To the Moon and Back

President Donald J. Trump listens as Senator Chuck Grassley, R- Iowa, addresses remarks during the federal judicial confirmation milestones event, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2019, in the East Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

No, the above title isn’t referring to the beloved children’s book. Rather it’s about the list of those owed an apology over Hunter Biden’s laptop computer affair. The list, as Kimberley Strassel writes in the WSJ, may stretch to the moon and back.

Heading the lineup of those smeared and vindicated should be Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson:

… on Tuesday (Grassley and Johnson) delivered the latest installment of their years-long investigation into Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings—laying out in Senate speeches the complex web of banking transactions tying his companies to entities connected to the Chinese government. Their exposé offered more detail into their September 2020 report about the Biden family’s foreign financial entanglements.

As courageous (and accurate) as the New York Post’s October 2020 reporting on the Hunter laptop was, it came after the Johnson-Grassley bombshell. Only now—18 months late—are mainstream media outlets grudgingly confirming the truth of that Senate report. “Inside Hunter Biden’s multi-million-dollar deals with a Chinese energy company,” read last week’s Washington Post story. Reporters acknowledge that many aspects of their account of Hunter’s business dealings with CEFC China Energy were “included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020,” even if the Post only recently bothered to confirm “key details.”

Democrats were in a panic when they realized Republicans were readying a report that detailed the Biden family’s seedy ties in Ukraine and elsewhere. Defaulting to the scurrilous claim that the Republican senators were spreading Russian di information, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other top Democrats accused the Republican senators of spreading Russian disinformation. They released a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation expressing worries that Congress had become “the target of a concerted foreign interference campaign.”

Attached to (the letter) was classified information, which Democrats immediately leaked to the press, claiming the Grassley-Johnson probe specifically had “become a vehicle for ‘laundering’ a foreign influence campaign” to damage Mr. Biden, as Politico helpfully narrated.

The press is engaging in a “modified limited hangout,” argues KS. Its reporting is focused exclusively on Hunter’s “tax affairs” while continuing to ignore larger questions about Joe Biden’s potential involvement.

Hunter Biden spent years entwining the family in questionable ventures in Ukraine, Russia and China, even as his father’s biggest foreign-policy concerns are Ukraine, Russia and China. This history raises legitimate questions about counterintelligence and extortion, even as it puts a spotlight on how honest President Biden has been in claiming no knowledge of his son’s doings.

Will the media, at last, do what they should have done back in 2020? Senators Johnson and Grassley are adding to the pressure on the media to investigate, continues Ms. Strassel. Continued investigation has confirmed earlier reports, “thereby adding to the pressure on the media finally to do some digging.”