant tax liability in hopes of staving off an indictment stemming from an investigation into his tax affairs, but that he is still the subject of a "wide-ranging examination of his international business dealings."You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. On today's episode, we are going to be discussing the Hunter Biden story and some news that broke last week around that story and what it all means. But as always, before we jump in, we're going to start off with some quick hits. First up, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would consider waiving an attempt to join NATO in search of a deal to secure Russian withdrawal and security guarantees. Ukrainian

forces retook a key suburb outside Kyiv shortly before the announcement. Number two, President Biden warned the U.S. private sector that Russia is considering options to execute a cyber attack and asked all members of the private sector to be on high alert. Number three, Russia sentenced opposition leader Alexei Navalny to nine more years in prison after a sham allegation of fraud was deliberated in court. Number four, the Fed indicated it will continue to raise interest rates more aggressively to help control inflation. Number five, questioning of Supreme Court nominee Katonji Brown-Jackson will begin today in the Senate. All right, that's it for our quick hits today. That brings us to our main story, which will be the only really big topic we covered today. We are not going to be doing a reader question because I want to give this story some extra

attention. All right. Yesterday on this program, we told you about how Hunter Biden had taken out a loan for a million dollars to pay some back taxes to get himself out of trouble. Well, you know what? As it turns out, the New York Times did that story yesterday and that was in their lead. But in the 24th paragraph, hardly anybody reads that far into a story. But in the 24th paragraph, hardly anybody reads that far into a story. In the 24th paragraph, it mentions an email between Hunter Biden and his associates. There's been a big change in tune on the Hunter Biden laptop story. Remember how the media dismissed it?

Biden, this laptop that intelligence officials have warned is likely Russian disinformation. I get pretty. According to the New York Times, Hunter Biden paid off a significant tax liability. The payment was made following his public announcement about a federal investigation after the 2020 election. Last week, the New York Times published an update on an ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden. Tangle covered that investigation in December of 2020. In it, the Times reported that Biden had paid off a significant tax liability in hopes of staving

off an indictment stemming from an investigation into his tax affairs, but that he is still the subject of a, quote, wide-ranging examination of his international business dealings, end quote, the Times reported. Biden, who became a lawyer at Yale, worked as a registered lobbyist and also pursued international business deals in Asia and Europe when his father was vice president. By his own telling, Biden was paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. The investigation into Hunter's taxes began under the Obama administration but widened in 2018 to include possible criminal violations, including money laundering and unregistered foreign lobbying. Under the Foreign Relations Registration Act, also known as FARA, all persons acting to influence U.S. policy or opinion on behalf of a foreign entity in the United States must disclose as much, though the law is notoriously flaunted with impunity.

must disclose as much, though the law is notoriously flaunted with impunity. There were only seven prosecutions between 1966 and 2016, though that has changed in recent years. A federal grand jury heard testimony in the investigation in Delaware as recently as last month. Included in the latest Times report was also this paragraph, quote, people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer, people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors had examined emails between Mr. Biden, Mr. Archer, and others about Burisma and other foreign business activity. Those emails were obtained by the New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in the Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation.

This piece of reporting immediately became news as it confirmed the authenticity of the quote Hunter Biden laptop story that was first reported by the New York Post shortly before the election. Tangle covered that story in October of 2020 on two occasions. However, shortly after the Post's report began spreading online, it was throttled by social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, the latter of which prohibited users from sharing the story at all, citing rules about, quote, hacked materials. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later apologized, saying that the censorship was a mistake. intelligence officials and Democratic members of Congress speculated publicly that the report was quote Russian disinformation, and some news organizations gave it little or no coverage, saying they couldn't confirm the authenticity of the emails, text messages, and images shared by the Post. The Times reporting, along with now confirming that Post's report, also broke a few other pieces of news. For starters, it confirmed that Hunter Biden and his partner, Devin Archer, discussed inviting foreign business associates, including an executive from a Ukrainian energy

