CNN, MSNBC Called Out For Burying Hunter Biden Story Until After the Election

The liberal mainstream media largely ignored the ongoing Hunter Biden scandal until after his father won the presidential election — and media watchdogs feel it was a strategic move to help Joe Biden defeat President Trump.

“The news media helped silence a story and alter the results of an election. They are probably laughing in newsrooms all around the country,” Media Research Center vice president Dan Gainor told Fox News.

In the final weeks of the campaign, there was an unprecedented media blackout of the explosive reporting from the New York Post that shed light on Hunter Biden's questionable business dealings overseas. It was even revealed through leaked recordings from Project Veritas that CNN president Jeff Zucker and CNN political director David Chalian urged staff to avoid the scandal, which involved a laptop allegedly belonging to the son of the president-elect and purportedly contained evidence of his dealings with Ukraine, among other things.

It is not clear whether the ongoing taxes probe is in any way connected to the laptop's contents.

On Wednesday, the Biden-Harris transition announced that the younger Biden's "tax affairs" were being investigated and suddenly CNN and MSNBC found time to cover the news.

The scandal that was once dismissed by members of the media as “too disgusting” to cover and a "baseless conspiracy theory" now appears to be newsworthy in the eyes of the networks' decision-makers.

The Hill media columnist and Fox News contributor Joe Concha said the New York Post is presumably angry that it was accused of “peddling Russian disinformation.”

“This thing was not only dismissed, it was actually suppressed,” Concha said Thursday on “America’s Newsroom.”

“It only makes you imagine… as far as Arizona, and Georgia and Pennsylvania, those races that were so close, if there was the vigor around the reporting about Hunter Biden as there was around Russian collusion, if the result could have been changed at some point,” Concha said.

CNN and MSNBC did not immediately respond to a series of questions, including a request for explanation as to why they initially ignored the story and whether or not they have any regrets now that the president-elect's son revealed his "tax affairs" are being investigated by the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson told Fox News that mainstream media appears to have “snuffed out the Hunter Biden scandal” in order to help the former vice president's election chances.

”It would have seriously hurt Joe Biden's campaign enough to make a difference in key swing states,” Jacobson said. “Now that the election is over, and the media mission appears to be accomplished, there are no such constraints. Rather than regretting this journalistic malfeasance, the perpetrators likely are quite proud of themselves."

Conservative strategist Chris Barron agrees that CNN and MSNBC essentially helped Biden win the election.

“Hunter Biden’s business dealings would have cost Joe Biden any shot at the White House, which is exactly why outlets like CNN and MSNBC refused to cover the issue before the election,” Barron told Fox News.

Ric Grenell personally called out CNN's Jake Tapper for burying this story back in October.

For more on that, here's the New York Times:

Jake Tapper was the first anchor on CNN to address the statement released by President-elect Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden revealing that his “tax affairs” were being investigated by the Delaware US Attorney’s Office.

Tapper shared a CNN report about the investigation on Twitter, which caught the attention of former Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell.

“This story broke in October. You didn’t do it then,” said Grenell, who then asked Tapper point-blank: “Were you instructed to ignore it until after the election?”

CNN did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.

Grenell’s question appears to be valid after recordings leaked by Project Veritas last week revealed that CNN president Jeff Zucker and political director David Chalian urged staff back in October not to cover the explosive New York Post report that shed light on Hunter Biden’s shady business dealings overseas.

“Obviously, we’re not going with the New York Post story right now on Hunter Biden,” Chalian is heard saying during a conference call on Oct. 14, the same day The Post published its first Hunter Biden story.

“The Trump media, you know, moves immediately from — OK, well, never mind — the [Michael Flynn] unmasking was, you know, found to be completely nonsensical to the latest alleged scandal and expects everybody to just follow suit,” Zucker told his staff on Oct. 16. “So, I don’t think that we should be repeating unsubstantiated smears just because the right-wing media suggests that we should.”

Chalian and Zucker’s messages appeared to have later resonated with Tapper, who said Oct. 22 that the allegations against Biden’s son were “too disgusting” to repeat on air and that the “right wing is going crazy.”

However, since the election, Tapper has struck a vastly different tone when it comes to Hunter Biden’s potential business conflicts. Last week, the CNN anchor even asked Joe Biden about it during an interview.

“When your son came under scrutiny during the campaign, you vowed, ‘No one in my family or associated with me will be involved in any foreign operations whatsoever. Period. End of story,'” Tapper began. “Will your brothers, will your son take leave from any business interests, not just foreign but any business interests, that might create any even an appearance of impropriety?”

“My son, my family will not be involved in any business, any enterprise that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict with an appropriate distance from the presidency and government,” Biden responded.

CNN specifically has led the charge of reporting fake news.

Even they can't lie their way out of this one.