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CBS News Smears the Justice Department to Smear Hunter Biden (How Herridge works for Jim Jordan) [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-17

Certain words and phrases are defining markers. If you read or hear, "Tony Bobulinski" or "10% for the big guy," you know with mathematical certainty that the speaker is trafficking in lies. Among the dozens of lies used to impugn Hunter Biden and his family, Bobinski‘s are foundational, used as a predicate to amplify other transparent falsehoods. Here’s an explainer of how some of them went viral.

First, no honest journalist could plausibly miss the underlying facts, which are simple and easily accessible from a five minute Google search. In May 2017, Bobulinski, Hunter Biden, and a few other individuals negotiated terms for a prospective joint venture, and one of the would-be partners, James Gilliar, asked if Joe Biden might want to take a 10% share of their collective stake. The question in his email fragment, "10 held by H for the big guy?" was promptly answered with a "no," as confirmed in legal correspondence and legal documents. Gilliar confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the answer to his question was "no." Not that it would have mattered, since the venture was never funded.

Over the past three years, Bobulinski and an army of professional liars, mostly talking heads on Fox News, have cited Gilliar's inconsequential question as "evidence" to show that Joe Biden had an ownership stake in his son's stillborn venture, and that Joe Biden's denial of involvement was false. They refuse to acknowledge that the email fragment was a question, or that the question was answered with legal documentation, because those facts would discredit Bobulinski, who was the subject of two glowing episode-long profiles on Tucker Carlson in October 2020 and in October 2022. Bobulinski is no more a whistleblower than Sidney Powell or Mike Lindell; yet he was touted as an unnamed "whistleblower" by Sen. Chuck Grassley, in order to launch his smear campaign against FBI and certain FBI agents, who chose to ignore the obvious lies Bobulinski told them when accompanied by a Trump-affiliated lawyer on October 23, 2020.

Catherine Herridge amplified Grassley's smears against the FBI agents. She was careful not to identify Bobulinski, or the “negative information” being referenced, because then the baselessness of Grassley’s smears would have been obvious. She's an outlier at CBS News because of her contemptuous disregard for basic fact checking, which is one reason why Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel.com labels her, "High Gaslighter.”

"Herridge works for [Jim] Jordan,” writes one of Jordan's former colleagues, Denver Riggleman, the former Republican House member who advised the January 6th Committee. Riggleman's accusation is supported by her consistently dishonest reporting, which always excludes facts that nullify her preset agenda, as shown below.

Others who piggybacked off of Bobulinski's obvious lies include IRS agent Gary Shapley, and two of Herridge's CBS colleagues, Jim Axelrod and Andy Bast, who reported, "IRS whistleblower in Hunter Biden probe says he was stopped from pursuing investigative leads into 'dad' or the 'big guy.’” Let's count the lies:

No one was ever prevented from exhaustively investigating the origins or outcome of that notorious email fragment on the internet, where anyone can see that the email was substance-free; The internet also confirmed that the email was connected to zero taxable income, which proves Shapley had no reason to investigate it; The substance-free and income-free nature of the email fragment proves that Shapley is not a "whistleblower” who observed illegal or unethical activities, only a lying crackpot; and Jim Axelrod and Andy Bast actively concealed from CBS viewers the obvious facts that (a) definitive documentation proved that Joe Biden was never involved, and (b) there never was income for Shapley to investigate, so that (c) Shapley's allegation was transparently dishonest.

From these three lies we can easily infer that Axelrod and Bast would have been fired from a reputable news outlet for using their platform to deceive viewers in such an obvious manner. Like the crackpots who insist claims of 2020 voter fraud were never fully investigated, they insinuate that “10% for the big guy” was never fully investigated because of a government “coverup.” And the refusal of CBS News to issue a correction or clarification reflects an ongoing agenda, of some at the network, to promote this false narrative.

And there's more. Shapley's other accusations have been consistently refuted by everyone in the Justice Department, which is why Herridge concealed those facts in order to deceive CBS viewers about Shapley's credibility. Shapley said he heard from the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney in charge of the Hunter Biden investigation, David Weiss, that Weiss was not authorized to pursue charges without Attorney General Merrick Garland's approval, so that Garland's sworn testimony about the matter was false. Shapley, who is not an attorney with any grasp of Justice Department procedures, offered up double-hearsay, which few lawyers would deem credible.

But Herridge didn't care. So CBS reported, "After delivering closed-door testimony, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley tells @CBS_Herridge that he stands by his testimony that special counsel David Weiss told investigators he was “not the deciding person” to bring criminal charges against Hunter Biden.” Shapley, Herridge and other professional liars never pivot, they only double down.

Marcy Wheeler's pithy response cut to the heart of the matter. "The High Gaslighter won't tell CBS viewers that this has been debunked 50 different ways INCLUDING by Shapley's own unreliable notes," she writes. "Why does CBS platform propaganda?!?!? NO WITNESS backs his claim. None."

To recap, all of Gary Shapley's accusations are transparent lies, which is why anyone who touts him as a "whistleblower" is no less deceitful than the professional liars who tout Bobulinski's transparent lies. And the victims of Shapley’s and Herridge’s smear campaigns extend beyond the Bidens to include honest professionals at the FBI and the Justice Department who have suffered professional harm and been subject to harassment, and will go unnamed here.

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