company, to meet for dinner at a Washington, D.C. restaurant and have Joe Biden stop by. It reports that Joe Biden did, in fact, attend one such dinner, though the Times says it was unclear whether the invited executives were there. The Times also reported at least some modicum of caution by Hunter Biden in his dealings. In one 2014 email, Biden wrote to his associates before one of his father's visits to Ukraine that Burisma officials, quote, need to know in no uncertain terms that we will not and cannot intervene directly with domestic policymakers and that we need to abide by FARA and any other U.S. laws in the strictest sense across the board, end quote. The Times also said that investigators have

examined Hunter Biden's relationships with interests in Kazakhstan, a Chinese energy conglomerate, and Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, according to people familiar with the investigation. They said prosecutors had investigated payments and gifts Mr. Biden or his associates had received from foreign interests, including a vehicle paid for using funds from a company associated with a Kazakh oligarch and a diamond from a Chinese energy tycoon. Prosecutors also sought documents related to corporate entities through which Mr. Biden and his associates conducted business with interests around the world. In a moment, we'll take a look at some reactions to the Times confirming the authenticity of the emails from Hunter Biden's laptop,

as well as some commentary about the investigation. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right criticizes the media for ignoring the story and social media companies for censoring it. They point out that many on the left tried to dismiss the story as Russian disinformation. They say a full investigation of Hunter and his business dealings is needed and suspect he may have violated the law. The New York Post editorial board said, quote, now that Joe Biden is president, the Times finally admits Hunter's laptop is real. First, the New York Times decides more than a year later that Hunter Biden's business woes are worthy of a story. Then, deep in the piece, in passing, it notes that Hunter's laptop

is legitimate, the board wrote. You don't say. You mean when a newspaper actually does reporting on a topic and doesn't try to whitewash coverage for Joe Biden, it discovers it's actually true? But wait, it doesn't end there. In October 2020, the Times cast doubt that there was a meeting between Joe Biden and an official from Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company for which Hunter Biden was a board member. A Biden campaign spokesperson said Mr. Biden's official schedules did not show a meeting between the two men, the Times wrote, acting as a perfect stenographer. Yet, in the latest report, published Wednesday night, the Times said the meeting likely did happen. Biden had attended the dinner in question. Funny how this works when you don't just take someone's word for it, the board said.

Readers of the Times have discovered in March 2022 that Hunter Biden pursued business deals in Europe and Asia and may have leveraged his father's position as vice president to do it. Hunter also may not have properly registered with the government or declared all his income. All legitimate topics of discussion about a presidential candidate's family know. Readers of The Post have known this since October 2020. Byron York wrote about the shame media organizations and social media companies should feel. The bitterness in the story is that the New York Post article, coming in the heat of a presidential campaign, was ignored, downplayed, or attacked in many media outlets, York wrote. In the two biggest social media platforms,

Facebook and Twitter, it was suppressed. Rather than follow up on the New York Post's reporting, other news organizations limited the reach of negative information about Hunter Biden and his father, then the Democratic candidate for president. Some of the treatment was downright comic, he added. For example, right after the first presidential debate, in which then-President Donald Trump made many references to the laptop, to Hunter Biden's habit of referring to his father as the big man, and more, the New York Times published a guide for confused viewers. Quote, if you listen to President Donald Trump debate Joseph R. Biden, you may have felt like you started to watch a complicated serial drama, Lost or Twin Peaks, in its final season, the New

York Times wrote. The president kept dropping names and plot points, all seeming to reference a Baroque mythology. Who was the big man? Who was the laptop? How many seasons of the show did I miss? It was all so mysterious, Byron York said. In the Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker said there will be no accountability for the mistake. In close elections, a fraction of the total vote distributed in the right places can swing an outcome, and we can never be sure what effect late news stories can have. We'll never know what the effect of the quote-unquote October surprise of 2020, the New York Post reporting of the discovery of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden containing all sorts of embarrassing emails, might have had on the election that year if it had received wider circulation. Perhaps in a campaign dominated by COVID and characterized by chaos, it would have been another. Perhaps in a campaign dominated by COVID and

characterized by chaos, it would have been another snowflake in the blizzard of news voters were being hit with. But the allegations in the reporting that the son of the man favored to become the next president had been selling his high-level family political connections to foreigners, including suggestions of a possible cut for his father, were worth pursuing. But enough influential people in and out of government, in the foreign policy intelligence complex, in the media, in the big tech firms were so alarmed that it would affect the outcome that they pulled off one of the greatest disappearing tricks since Harry Houdini made that elephant vanish from a New York stage.

All right, that is it for what the right is saying. That brings us to the left's take. The left says there was a reason to be cautious of the story. Some argue it can no longer be ignored, but point out that Trump's administration had its share of illegal foreign lobbying too. Others say they are still waiting for something criminal to materialize and view this story more as a sad episode than anything else. In the Washington Post, Philip Bump said the context of what happened with Hunter Biden's laptop is still important. Was the sourcing for information sufficiently dubious to justify caution by mainstream outlets? The answer, it seems clear, is yes, Bump said.

It's critical to remember what happened in the 2016 election cycle. WikiLeaks published two large clusters of documents stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee's network and from John Podesta, a top aide to the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. After the election, we learned the full scope of Russia's involvement in the election. Suddenly, the coverage of WikiLeaks material took on a new light. It was stolen by a foreign government to try and influence U.S. politics. Media companies reconsidered their coverage, should there have been more caution about playing into the hands of a foreign influence campaign? This question was very much on people's minds in the months before the 2020 election,

particularly given indications that Russia was again hoping to aid Trump's election. The Times would later report that publishing the material was contentious enough even at the New York Post. Fox News had already passed on it, apparently in part because of the questions about provenance. A number of Post employees questioned whether the paper had done enough to vet the material. After the story came out, the Post didn't share the material with other outlets for them to do their own investigations. In other words, coverage necessarily depended on taking the Post's word for things, which is by itself a disincentive for other outlets. In The Guardian, Edward Helmore said the Biden story is becoming hard to ignore. The larger question beyond whether Hunter Biden correctly met tax obligations during a period in which, by his own telling, he was being paid $50,000 a month by

Ukrainian firm Burisma, are Biden's financial ties to foreign figures and businesses while his father served as Barack Obama's number two. Illegal lobbying is an issue that chattered Trump throughout his presidency, leading to the conviction of Paul Manafort, Trump's 2016 campaign manager, on tax fraud charges, Hemor said. Illegal lobbying is an issue that shadowed Trump throughout his presidency, leading to the conviction of Paul Manafort, Trump's 2016 campaign manager,

on tax fraud charges. Manafort later pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by providing false statements, laundering money, witness tampering, and failing to register as an agent of the Ukrainian government. Last year, Thomas Barak, a friend and former advisor to Trump, was arrested on charges that he and others failed to inform the U.S. government that they were working to influence U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, Helmohr added. In addition to under Biden's ties to Ukraine through the gas

company Burisma, he has sat on the boards of BHR Partners, a private investment fund backed by a number of Chinese state entities, a hedge fund Paradigm, a consultancy Seneca Global Advisors, and the fundraising firm Rosemont Seneca. For presidential children, the stakes are different and may have only risen as Washington has become more partisan. In a New York Times piece titled It's Never a Good Time for the Hunter Biden Story, Gail Collins shared her view with Brett Stevens. I'm so glad our colleagues are still doing strong reporting on this story. Hunter Biden's scummy business dealings shouldn't be swept under the rug any more than anyone else's, Collins said. That said, I have to admit, I've never found Hunter's behavior criminal,

just very, very depressing. Fragile son in a family buffeted by a tragedy grows up to have a drug problem and makes a lot of money by working for companies that presumably like to have a famous American politician's relative to trot around. Some of Hunter's behavior was obviously unseemly in the extreme, she wrote. Any new evidence needs to be carefully examined to see if Hunter's behavior ever went past that into actual criminality. Did he claim, for instance, that he could deliver favors from the government because he was Joe Biden's son? So far, I haven't seen it, but whenever Hunter's name comes up, I do find myself holding my breath. All right, that is it for what the right and the left are saying, which brings us to my take. I'm going to start by just leveling one critique against the New York Post just to get it out of the way, and then I'm going to take a little bit of a mini victory lap on this story. So one of the only real gripes I have with the

