Gee, if only Hunter Biden’s laptop had come to the attention of national media before now!  NBC News reports today that the hard drive has lots of interesting information on it after all. Nineteen months after it mattered, it turns out that Hunter made a lot of money through Chinese and Ukrainian fraudsters while The Big Guy was VP, as well as afterward:

From 2013 through 2018 Hunter Biden and his company brought in about $11 million via his roles as an attorney and a board member with a Ukrainian firm accused of bribery and his work with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud, according to an NBC News analysis of a copy of Biden’s hard drive and iCloud account and documents released by Republicans on two Senate committees.

The documents and the analysis, which don’t show what he did to earn millions from his Chinese partners, raise questions about national security, business ethics and potential legal exposure. In December 2020, Biden acknowledged in a statement that he was the subject of a federal investigation into his taxes. NBC News was first to report that an ex-business partner had warned Biden he should amend his tax returns to disclose $400,000 in income from the Ukrainian firm, Burisma. GOP congressional sources also say that if Republicans take back the House this fall, they’ll demand more documents and probe whether any of Biden’s income went to his father, President Joe Biden.

Remember when national media outlets assured us in October 2020 that this was nothing more than a dirty trick? When Nina Jankowicz diagnosed it as “Russian disinformation” and social media platforms blocked New York Post reporting on it on that basis? Good times, good times.

Now that Biden’s in office, it’s apparently safe to report on the hard drive, or rather, regurgitate the NY Post’s original reporting on it. For instance, Hunter profited a lot more than he or Joe admitted off his ventures with state-linked businesses in China:

Biden made $5.8 million, more than half his total earnings from 2013 to 2018, from two deals with Chinese business interests.

Biden’s most lucrative business relationship was acting as a consultant in a project with a company that belongs to a once-powerful Chinese businessman who is now thought to be detained in his homeland.

That’s Ye Jianming, who ran CEFC and had been known as “the Belt and Road billionaire” for his involvement with that key strategic initiative in the Xi Jinping regime. CNN reported on his fall in 2018:

[O]ne thing is clear: at its height, Ye’s company, CEFC China Energy, aligned itself so closely with the Chinese government that it was often hard to distinguish between the two.

The young tycoon appeared to be China’s unofficial energy envoy, meeting presidents across the globe and even becoming an adviser to a European government. In 2016, he ranked No. 2 on the Fortune magazine 40 Under 40 list. …

Shortly after Ye’s appointment came his high-profile splurge. The deals made no commercial sense, says Martin Hala, a leading Czech academic in Chinese studies. But they sent a clear message from Beijing to the international community that China now had a firm friend in Europe.

That was important. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road initiative aims to export Chinese commerce, goods and influence across the globe. A foothold in the Czech Republic gave China a gateway to Europe, and a valuable political ally within the European Union, Beijing’s largest trading partner. …

When Zeman met with Xi Jinping in Beijing in 2015, Ye was photographed with both presidents. His proximity to the center of Chinese power had never looked stronger.

Neither Hunter nor Joe Biden got mentioned in this rise-and-fall story, despite Ye’s status as Hunter’s business partner. That was kept quiet until the laptop emerged, and still remained quiet when national media outlets refused to report or even acknowledge the story.  However, Hunter’s other deal came under some scrutiny given its proximity to the ride he got from The Big Guy on Air Force Two to the deal.

Hunter Biden’s business deals during his father’s time as vice president are drawing new scrutiny – a 2013 trip to China is getting new attention because then-Vice President Biden brought Hunter on the official visit, @halliejackson reports. pic.twitter.com/tDPsWr1hRd

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 2, 2019

Biden’s “puzzling” attitude about the threat from China also came up at the time, although again it didn’t a lot of scrutiny. This certainly raises even more questions about the official policies The Big Guy has pursued in that regard. If Biden’s son was making money off a partnership with a businessman closely tied to Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, that would explain much about Biden’s softness on China.

Wouldn’t all of this have been good for voters to know before the 2020 election? I’m not sure it would have changed the outcome; the election was mainly a referendum on Donald Trump and his inability to modulate his chaos in the middle of a global emergency. But at least it would have allowed voters to make that choice, rather than a clique of academics and editors who decided to only print the news that fit their narrative, not print all the news that fits.

The true corruption on display here is the media’s. And they still refuse to come to terms with that reality.