Why Democrats want to avoid special counsel in Hunter Biden probe
Fox News contributor Byron York discusses the need for investigation of president-elect's son on 'The Daily Briefing'
Republican lawmakers have called for incoming acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to appoint a special counsel to probe Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings and tax affairs, but evening newscasts on NBC, CBS and ABC hardly felt it was worth mentioning.
"Biden’s defenders in the broadcast networks largely covered up the calls for accountability while ‘NBC Nightly News’ openly scoffed at the idea," Media Research Center analyst Nicholas Fondacaro wrote after watching all three broadcasts.
JOE BIDEN BREAKS SILENCE ON HUNTER FOR FIRST TIME SINCE FEDERAL INVESTIGATION SURFACED
Fondacaro noted that NBC White House correspondent Kristen Welker -- who moderated a presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden – "spent only 26 seconds on calls for a special counsel" and "made it seem as though those calls were only coming from Trump."
It wasn’t only Trump, as Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that he "absolutely" supports calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China.
Graham, R-S.C., told reporters Wednesday that he has not yet spoken with Trump about the situation, but he added that he believes the appointment of a special prosecutor is a "good idea." The senator called for the special counsel to probe whether "any crimes were committed" and determine any "conflicts" that exist for President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration.
While Fondacaro wasn’t a fan of NBC’s coverage, ABC and CBS skipped the story altogether.
"While NBC only spent 26 seconds on the story (during a report moaning about Trump’s refusal to concede), that was 26 more seconds than ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’ and ‘CBS Evening News’ gave it," Fondacaro wrote.
Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings were the subject of intense scrutiny in recent months but the mainstream media has downplayed the scandal from the jump. NPR has called it a waste of time, CNN president Jeff Zucker was caught on a conference call instructing staffers to ignore the story and it was famously censored by Twitter prior to the election.
Trump and other prominent critics have accused Hunter Biden of leveraging his father’s political influence during his time as vice president in the Obama administration to enrich himself through dealings in Ukraine and China.
The president-elect’s son disclosed earlier this month that the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware was investigating his "tax affairs." Earlier Wednesday, Joe Biden said he was "confident" that Hunter hadn’t committed a crime.
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Graham pointed to the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia after the 2016 election as a precedent for a similar look at Hunter Biden’s dealings.
Meanwhile, correspondence between Hunter Biden and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming from 2017 shows the president-elect’s son extending "best wishes from the entire Biden family," and urging the chairman to "quickly" send a $10 million wire to "properly fund and operate" the Biden joint venture with the now-bankrupt Chinese energy company.
Fox News’ Thomas Barrabi and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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