CNN buried the story Tuesday of Devon Archer’s explosive testimony at the House Oversight Committee the day before, which implicated President Joe Biden in his son Hunter’s influence-peddling schemes and suggested the president lied to the country.
Archer testified, among other things, that Hunter Biden had put his father on a speakerphone to talk to his business associates at least 20 times, contradicting repeated claims by the president that he had never spoken to his family about their business affairs.
He also confirmed that Hunter Biden made money from business deals in China, debunking another one of his father’s denials. And he said that Hunter Biden’s role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had been to help pressure his father, who was then the vice president, to stop a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, from investigating it, confirming an accusation by President Donald Trump in 2019 that Democrats vehemently denied as they tried to impeach Trump and remove him from office.
Archer’s explosive testimony, however, did not even make CNN’s top 5 stories on Tuesday morning, which led with poll numbers that have Democrats worried Trump could defeat Biden in 2024, but included a story about a recall of a popular pickup truck.
CNN’s home page also buried the news, leading with a story about “Trump’s legal woes.” The page did not mention Devon Archer, and the only two mentions of Hunter Biden were an opinion article about last week’s aborted plea bargain, in the context of the charges facing Trump; and a news article citing a source who claimed that Archer’s testimony suggested that Hunter Biden had sold the “illusion” of access to his father, but not actual access to his father — a Democrat claim that was mocked on social media.
CNN’s attempt to bury what is perhaps the most important story in American politics — evidence of real bribery involving the president — was mocked as a “total clown show”:
The New York Times was mocked for claiming Biden’s lies about talking with his son’s business associates were widely known, in an article whose headline repeated a Democrat talking point from former impeachment attorney Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), who had been in the closed-door hearing — “Biden Spoke With Son’s Associates, but Not About Business, Former Partner Says”: