Bluntly put, I’m going to ask you for money. But, before I do, I have a pressing question: Do you know how fire alarms work?

I do. And I’d wager that most of the press did, too, until Representative Jamaal Bowman pulled one this week in a possible attempt to shut down the work of Congress, and, in a transparent attempt to ignore the problem with his having done so, the operation of fire alarms immediately became one of those great Talmudic mysteries that prompt furrowed brows and the perplexed shrugging of shoulders. If you want to see a journalist lose faith in epistemological truth, have a Democrat do something corrupt or stupid. Within seconds, you’ll be transported to a pot-filled sophomore philosophy seminar. “When you think about it, what can we really know, dude?”

I mention The Strange Case of the Exquisitely Complicated Fire Alarm because it strikes me as a perfect example-in-miniature of how the media have elected to treat the growing evidence of serious wrongdoing by President Biden and his family. Back in 2017, when the subject of rumors was Donald Trump and his supposed “collusion” with Russia, the press treated every claim that was made as if it were self-evidently true. In the hive mind’s estimation, Trump was obviously connected to the Kremlin, and any suggestion made by any person — however patently ridiculous — was folded into that assumption without delay. Allegations were printed without context. Dossiers were amplified without shame. Questions were begged without relief. If it was alleged at 5 p.m. that Trump had once tried a vodka martini, by 6 the walls would be closing in. By comparison, Abigail Williams was an amateur.

With Biden, the media have taken precisely the opposite approach. I would like to say that this reversal represents a salutary overcorrection, but, of course, we all know that it is no such thing. It represents corruption. The press wanted Trump to be guilty, it wants Biden to be innocent, and it has proceeded accordingly in both cases. With Trump, fluff was treated as evidence; with Biden, evidence is treated as fluff. Week by week, the president’s denials have fallen apart, his story has changed, the signals pointing toward wrongdoing have mounted, and the press — which still fancies itself to be full of Woodwards and Bernsteins — has simply rolled its eyes. Professionally, this baffles me. Analytically, I understand. The press has a team, and it intends to play for it. Certain figures — the Washington Post’s Philip Bump, for example — have turned this positioning into a veritable art form, resembling nothing so much as the fictional British lawyer Sir Robert Massingbird, who, we are told, was given a case in which “a man was found next to a murdered body” with “the knife in his hand”; “13 witnesses had seen him stab the victim”; and “when the police arrived, he [had] said ‘I’m glad I killed the bastard.’” And the lawyer nevertheless “not only got him off; he got him knighted in the New Year’s Honours List, and the relatives of the victim had to pay to wash the blood out of his jacket.”

I am proud to say that National Review did not behave in this manner in either case. The phrase that I have heard most frequently uttered by my colleagues during the discussion of both of these stories is “don’t get out over your skis.” Instead: Be skeptical, be open-minded, be patient, look for evidence, and follow it where it goes. I have something of a reputation around these parts for being a staunch proceduralist in the realm of criminal justice and, indeed, for insisting that we should apply that proceduralist instinct elsewhere. I believe that as much in this case as any other. But you cannot tell me with a straight face that the facts that have emerged do not look bad. Is there a journalist in America who, upon learning about complicated networks of shell companies, and millions of dollars in hitherto-denied foreign transfers to the vice president’s son, and pseudonyms designed to evade FOIA, and strange appearances on shady phone calls, and oblique references to “the big guy” and so forth, would say “sounds like a non-story to me”? Come now. If the press can’t look deeper into this one, there is no purpose to the press.

Which is a problem, but much less of a problem than it would be if National Review did not exist. With your help, we will continue to do the work that the mainstream press will not. Andy McCarthy will continue to explain the legal issues as only he can. The news team will continue to cover what the newspapers hide. Jim Geraghty will continue to write those insanely detailed roundups of what’s really happening in our fast-moving world. And the rest of us will continue to decline to get out over our skis — but we won’t deny where those skis are quite obviously pointing either. So please, consider donating to our webathon to support this coverage.