The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (7) -- How Is It Even Possible To Keep Spinning This?

August 04, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian, 55 Comments 

I want you to imagine that you have recently taken a job as a senior editor at the New York Times. Your mission, well understood by you, is to co-ordinate the coverage to spin the news of the day in a way to present Democrats in as favorable as possible a light, and Republicans as unfavorably as possible. In particular, you understand that Donald Trump must be shown as the devil incarnate, while Joe Biden is a kindly fellow who just loves his family. No problem.

But now you are suddenly presented with the news of the past few days. The “Justice” Department, under the control of Biden henchman Merrick Garland, has just taken the unprecedented step of indicting Trump, who currently holds a commanding lead in the polls to be the Republican candidate in the next presidential election, for the supposed “crime” of repeatedly asserting that the last election was stolen — an assertion that has been a perennial in presidential politics for decades without anybody ever being indicted for it. Meanwhile, a transcript of a witness’s testimony before a House committee earlier this week has just been released, with the witness having offered testimony to close the loop with the last piece of a clear quid pro quo bribery scheme involving millions going not just to Hunter Biden, but also Joe, with U.S. taxpayer funds used to the benefit of corrupt Russia-allied Ukrainians.

OK, this is a tough one. How are you possibly going to spin your way out of it?

Before getting to how the real New York Times approaches this situation, let’s consider how bad it has gotten for Joe in the Ukraine/Burisma bribery matter.

• It is well-established that Hunter Biden received $83,000 per month, or $1 million per year, for service on the Burisma board, beginning in May 2014 when Joe Biden was Vice President and continuing until some time after Joe left office. (The recent FD-1023 form released by the House Oversight Committee also contained allegations that Burisma had separately paid Joe Biden $5 million directly, but let’s take that as unproven for the moment.).
• Then there is the November 2, 2015 email chain between and among Hunter Biden and his Burisma paymasters, released by congressional Republicans. The email chain is discussed by Margot Cleveland of the Federalist today, and by Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post on July 17. Both quote Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi in the chain as stating that his “only concern” was that they [Burisma and Hunter] were on the “same page re our final goals,” with the Burisma executive confirming that the “the ultimate purpose” was “to close down” “any cases/pursuits against Nikolay in Ukraine.” “Nikolay” refers to Burisma’s chairman, Mykola Zlochevsky.
• And now we have the fresh testimony earlier this week of Hunter Biden’s business partner and fellow Burisma board member Devon Archer. From Cleveland’s piece at the Federalist: “Devon Archer . . . testified . . . that in December 2015, Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi “placed constant pressure” on Hunter Biden to get help from D.C. regarding the Ukrainian investigation. In response to such pressure, according to Archer’s testimony, Hunter Biden called his then-vice president father with Zlochevsky and Pozharskyi in tow.”
• Within days after that, Joe Biden appeared in Ukraine and demanded that the prosecutor be fired, or else some $1 billion of badly-needed U.S. aid would be withheld. And a couple of months after that, the prosecutor was indeed fired.

In other words, there is now lay-down evidence of all the elements of a multi-million dollar bribery scheme in which our current President was directly involved, and in which a billion dollars of taxpayer-funded U.S. aid was leveraged to secure a direct benefit for a Ukrainian oligarch and a big personal payday for the President and his son. Has there ever been a comparable political corruption scandal in U.S. history? Not that I am aware of.

OK now, over to the New York Times. How can they possibly spin this to keep up their narrative? Here is the front page of the print edition from yesterday:

Yes, the entire front page was occupied with the completely phony new charges against Trump, characterized as matters of “destabilizing lies” that put “the essence of American democracy” at stake. I guess that was to be expected.

But how about even a word about the new revelations making it definitive that our current President headed up a multi-million dollar bribery scheme to enrich his family while he was Vice President? Maybe we can find that somewhere deep in the interior pages some time this week? Yes! Here is a shot of the bottom half of page A13 from today’s print edition:

That’s right: this whole Biden bribery thing is just Trump’s “whataboutism defense.” It’s not even worth coverage in its own story outside of that context.

I’ll bet in your prospective role as Times senior editor you could never come up with a level of spin so completely preposterous and outside the realm of reality. It looks like you will never qualify for such a prestigious position. Perhaps you should stick to your current job as a manual laborer or whatever.

Meanwhile, if you are interested, go to this link at PowerLine, for a full 12 minute video of Democrats asserting that election results they did not like involved fraud. Somehow the “Justice” Department did not think that any of these statements warranted investigation, let alone indictment.