Post coverage, and I don't really know how else to say this, is just how trashy it is. I know the Post is a tabloid. I live in New York City. I get it. But when this story first broke, what could have been a very serious and shocking report on the former vice president's son was instead littered with pictures of Hunter Biden having sex, smoking crack, and screenshots of text messages where he's having deeply personal and troubling arguments with his wife, children, or father. The whole thing was gross, and you got the feeling the Post's intent was more to embarrass him and Biden than to break any real news. And for anyone who has ever been close to addiction, as I have, I'm sure it was especially grating. They were clearly the images and messages

of a person in crisis. Even in today's editorial, which the Post published, the story is still littered with photos of Biden shirtless, smoking out of a crack pipe, or otherwise indisposed. Photos that are totally irrelevant in a piece about media bias and violating foreign lobbying laws. They seem to be there for no other reason than to shame, embarrass, and dehumanize Biden, which, not to be so high-minded about it, I do truly find revolting. It's the worst sort of journalism. So that's my critique, just to put that out there and get it out of the way. Otherwise, the whole thing is simultaneously unsurprising and shocking all at once. On the first day this story broke, I was pretty skeptical of how the material was obtained, and who could blame me? It looked like a classic October political hit job. We were being told by

Rudy Giuliani that a blind man working at a computer repair shop was handed a laptop by Hunter Biden, had recognized it was Hunter Biden because of a Beau Biden Foundation sticker, and had then downloaded the hard drive and handed it over to Giuliani. And by the way, the computer was full of incriminating pictures, emails, and text messages. But in the first few days after the story broke, my mood had already started to change. For starters, Biden and his team weren't even denying the contents of the emails were real. Screenshots and troves of data looked authentic. Contemporaneous reporting on Joe and Hunter Biden's movements and what the emails alleged all added up. I think the emails are real. If they weren't, the Biden administration

would be arguing that. I wrote five days after publication. And from the very first day the news was reported, I was seething that Twitter and Facebook had censored the story and that former intel officials, liberal cable news pundits, and members of Congress were calling it quote-unquote Russian disinformation. That was, in a best-case scenario, nothing but political hackery and speculation. In the worst-case scenario, it was a coordinated public relations cover-up. It wasn't Russian disinformation. It was a bizarre, wild, fairly shocking, and very real story of the now-president's son doing a host of gratuitously dumb things, from entangling his vice president father and his foreign business dealings to filming himself with sex workers. We can now say

pretty confidently that all the images, texts, and emails the New York Post reported were real. We should also be able to say affirmatively that censoring or blocking these stories continues to be bad for honest public discourse. I argued this then, argued it about the lab leak theory on COVID-19, and I've argued it more generally when people are quote-unquote deplatformed. Yet no matter how many times these arrogant assumptions about what we do and don't know are made, not just in the last 20 years but throughout history, I still get bombarded with people accusing me of all sorts of nasty things for taking the position that we should not try to sequester these stories into the dark corners of the internet. I was right to cover this story

three times, despite all the hate mail I got for doing it and all those people who, at the time, claimed I was falling for some kind of Russian disinformation campaign. As I wrote a few months ago, the best book to read about this issue is The Bidens by Politico's Ben Schreckinger, which covers not just the story of Hunter's foreign dealings and Rudy Giuliani's fumbling attempts to capitalize on them, but the entire story of the Biden family's rise to power. The good news is that the Trump-appointed judge in Delaware overseeing the case, David Weiss, has a strong reputation as a straight shooter. He was appointed by Trump at the recommendation of two Democratic senators, and he has not been replaced by Biden. The question

of whether anything Hunter did crossed into criminality is something that should be resolved in the coming months, or hopefully not years, if not sooner now that journalists are covering the story in earnest. Which is another thing worth remembering. Byron York is right to call the Times coverage of Hunter's laptop, quote, comical. Yes, it's true that the Post did not share the source materials with other news outlets immediately, something I criticized them for at the time. But when has that stopped papers from trying to out-scoop each other in the past? Throughout 2020, instead of trying to one-up the New York Post, the Times was citing letters from Democratic officials calling the story Russian disinformation with no evidence and quoting

Biden's press team with no pushback. In September, it was still calling the story, quote, unsubstantiated in the limiting reporting it did on the whole thing. Of course, none of the stuff Hunter got involved in is new, and plenty of reporters at The Times would be well-equipped to pursue this, as we witnessed last week. Politicians and their families have been making millions via influence peddling across the globe for decades. It's the kind of corruption we have, for a long time, done little or nothing about, even as the children and brothers of powerful politicians like Joe Biden rake in dough.

