ABC Hack Brags About Looking Into Hunter-Burisma Deal, Then Says 'No Evidence' of Biden Family Corruption
Jonathan Karl is apparently a man with a mighty tolerance for cognitive dissonance.
Karl, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, was on “The View” Wednesday to explain the implications of Hunter Biden’s slap-on-the-wrist plea deal reached the previous day.
The journalist couldn’t help but brag that, during his time as ABC’s chief White House correspondent, he couldn’t help but notice the strangeness of Biden’s deal with Ukrainian energy giant Burisma and started asking questions.
He admitted there were plenty of other weird questions about Biden’s dealings with entities that weren’t in Ukraine. But, in the very same segment, he avouched that there was “no evidence” of Biden family corruption.
Right.
According to Reuters, the plea deal involves President Joe Biden’s son pleading guilty to two tax charges and a gun crime, both misdemeanors.
The firearms charge had to do with the fact Hunter lied on a federal form about whether or not he was addicted to or misusing controlled substances when he purchased a handgun in 2018.
As for the tax charges, the president’s son allegedly declined to pay his fair share on the $1.5 million he made in both 2017 and 2018 — or any of it, for that matter, according to Forbes.
To explain the legal matters at hand, Karl appeared on ABC’s daytime chatter-fest, “The View,” to break it down as only Karl could — and, naturally, to advance the usual “Republicans pounce!” narrative.
“These issues of conflict of interest and playing off his name and the Biden family name will be investigated by Congress, by Republicans in Congress,” Karl said. “The issue is not going away.”
“But doesn’t this show, Karl, that Biden is not in the pocket of the DOJ?” co-host Joy Behar asked.
“It depends on — so, how do you look at it?” Karl said. “Do you look at it and say, ‘Look, they prosecuted anyway, his son now has a criminal record’? Yes, that shows, that would seem to show there was no interference. He didn’t pull the plug on the investigation. He didn’t order his attorney general to pull the plug on the investigation.
“But what Republicans will say is that this didn’t look at the bigger, more serious allegations about whether or not — I mean, the Republicans had made lots of major allegations against Biden, against President Biden. You know, they call it the Biden crime family. They claim they’ve traded off their name … that they’ve gotten money from foreign entities illegally? None of that’s been proven.”
“There’s no evidence of that, but they’re going to continue those investigations and make those allegations,” he continued, noting allegations including Hunter getting a 2.8 karat diamond in the course of “his business dealings in China.”
However, Karl insisted that with “Republicans, there’s no shortage of hypocrisy coming from the Republicans who were willing to give Donald Trump a pass on everything that’s come out, but are, you know, yelling and screaming about Hunter Biden. But that hypocrisy doesn’t mean that there isn’t something fundamentally at issue here with Hunter Biden.”
You don’t say, Mr. Karl? Particularly since, as Nicholas Fondacaro of the Media Research Center noted, you seemed to have bragged about how you were mystified that Hunter Biden was on the board of Burisma long before everyone else was:
Shortly before claiming “there’s no evidence” of Hunter or the Biden family trading off their name, Karl bragged about asking questions about Hunter’s employment by Burisma.
“2014, I found it remarkable [Hunter] was getting paid $50,000 a year … Why did they hire him?” pic.twitter.com/qnFSnIoLQw— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) June 20, 2023
“I was concerned — 2014, this is almost 10 years ago — I found it remarkable that the son of the then vice president of the United States was getting paid $50,000 a year by the largest Ukrainian energy company,” Karl said.
That’s actually $50,000 a month, but never mind:
“He kept getting that money all the way until 2019, and he had no apparent skills or experience on the questions of energy. And at that point, while Biden was vice president, he wasn’t just vice president, he was the point-person for the Obama administration on Ukraine.”
And now, congressional Republicans have evidence of a convoluted network of foreign entities pumping cash to various members of the Biden family. There are even allegations “the Big Guy” is involved.
But as far as Karl is concerned, there’s “no evidence” that this was anything more than a wastrel of a son trading off his last name.
The media’s gullibility is what allowed the influence-peddling Hunter and James Biden to fly mostly under the radar during both the Obama administration and the 2020 presidential race.
Now that the president’s son has gotten a sweetheart deal, we’re supposed to pretend this was handled fairly and impartially. There’s “no evidence” of wider corruption, despite the president’s lies about how much he knew regarding Hunter’s business dealings with foreign nationals and how extensive those dealings were.
Nothing to see here. Move right along.
This is hackery at its finest from Jonathan Karl — and reporting like this is what’s going to make it easy for Hunter and his father to avoid any serious consequences for any transgressions they may or may not have been involved in.
When the fourth estate acts as a fifth column for the Democrats, the system has become so rotten that it’s impossible to believe there are any checks on this White House or those associated with it.
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