So much happens in the final weeks of a presidential campaign that it’s easy to lose off whatever happened to this or that development in the news. A lot falls between the cracks. There’s overload. Politicians know this of course, and they use it to their advantage. If they can detail a story till after Election Day, often it goes away forever. No one really remembers.
That was precisely the thinking behind the Democrats’ response to Hunter Biden’s laptop. They knew from the first day that the contents of that laptop were genuine. Look at what’s on there. It may be theoretically possible that some foreign intelligence service would photoshop a picture of Hunter Biden’s crotch, mostly to amuse themselves. But a 100 pictures of Hunter Biden’s crotch? Adorned with M&Ms? Nope. No Russian did that. Those were entirely real. So were the huge numbers of emails and texts from Hunter Biden explaining how he was selling access to his father, the vice president, and how his father helped him do it. In order to enrich his family, Joe Biden changed our country’s foreign policy. That happened. And it was the real crime that Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed.
That was the real scandal. If voters had understood that, if someone had told them, it might have affected the election results. So they couldn’t know. The permanent bureaucracy hid that from the country. In October, a group of corrupt intelligence officials, 50 of them, signed a letter blaming Vladimir Putin for the laptop. "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, dozens of former intel officials say." That was the headline in Politico. It was a lie from top to bottom, totally unsupported by evidence of any kind. But it came just in time for the presidential debate. That was the point. Joe Biden picked it up and wielded it like a club from the stage.
BIDEN: We are in a situation where we have foreign countries trying to interfere in the outcome of our election. His own national security adviser told him that what is happening with his buddy, Rudy Giuliani, he's being used as a Russian pawn. He's being fed information that is Russian. Information that is not true.
Just two months after that debate, the truth began to leak out. According once again to Politico, the intel world’s favorite media tool, a "person with firsthand knowledge of the investigation" conceded that, actually, Hunter Biden's laptop wasn't a Russian fabrication. It was real. Real enough to be used as evidence in an ongoing investigation into, "potential money laundering and Hunter Biden’s foreign ties." Hunter Biden, we learned, was facing possible indictment for what was on the laptop.
The DOJ was looking into the Ukrainian and Chinese businessmen paying Hunter to get close to his father. They wanted to know why his father was apparently getting 10% of the deals. That’s what we learned. And that’s all we learned. For six months, we heard nothing more. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden got a lot richer. He sold a book no one read for millions of dollars. Simon & Schuster paid him off.
He sold paintings you’d never hang anywhere for possibly even more than that. We don’t know, because the identities of the people who bought them are still secret. But what you do know, for certain, is that Hunter Biden was never charged for anything. Why is that? It’s kind of weird, given that Hunter Biden himself admitted on television a few months ago that the laptop didn’t actually come from the Kremlin:
TRACY SMITH: Was that your laptop?
HUNTER BIDEN: I don’t-- I-- for-- for real, I don’t know.
…
TRACY SMITH: So could have been yours?
HUNTER BIDEN: Of course certainly. It, it, there could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the-- that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me.
You'd think a clip like that where he admits it – the 50 intel officials were all lying - would be a key piece of evidence in the probe into Hunter Biden's finances. Where did all his money come from? Why are foreign governments sending him millions of dollars? Emails on the laptop directly implicate Hunter Biden in his family's foreign influence-peddling operation. So why haven't we heard anything to this day about this from the Department of Justice?
GOP SEEKING WHITE HOUSE DOCUMENTS ON BIDEN FAMILY MEMBERS TRYING TO ‘PROFIT OFF THE PRESIDENCY’
Today we got our answer -- naturally, from Politico. The magazine "reported" -- meaning was told, likely for complex reasons we can never really know -- that the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, a man called David Weiss, had buried the Hunter Biden case, and done so on purpose because he was asked to do it.
David Weiss decided to do that, Politico told us, because he wanted, "to avoid taking any actions that could alert the public to the existence of the case in the middle of a presidential election."
Just say it out loud now. He didn’t want to hurt Joe Biden, in other words. And he did this at the request of the Biden family and their lawyers. We learned that from the Politico piece too. It includes this quote: "To Weiss’s credit, he listened," said a person involved in the discussions."
In other words, he "listened" to the Bidens and their lawyers. Because he did that, apparently, David Weiss has kept his job as a federal prosecutor. Ben Schreckinger of Politico, needless to say, strongly approves of this, it’s not a subversion of justice, it’s the right thing. "Weiss’s decision to avoid revealing the investigation — a move that might have boosted Donald Trump’s campaign, even at the cost of politicizing the probe — was consistent with his sober-minded approach to his job."
Got that? When you cover for a Democratic presidential campaign, you’re, according to Politico, a "sober-minded" prosecutor. You did the right thing. Good job, David Weiss. You used our justice system to get the right team into the White House.
And in case you have any doubt that’s exactly what happened, and nothing to do with the timeframe before the election, you should know the FBI had Hunter Biden's laptop for an entire year before the election. We know they’d made a forensic copy of the hard drive all the way back in 2019. But they did nothing. And they still haven’t. Now they don’t have time, they’re too busy hunting down senior citizens who dare to talk about election integrity — the fabled insurrectionists. They can’t do anything about the subversion of America’s foreign policy by the Biden’s because they’re busy with the insurrectionists.
Maybe someday Politico will tell that story. In the meantime, we can look forward to more treatment like this for dissidents who opposes the regime in any way. As a reminder, here’s what happens to Americans who mock the people in power:
JON BERMAN: Exclusive footage you're looking at right now from CNN as the FBI arrives at Roger Stone's residence in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, taking him into custody
JON BERMAN: Again, they arrived before dawn just after 6:00 a.m., a dozen officers we're told. … FBI AGENT BANGS ON DOOR AND SHOUTS "FBI! OPEN THE DOOR!
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That was Roger Stone, of course. They roused him and his wife. Both of them are senior citizens, by the way. Because he made the mistake of texting unflattering things about federal prosecutors, and the government read his texts.
Hunter Biden doesn’t have to worry about the SWAT team showing up at his house at down with a CNN camera crew in tow. He can violate all the federal gun laws he wants and never be charged. Merrick Garland works for his dad. He’s fine. He can do literally whatever he wants — and as we’ve seen, he definitely has. But there’s a different standard for you. If you step out of line, you’re done. They mean it too. Ask Ashli Babbitt’s family — or Chewbacca Guy, the harmless shaman of January 6th. He’s still in solitary.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the July 16, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."