Legacy media appears to have no interest in an alleged bribery scheme involving then-Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and an as-yet unidentified foreign national.
When Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. James Comer (R-KY) came forward with information about the alleged scheme, legacy media outlets should have been all over the story — but they were not.
Then more information began to trickle out: namely that the alleged bribery scheme likely was tied to Burisma, and that Biden could have profited by as much as $5 million for a certain policy outcome requested by the unnamed foreign national — the timing of which aligned with an alleged $5 million payment aimed at killing an investigation into Burisma Holdings’ founder.
Still, legacy media coverage of the whole situation remained minimal — even as Comer threatened to hold FBI Director Christopher Wray in contempt over the bureau’s refusal to comply with a subpoena and provide Congress with an FD-1023 form related to the alleged scheme.
Grassley gave several updates in recent days as well, noting that the FBI did allow some members of Congress to review the FD-1023 – but despite it already being unclassified, the bureau had insisted that they view the document in a classified facility and had reportedly made additional redactions to it prior to allowing those viewings.
Grassley, who has read the unredacted version of the FD-1023, announced on the Senate floor that one of the redactions included the claim that the unnamed foreign national had reportedly kept a number of recordings of conversations related to the bribery scheme — 15 conversations with Hunter Biden and two with then Vice President Joe Biden – as a sort of “insurance policy” if things should go wrong.
WATCH:
GRASSLEY: "The foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden allegedly has audio recording of his conversation with them. 17 such recordings…15 audio recordings of phone calls between him and Hunter Biden…two audio recordings of phone calls between him and… pic.twitter.com/0QdUMEKhOR
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 12, 2023
And still, legacy media outlets appeared disinterested.
The Media Research Center’s Newsbusters laid out a stark comparison following the two major stories that broke on June 8 — one involving the alleged Biden bribery scheme and the other involving another indictment of former President Donald Trump.
“On June 8, former President Donald Trump was indicted by the Special Counsel in the classified documents case. That very same day it was reported that President Joe Biden had allegedly received $5 million dollars from an executive of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, the same company in which his son Hunter was involved,” according to Geoffry Dickens of Newsbusters.
During the four days that followed, Newsbusters determined that the three major networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — devoted nearly five hours (291 minutes) of coverage to Trump’s indictment. Those same networks opted not to cover the Biden story at all.