Turley blasts media's coddling of Hunter Biden after softball Jimmy Kimmel interview: 'Willful blindness'

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Jonathan Turley blasted the media's "collective willful blindness" on behalf of Hunter Biden on Friday, following another friendly interview with the president's son by ABC late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.

"This collective willful blindness was evident in the interview conducted last night by Jimmy Kimmel where the two joked about Hunter’s convenient lack of memory," Turley wrote. "Hunter goes blank on incriminating issues even though he can remember other details going back to when he was eight years old."

Rather than discuss sordid details like Biden fathering a child in Arkansas he denied was his, the media is "driving home the image of an American Odysseus who overcame every challenge," Turley wrote.

Kimmel praised Biden's new memoir "Beautiful Things," where he details his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction, and the two discussed his controversial work for the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, as well as the infamous laptop that Biden called a "red herring," while acknowledging it could belong to him.

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Mainstream media outlets and Big Tech engaged in an astonishing level of cooperation to suppress and delegitimize the New York Post's reporting on Biden's laptop in October, weeks before his father's election to the presidency. Emails on the laptop discussed Biden's overseas business dealings and raised concerns that he gave undue access to his powerful father.

Turley wrote Kimmel ignored "obvious and embarrassing contradictions" in Biden's story, such as defending his qualifications to serve on Burisma's board while struggling at the time with memory blackouts from his crack addiction, which Biden said was triggered in part by the death of his brother Beau in 2015.

"Ignoring conflicts in the interview was no easy task. Kimmel made reference to Hunter’s struggle with drugs without noting that Hunter admits to being a crack addict all the way up to his father’s 2020 presidential election," Turley wrote. "Hunter left that off of his description of his work on Burisma.

"While Hunter was claiming blackouts of memory due to his crack addiction, he was also claiming that he was a natural choice for the board of an major energy company.  Burisma and other companies not only gave massive payments to someone without any notable skills or experience, they hired someone who was a drug addict who was, by his own account, a total trainwreck."

Kimmel said Biden's claim of a foggy memory regarding his laptop was believable because of his drug use at the time, but Turley noted Biden's memory was fine when it served his narrative well. 

In spite of his famous father and scandalous history, liberal journalists have treated Biden with what amounts to kid gloves.

Liberal CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter, while dinging right-wing media for "being obsessed with him," called Biden's new book "breathtaking" and "extraordinary." He also gushed over it at length in his "Reliable Sources" newsletter on April 5.

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In spite of Biden's non-denial that the laptop in question was his, MSNBC's Chris Hayes found himself shrugging his shoulders about the matter Friday. 

Last month, though, Hayes and other prominent liberal journalists inaccurately claimed a declassified intelligence assessment proved Biden's laptop came from Russians trying to meddle in the 2020 election, when the director of national intelligence made no such claim. 

Journalist and corporate media critic Glenn Greenwald said journalists giving Biden a free pass on tough questions were committing malpractice.

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Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.