Hunter's windfalls do appear to be fairly unprecedented, though, and are further complicated by how much action took place in the very country his father was conducting U.S. diplomacy. It was always a farcical lie that Joe and Hunter never discussed their business dealings, as the president has claimed repeatedly, but now we have hard confirmation of that lie. For now, Hunter hasn't been charged with any crime, let alone convicted, so we should proceed with caution. The big question was never if Hunter made money from selling his name, which we know he did. It's whether he violated the law, or more importantly, if his father ever profited off his dealings or changed U.S. policy because of them. His business aspirations and alleged tax avoidance have always been a problem, hence this investigation starting during

Obama's time in office. The Republican-controlled Senate even spent years investigating them, but turned up nothing on the current president, which, for whatever it's worth, is encouraging. Perhaps bigger than the story of Hunter's slimy business dealings is the story of how the major newspapers and social media navigated them, but there's no doubt, or should no longer be any doubt, that both threads need to be followed to the end. All right, that is it for my take. We are skipping today's reader question because this podcast already got pretty long, but just remember you can write in Isaac, I-S-A-A-C at readtangle.com anytime to ask a question. So that brings us to our story that matters today. This one is about

Okta, an authentication company that thousands of organizations use around the world to provide access to their networks. It is notifying customers of a potential breach. Lapsus, a hacking and extortion collective, has claimed credit for the breach. The news broke the day after President Biden warned of Russian cyber attacks, further inflaming concerns about the private sector's vulnerability to hacking. Okta's authentication services are used by FedEx, Moody's, T-Mobile, the FCC, Peloton, and Sonos, among its other 15,000 clients. Any breach of its services would have widespread impact on the U.S. Reuters has the story. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. All right, that brings us to our numbers section. The number of former intelligence officials who

signed a letter claiming Hunter Biden's laptop has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation was 51. The estimated amount of tax liability Hunter Biden paid off was over $1 million. The percentage of registered voters who said they had heard at least a little bit about the Hunter Biden laptop story in October of 2020 was 77%. The percentage of registered voters who said they had heard a lot about the Hunter Biden laptop story in October of 2020 was 39%. The percentage who felt Hunter Biden had engaged in corrupt business dealings was 45%, and the percentage who felt he had not was 32%. percent, and the percentage who felt he had not was 32 percent. All right, last but not least, our have a nice day story. I love this one. This is a great piece.

An alcohol-free bar in Texas is thriving in helping accelerate interest in people who want a sober lifestyle. The bar was founded by Chris Marshall, who said he wanted to create a place where people could socialize and have fun without the presence of alcohol, a passion born out of his own struggles with addiction. The bar is part of a growing movement called Sober Curious, which involves people who are interested in removing alcohol from their lives, but worried about the cost it might have on their social life. Chris Marshall said, quote, When I went into treatment, I was all alone. And I think that my main motivating factor was that feeling of loneliness. And when I got into rehab, the first thing I heard was someone tell me, you don't ever have to feel lonely again. So this space that we're sitting in today is a direct result of that very real statement that someone made to me 15 years ago, telling me that I didn't have to be alone, that I didn't have to live alone. You can read the story about Chris and his bar in today's

newsletter. There is a link to it. It's also on abcnews.com. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. I want to also just apologize if you've heard two straight days of dogs barking in the background. I have no idea what's going on, where these dogs came from. They're apparently outside under the window of our office and recording studio, which is super not convenient, but they seem like they're having a good time. So, you know, I apologize. Anyway, we'll be back same time tomorrow. Before you go, don't forget, check out the episode description, punch that five-star rating, subscribe, donate, do whatever you can to keep this podcast

running we really appreciate it have a good one peace our newsletter is written by isaac saul edited by bailey saul sean brady ari weitzman and produced in conjunction with tangle's social media manager magdalena bakova who also helped create our logo the podcast podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. Bye.