Hunter Biden’s laptop: The April 16, 2015, dinner

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When the New York Post released emails last fall from what it claimed was Hunter Biden’s laptop, The Fact Checker produced an explainer that turned out to be one of the most read articles in our 13-year history. A key question we examined was whether Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, arranged for a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm to meet with the then-vice president when he was in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine. The date in question: April 16, 2015.

A campaign spokesman for Joe Biden had said a review of Biden’s schedule for that day found no record of any such meeting. Officials who worked for him in 2015 also told The Fact Checker that no such meeting took place.

Recently, a reader directed our attention to a May 26 New York Post report, featuring more emails, that was headlined: “Hunter Biden brought VP Joe to dinner with shady business partners.” The article suggested Joe Biden met with the Burisma executive, Vadym Pozharskyi, at a dinner that was held in the private “garden room” at Cafe Milano in Washington. Continue reading.

Murdoch’s Fox News, New York Post start to distance themselves from Trump

The TV outlet in particular is credited with helping bring Trump to power in 2016, but now seems to be in the process of dumping him as Biden closes in on the White House

NEW YORK (AFP) — Fox News and the New York Post, magnate Rupert Murdoch’s main media outlets, have started distancing themselves from Donald Trump as the US election vote counting drama drags on — a first since the president came to power and a potential turning point.

On Thursday night in Phoenix, Arizona, supporters of Trump bluntly shouted “Fox News Sucks” in reference to the news outfit considered fiercely loyal to the president for the past five years.

Fox News infuriated Trump and his people on election night by calling Arizona for Democrat Joe Biden. Continue reading.

In remarkable exchange, Trump offers startling view of role of free press

Credit: Jacquelyn Martin, AP

Ever since Donald Trump set the tone for his presidency by berating the press for accurately reporting on his paltry inaugural crowd size and attacking the media as the “enemy of the American people,” journalists and commentators have tried to persuade Trump to take two things seriously in his role as president.

First, that the role of the free press is to hold the powerful to account. And second, that President Trump’s attacks on the news media have dangerous consequences, both at home and around the world.

In a remarkable new exchange, the publisher of the New York Times pressed Trump at length on both these points. The results were startling. Trump displayed only the dimmest awareness that his attacks on the press might be having severely negative effects, while repeatedly reverting into a tone that alternated between megalomaniacal self-congratulation and self-imagined victimization, and largely refusing to accept responsibility for those consequences.

View the complete commentary by Greg Sargent on The Washington Post website here.