Opinion
People often forget that Richard Nixon was impeached, not because of an amateurish burglary, but because of the cover-up. Similarly, Bill Clinton was impeached, not for banging an intern in the Oval Office, but for lying about it under oath. Donald Trump is on trial, not for paying a two-bit porn star to shut her mouth, which is not illegal, but for allegedly conspiring to cover up the payment.
Time and again, the biggest scandals in politics claim their subjects, not because of the initial wrongdoing, but because of the cover-up.
And cover-ups are something Joe Biden has in spades.
There was, of course, Hunter Biden’s “laptop from Hell”. Joe Biden, in a presidential debate, flatly denied that the laptop or its contents were genuine. A roster of “intelligence experts” testified that it was “Russian disinformation”. The media went along wholeheartedly with the cover-up.
It was all, as we know, a farrago of lies. The laptop was genuine. Its contents were genuine: from emails implicating the president in alleged influence-peddling, to disturbing photos of what appeared to be Hunter Biden with very young girls.
Speaking of adult men in compromising positions, it turns out that another long-denied Biden scandal is also true.
Ashley Biden has confirmed that her diary that became the subject of an FBI raid on Project Veritas is authentic, and the leftist Snopes “fact-checking” website has corrected its label on the story.
Biden confirmed the diary and contents in a letter to a judge in which she asked for the woman who sold it to Project Veritas to get jail time. A federal judge sentenced that woman, Aimee Harris, to a month in jail on April 9.
Twenty days later, Snopes corrected its erroneous claims about the diary, long known to be Biden’s given Harris’ conviction in August 2022.
The New American
One can understand Ashley Biden’s dismay. After all, this is a private diary which was stolen and sold, as she said. It is indeed, as she says, “a complete violation of my privacy and personal dignity”. We don’t have to like her father to understand that here is a woman whose most embarrassing secrets have been laid bare for the world to gossip over.
No doubt she would be just as upset, had it been sold to, say, the New York Times. The only difference is that the Times would defend it as a “source”, and the mainstream media would cheer them on. After all, the Times openly defends paying sources, as do other “ethical journalism” organisations.
We could be forgiven for suspecting that the only reason the media are huffing and puffing in outrage is because the diary was sold to Project Veritas, and not them. Indeed, Project Veritas in some ways behaved more ethically than the mainstream media.
After all, the mainstream media have shown themselves perfectly willing to spread the most absurd lies about Donald Trump without the least attempt at verification. This is true of everything from “Russiagate”, to the “Gorilla Channel”. On the other hand, Project Veritas refused to publish the diary because they were unsure of its authenticity. Project Veritas also insisted that they were led to believe that the diary had been obtained legally.
The diary only came to public light when it was stolen in turn from Project Veritas — or, leaked, if you prefer — by an employee.
But the diary would almost certainly have never seen the light of day, had the mainstream media been involved.
Because its contents are damning for the president. Ashley Biden is, as she says, “a private citizen”. Her misfortune, though, is that her father is not.
The contents are disturbing, to say the least.
Ashley Biden writes of being “hyper-sexualised @ a young age”.
What is this due to? Was I molested. I think so…
The diary is vague, perhaps reflecting what the author clearly thinks are repressed memories.
But all this would be prurient scuttlebutt of little real interest, were it not for one sentence — which, naturally, most right-wing media have seized on.
Showers with my dad (probably not appropriate).
What to make of this? Some sites have asserted that Ashley was a teenager at this time, but there’s no evidence to suggest whether or not this was the case. In other words, it may have just been a young child sharing a shower with her parent, as children often do.
But given, of course, Joe Biden’s penchant for odd, to say the least, behaviour around young girls especially, speculation is rife. Especially given, too, Hunter Biden using the nickname “Pedo Pete” for his father in some personal communications.
In the end, though, the real story is not that a vulnerable woman had her diary and its mortifying contents stolen and splashed in the media, or far-flung speculation about her father.
No, the real story is the cover-up and the hypocrisy. The media have spent months denying the veracity of the diary, every bit as voraciously as they did the laptop.
Now that the lie has been exposed, they’ve moved on to the “nothing to see” phase of the narrative.
Try, though, to imagine the same furious denial and disinterest, had the diary belonged to Ivanka Trump.