Blog

USA Today Refused To Publish Hunter Biden Scandal Op-Ed, So Here It Is

SO USA TODAY DIDN’T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK. My regular editor is on vacation, and I guess everyone else was afraid to touch it. So I’m sending them another column next week, and just publishing this one here. Enjoy! This is as filed, with no editing from USAT.

*  *  *

In my 2019 book, The Social Media Upheaval, I warned that the Big Tech companies — especially social media giants like Facebook and Twitter — had grown into powerful monopolists, who were using their power over the national conversation to not only sell ads, but also to promote a political agenda.

That was pretty obvious last year, but it was even more obvious last week, when Facebook and Twitter tried to black out the New York Post’s blockbuster report about emails found on a laptop abandoned by Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The emails, some of which have been confirmed as genuine with their recipients, show substantial evidence that Hunter Biden used his position as Vice President Joe Biden’s son to extract substantial payments from “clients” in other countries. There are also photos of Hunter with a crack pipe, and engaging in various other unsavory activities. And they demolished the elder Biden’s claim that he never discussed business with his son.

That’s a big election-year news story. Some people doubted its genuineness, and of course it’s always fair to question a big election-year news story, especially one that comes out shortly before the election. (Remember CBS newsman Dan Rather’s promotion of what turned out to be forged memos about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service?)

But the way you debate whether a story is accurate or not is by debating. (In the case of the Rather memos, it turned out the font was from Microsoft Word, which of course didn’t exist back during the Vietnam War era.) Big Tech could have tried an approach that fostered such a debate. But instead of debate, they went for a blackout: Both services actually blocked links to the New York Post story. That’s right: They blocked readers from discussing a major news story by a major paper, one so old that it was founded by none other than Alexander Hamilton.

I wasn’t advising them — they tend not to ask me for my opinion — but I would have advised against such a blackout. There’s a longstanding Internet term called “the Streisand effect,” going back to when Barbara Streisand demanded that people stop sharing pictures of her beach house. Unsurprisingly, the result was a massive increase in the number of people posting pictures of her beach house. The Big Tech Blackout produced the same result: Now even people who didn’t care so much about Hunter Biden’s racket nonetheless became angry, and started talking about the story.

Keep reading

The 2016 deposition that Ghislaine DIDN’T want you to read: Maxwell ‘pounds’ interview table in rage as she admits to intimacy with Epstein but denies underage orgies – and says Bill didn’t visit Pedo Island and there was no ‘basket of sex toys’

Ghislaine Maxwell admitted she had an intimate relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in a bombshell 2016 deposition released today, but refused to discuss their sex life as she dodged questions about orgies, underage girls and Prince Andrew. 

The 418-page document was released Thursday morning after Maxwell’s attorneys fought tooth and nail to keep the deposition private. It stems from a defamation lawsuit brought against Maxwell from Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre.  

Over the course of the heated deposition, Maxwell repeatedly lashed out against Giuffre’s lawyers, tried to object to questioning and at one point pounded her fist on the table.

After the fit, she remarked: ‘Can we be clear, I didn’t threaten anybody.’   

The combative Maxwell continually denied all wrongdoing. She refused to answer questions about her sex life with Epstein, denied she participated in orgies and rebuffed questions about underage girls, including a 13-year-old, being in Epstein’s home.  

The 58-year-old became agitated and refused to answer a simple question of whether she believed it is psychologically harmful for an adult to have sex with a minor. 

‘What are you asking me? I don’t know what you are asking,’ Maxwell responded. ‘This has nothing to do with Virginia Roberts.’ 

She denied taking nude photos of Epstein’s victims, but insisted that every photo she took was by request and would have been ‘mainstream type magazine photos’ that ‘could have been very happily and expected to be displayed on your parents’ mantel piece or grandparents’ mantel piece’. 

President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew were also brought up during the conversation, with Maxwell profusely denying Clinton had been to Epstein’s ‘pedo’ island. 

She also skirted questions about Giuffre’s claim that Prince Andrew used a Spitting Image puppet to grope her in Epstein’s New York home. Giuffre has claimed she was instructed to have sex with Prince Andrew multiple times, claims that he vehemently denied.   

Keep reading

Biden Won’t Give An Answer On Court Packing Until At Least 180 Days After Becoming President

Former Vice President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he won’t give an answer on court packing until at least 180 days after he becomes president and he receives a recommendation from a “bipartisan” commission on changing the Supreme Court.

Biden made the announcement during an interview with “60 Minutes,” saying the commission of bipartisan constitutional scholars would investigate various means of changing the court system, which Biden says has become a political football.

“If elected, what I will do is I’ll put together a national commission – a bipartisan commission … and I will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court system … it’s not about court packing,” he said. “There’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond court packing.”

Keep reading