It only took 17 months, and 24 paragraphs into an article at first glance totally unrelated to it, but buried in a New York Times report on the apparently sprawling federal investigation into Hunter Biden, the “Paper of Record” revealed a truth we’ve long known: Hunter’s “laptop from hell” – is real.

Its contents, showing his depraved and compromising behavior, he and his family’s sordid business dealings with Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian individuals and entities, and his father’s essential role in those dealings – the apparent influence-peddling, and perhaps even 10% for the Big Guy – all of it can’t be ignored.

We knew this BEFORE Joe Biden was ever elected, well at least some of us did. Millions of Americans didn’t. Why? Because the corporate media, the Deep State that it serves as a communications arm for, and Big Tech conspired to undermine and suppress the story – to the detriment of our republic. 

One poll shows it may well have swung the election.

The very same people who cry hysterically about defending our democracy, thwarted it. 

The essential questions we always needed answers for were these: Given the Biden family’s dealings with our adversaries, to what extent did they impact U.S. policy when Joe Biden was Vice President? To what extent would they corrupt U.S. policy if Joe Biden were to be president? How could the appearance of a conflict, of corruption, alone not disqualify him? What did Joe know? When did Joe know it? And how did he benefit?

We were deprived of those answers – deprived of those questions – because of one of the worst scandals, in an era filled with them, in the suppressing of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

And there are many layers to this scandal that are worth examining.

There’s the fact the media refused to pursue this story with such grave national security implications – dismissed it out of hand, and even ran interference for Biden when directly questioned on it by President Trump in debate.

DEBATE CLIP: “Why was he given tens of millions of dollars. He wasn’t given…. President Trump, you’ve already been discredited.”

There’s the fact it unquestioningly ran with a narrative to justify the dismissal of the laptop that it was “Russian disinformation” despite lacking in one scintilla of evidence to prove it.

There’s the fact that narrative was fed to them by intelligence officials who they’re supposed to scrutinize – intelligence officials who themselves are supposed to be prudent, and apolitical, but who’ve proven themselves to be anything but. 

More than 50 prominent intelligence officials – and we’re talking former CIA directors and on down used their names and reputations to recklessly speculate that the laptop contents and the circumstances around their release “ha[d] all the classic hallmarks of a Russian information operation” – also without one scintilla of evidence to prove it, knowing of course that it would be printed definitively that the laptop is Russian disinformation – as part of a campaign to take down a president, and replace him with someone, by the way, who spent 50 years getting every major foreign policy issue wrong, and has continued that perfect record since he’s been office.

Despite the fact that they hedged, remember, by admitting “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails…are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement…” they knew Politico and others would write headlines like these: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” 

There’s the fact the Big Tech companies engaged in brazen, unprecedented censorship they would never apply to reporting that helped political figures they liked, or from sources they approved of, also in a bid to take down a sitting president. 

They admitted as much, months after the election. The NY Post censorship of course set the conditions for the ever more pervasive, selective censorship we see today. 

Donald Trump’s banned on Twitter, Vladimir Putin’s free to tweet at his leisure. 

Covid information that got people banned six months ago is now the official CDC narrative promoted on Twitter today.

And where was the press? At very best they were silent on the censorship – the very people who benefit most from the First Amendment and our free speech principles are the greatest supporters of censorship, it appears, when it serves their political agenda.

These actors weren’t concerned about combatting disinformation. They weren’t concerned about protecting our democracy. They were concerned with taking down a president who threatened their power, privilege, and prerogatives  – a president by the way who had rebuilt our military, fostered alliances and partnerships to deter enemies while reducing America’s risk, and confronted and kept our worst adversaries at bay – led by the greatest adversary of all, Communist China – and all again while keeping America out of wars. 

He wasn’t some crazed cowboy with the nuclear codes or Russian stooge isolationist – he was a peace through strength, America-first president and the record proved it.

And look what’s been unleashed since he’s been gone.

No, none of these actors gave a damn about pursuing the compromising conduct and corrupting dealings that implicated a potential commander in chief, again, to the detriment of our democracy.

The end, of getting Donald Trump out of office at all costs, justified the means. 

We know how disingenuous this all is at least when it comes to the Times because the Times only felt compelled to admit what we’ve all known, when they were still calling the laptop unsubstantiated last year, when it came up in their reporting on a Hunter Biden investigation they can’t hide. 

We knew the laptop was corroborated at the time the New York Post ran its story in the stretch run of the 2020 election, and other establishment journalists by the way in places like Politico had verified parts of the laptop as well, many months back. 

The New York Times only admitted the truth when it absolutely had to – and only then again two dozen paragraphs into a story misleadingly emphasizing Hunter Biden had paid off his back taxes, rather than that the contents of the laptop are relevant to a federal case that might include money laundering, and foreign agency registration act charges – on top of back taxes.

The truth is, while our Ruling Class has been obsessed with Russian information and Russian influence operations, this has been a diversion from the fact they have been running American  information operations against domestic political foes.

Our Ruling Class has claimed Russian disinformation to hide its own disinformation.

Trump-Russia collusion was an American information operation.

Hunter Biden’s laptop being “Russian disinformation” was an American information operation.

As were a whole slew of other phony stories leaked out particularly by those in the national security space, a place we can’t afford to have politicization and weaponization – like the Russian bounties in Afghanistan story, or that Trump called dead American soldiers losers, or a million other pieces of fake news. 

The gravest threat to America in the information sphere is not from some Russian troll farm, or the people putting up pathetic Facebook memes. 

It’s, as we’ve discussed here before, from a weaponized national security apparatus, a press that does its bidding, a Big Tech behemoth that works hand in hand with them to censor and control narratives, and a broader Ruling Class on board with this agenda and contributing to it every day.

It’s infinitely more nefarious when the institutions we rely on to keep us safe, to inform us, and to enable free and open discourse, conspire against those with whom they disagree than when foreign adversaries try to meddle.

This is the real grave threat to democracy – to our republic. And if none of these actors are held to account, it is guaranteed to get far, far worse next time.