From a vaccine to Hunter Biden with the Supreme Court in between, the world has changed in less than two months, what did the media know and when did they know it?
It’s only been six weeks since the election, and yet new revelations have shifted the terms of the debate around some important topics. In my opinion, there are five key things we should’ve known prior to November 3 if we had an honest media, corporate, and political class.
Number 1: There’s a vaccine, it works, and others are on the way
On May 15, NBC news ridiculed President Trump for claiming a vaccine would be ready this year. “President Donald Trump has suggested multiple times that a coronavirus vaccine could come within months, an accelerated timeline that prominent health experts and veteran vaccine developers say is unlikely absent a miracle.”
The experts, including the lauded Dr. Anthony Fauci insisted a viable vaccine was 12-18 months away.
“I think it’s possible you could see a vaccine in people’s arms next year — by the middle or end of next year. But this is unprecedented, so it’s hard to predict,” explained said Dr. Paul Offit, a professor at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
Dr. Walter Orenstein, a professor at Emory University and the associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center, claimed a vaccine in less than a year would be “miracle.” “There’s a lot of things that could go wrong,” he added.
Of course, the first vaccinations were administered this Monday, December 15, six months to the day from NBC’s fact check, and the experts have now moved on from insisting having the vaccine would be a “miracle” to Trump didn’t order enough. Apparently, he should have had a crystal ball and ordered more of what they claimed didn’t exist.
While the rewriting of history is troubling, the idea that the media and some corporations kept this incredibly promising news hidden during the campaign is even more so. Pfizer announced the results of its clinical trial less than a week after the election. It is impossible to believe they (and the media) didn’t know what was happening with the trial in October.
Number 2: Hunter Biden’s laptop is real, not Russian disinformation, and he’s under investigation for shady business deals
At the second and final Presidential debate, Joe Biden said, “We are in a situation where we have foreign countries trying to interfere in the outcome of our election. His own National Security Advisor told him that [is] what is happening with his buddy… Well, I shouldn’t… Well, I will. His buddy Rudy Giuliani. He’s being used as a Russian pawn. He’s being fed information that is Russian that is not true.”
Biden based his claim on an open letter signed by over 50 former national security officials. As Politco reported on October 19, three days before the debate, “More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed a letter outlining their believe that the recent disclosure of emails belonging to Joe Biden’s son.” The former officials claimed that the emails had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The only problem with the claim: It was false, and Politico and the other media outlets covering it surely knew it. How?
The reporting from the New York Post on Hunter Biden’s laptop included documentation from the computer repairman who had possession of the device until turning it over to the FBI in December 2019. The documentation included a Case ID section filled in with a handwritten number, 272D-BA-3065729. The code 272 refers to the classification for money laundering, and the documents were signed by FBI Special Agent, Joshua Wilson.
Last week, Hunter Biden himself confirmed that he was under investigation. The media (and probably Joe Biden himself) surely knew this before the election, they just chose to lie about it.
Number 3: John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe in 2016 is now a Special Counsel Investigation
On December 1, outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr informed the Associated Press that US Attorney John Durham’s investigation was now a Special Counsel Investigation. The AP reported “Attorney General William Barr has given extra protection to the prosecutor he appointed to investigate the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, granting him authority to complete the work without being easily fired.”
Barr gave the order on October 19, however, before the election. This is relevant because Durham’s investigation includes the actions of the outgoing Obama-Biden Administration. While we do not know the outcome of the investigation yet, we do know that Joe Biden himself participated in Oval Office meetings where the original Russia investigation was discussed and then subsequently lied about.
Special Agent Peter Strzok’s handwritten notes from a January 4, 2017 meeting in the Oval Office claim Biden wanted to invoke the Logan Act against incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and that Obama demanded “the right people on the case.”
George Stephanopoulous asked about it in an interview earlier this year. “What did you know about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn?” Biden replied, “I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn.”
Biden later clarified, “I was aware that there was, that they had asked for an investigation. But that’s all I know about it. I don’t think anything else.”
According to temporaneous notes that have never really been disputed, this is untrue. In addition to any role Biden played in investigating a rival Presidential Campaign, it is likely that he will be appointing staff from the Obama Administration. These staff members could well be implicated in the probe, and the American public surely had a right to know.
One other question, of course, comes to mind: Why did Barr think the probe needed protection from a potential Biden presidency? Special Counsel’s are appointed because they are difficult to remove. What was Barr’s concern in this regard?
Number Four: The Supreme Court can no longer be relied on to safeguard the Constitution
For Republicans convinced there was finally a 6-3 pro-Constitutional majority on the court, their dereliction of duty in the lead up to the election is an extremely bitter pill to swallow.
What’s known as the Elector’s Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, clearly states, each “state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”
The key phrase in the text is “as the Legislature thereof may direct,” meaning the individual state legislatures are responsible for deciding election law including mail-in ballots. This is far from what happened in the lead up to the 2020 election, however. Instead, state courts and the executive branch ran roughshod over existing law in several key states.
For example, in Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court unilaterally extended the deadline for mail in ballots past the legislated period. As reported in Politico in September, “Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court extended the due date for mail ballots in the November election, a decision that will likely result in more votes being counted in the state — and more time to determine the final results.”
Though these are the same type of non-legislative changes that compelled the Supreme Court to weigh back in 2000, they were completely silent this time.
What about next time?
Number Five: The polls were fraudulent and there’s no way the media didn’t know
Enough has been said about this obvious topic after Biden was predicted to win Wisconsin by 17 points (17!) on his way to a better than Reagan landslide, but have you noticed that there’s no more coverage about the polls? No final word on what went wrong and how they will fix it?
There were a couple of days of media so-called soul searching immediately after the election, and then they moved right onto promoting new polls about the Georgia run-offs and everything else. Meaning, the fake polls aren’t going to stop whoever the Republican candidate may be in the future.
It won’t stop because the media doesn’t want it to stop. The goal of these polls is pure propaganda, shaping opinion rather than measuring it.
Closing Thoughts
Would any of this have been enough to change the outcome? Who knows?
What I do know: If Biden was a Republican, none of this is likely to have unfolded this way. There is no doubt in my mind these five things and potentially others would have been known before the election. That’s the problem.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 