Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we recap the media’s embarrassing reaction to the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, look at an unusual defense of a Virginia House candidate’s online sex work, and cover more media misses.
Media Jumps to Biden’s Defense on Impeachment Inquiry
To no one’s surprise, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement that he is launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden unleashed yet another round of media advocacy on the Biden family’s behalf.
But this time the buddy-buddy relationship between the Biden White House and the mainstream media went from implicit to explicit; the White House sent a 14-page memo to editors at several mainstream news outlets asking them to “ramp up [their] scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.”
That request came on September 12, and as Becket Adams wrote for NR this week, CNN published a 2,300 word “fact check” of McCarthy’s announcement just one day later.
As Adams reports:
It’s remarkable because, despite CNN’s best efforts, the fact check failed to find any factual fault with what the speaker said. CNN can’t point to any specific falsehood or even a misstatement. The fact check merely posits, repeatedly, that no one has proven the allegations that have led to the impeachment investigation, which is a thing that everyone already understood given that the inquiry is for the purpose of investigating the allegations.
“House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made several unproven claims Tuesday while announcing the opening of a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden,” the CNN story claims. “House Republicans have not presented any proof that Joe Biden ever profited off his son’s business deals or was influenced while in office by his son’s business dealings.”
But CNN was far from the only outlet that chose to carry water for the Bidens.
The Associated Press “reported” that “since gaining the House majority, House Republicans have aggressively investigated Biden and his son, claiming without evidence that they engaged in an influence peddling scheme.”
The New York Times published an end-of-summer news quiz for its readers that included a totally unbiased question that read: “Republicans are obsessed with Hunter Biden. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy just announced an inquiry into…”
The correct choice was even more laughable: “Impeaching Joe Biden for… fatherhood.”
But don’t worry, because Washington Post columnist Philip Bump insists there is actually no concerted effort here to protect the president.
“Not all criticism of Biden is insincere by any stretch, nor has every question about Hunter Biden been answered,” he acknowledges at the conclusion of his latest column that claims “the media-elite narrative about Hunter Biden sits on the right.”
“But the idea that it’s the mainstream media that is working in concert and dishonestly to protect the president seems less obvious than the idea that those in power on the right are working in concert to kneecap him,” he claims.
Democrats rushed to Biden’s defense as well, with House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) claiming that “extreme-MAGA Republicans have launched an illegitimate impeachment inquiry that is a kangaroo court, fishing expedition and conspiracy theater rolled into one.”
Jeffries further claimed there is “not a shred of evidence” against Biden.
For months, the House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee have been investigating the Biden family’s alleged influence-peddling schemes. Last week, McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry as the “logical next step,” which he said would “give our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the American public.”
House Oversight chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) and House Judiciary chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) have uncovered what they say is evidence of then–vice president Biden’s involvement in his son’s foreign-influence-peddling efforts, particularly in the case of Hunter Biden’s involvement with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Hunter Biden’s former business partner and fellow Burisma board member Devon Archer testified before the Oversight Committee that the elder Biden spoke on the phone and/or met with their business partners 20 times over the course of their decade-long partnership.
Those meetings and calls included chats with Burisma executives who asked Hunter to help shield them from a corruption investigation by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, whom then–vice president Biden later bragged about having fired. An anonymous FBI informant claims that Hunter and his father received $5 million each for intervening in the investigation.
McCarthy did not say whether the full House would vote on the decision to open the impeachment inquiry, a likely indication that even Republicans are divided on the issue.
The New York Times attempted to draw attention to McCarthy’s alleged hypocrisy of having not opened the inquiry with a vote after saying earlier this month that he would do so by incorrectly suggesting that President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment inquiry was opened with a vote of the full House.
In that case, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared an impeachment inquiry on September 24, 2019 without a vote. It was not until October 31, 2019 that she approved a vote to “establish procedures for open hearings.”
The New York Times later quietly amended its story to read: “Two presidential impeachment inquiries in modern history, of Bill Clinton in 1998 and Donald J. Trump in 2019, were endorsed with votes of the full House, though Democrats had announced several weeks earlier that they were beginning a formal investigation into Mr. Trump.”
“Nancy Pelosi has changed the rules of the House. We’re just following through,” McCarthy told reporters about his decision to open the inquiry without a vote.
Throughout the latest impeachment buzz, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been predictably quiet.
After Jean-Pierre claimed during a press conference last week that House Republicans have produced “no evidence” to connect President Biden with any wrongdoing, New York Post correspondent Steven Nelson asked her to explain why the president interacted with “so many of his son’s foreign business associates.”
“More than half of voters told CNN they believe the president was involved and he lied. You can’t have a response to that, Karine?” Nelson added.
Jean-Pierre responded by turning and walking away from the podium.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>"Can you explain why the president interacted with so many of his son's foreign business associates!? More than half of voters told CNN they believe the president was involved and he lied! You can't have a response to that, Karine?"<br><br>KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: walks out <a href=”https://t.co/mSusQmrNbh”>pic.twitter.com/mSusQmrNbh</a></p>— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href=”https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1702024189903839670?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>September 13, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>.
The press secretary has notably changed her defense of the president from saying that he never “discussed” business with his son, to now saying that Biden has never “been in business” with Hunter.
Headline Fail of the Week
“So What if a Candidate Livestreamed Sex Acts with Her Husband?” Politico media writer Jack Shafer asked in a column for the outlet’s magazine last week.
In the column, Shafer asks whether it is such a big deal after all that Susanna Gibson, a Democratic nominee for the Virginia House, has performed sex acts online for tips.
“Politicians have long transgressed polite society’s sexual boundaries,” Shafer writes, listing a number of examples, including members of Congress “getting busted for hiring prostitutes” and “having sex with underage pages,” as well as then-President Bill Clinton’s infamous affair with an intern inside the White House.
“But never before Gibson’s case has a politician’s hot video action spread on the internet. While the [Washington] Post story might seem to spell the nurse practitioner’s political ruin, we shouldn’t be so hasty to write her off,” he argues.
“On one level — and spare me the reflexive scolding — what’s so appalling about what Gibson streamed? For one thing, as the Post notes, there’s nothing illegal about Gibson’s online adventure. It’s not even extramarital! Granted, her performances proved that she and her husband are exhibitionists of the highest order, but we accommodate exhibitionists all the time without clucking our tongues,” he writes.
Media Misses