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Catherine Herridge

CBS News insider says the network knew the Hunter Biden Laptop was verified

Published

2 months ago

11 minute read

How Hunter Biden Laptop Got The CBS News Treatment

In the 60 Minutes interview with then President Trump, correspondent Lesley Stahl said of the Hunter Biden laptop, “It can’t be verified.”  As I watched the broadcast, I felt sick.

I knew the laptop records could be vetted and confirmed. I was confused by what seemed a disconnect between the CBS News division and 60 Minutes.

TOP LINE:
With new allegations this week about suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the last Presidential election, I can’t help but reflect on my own experience at CBS News — what I believe was a missed opportunity to rebut false claims it was Russian disinformation.
DEEP DIVE
This week, our investigative team revealed new evidence on X from IRS whistleblowers about alleged double standards at the IRS and Justice Department in the Hunter Biden probe.
Case agent Joseph Ziegler told us they were blocked from taking actions that could have revealed the investigation’s existence prior to the 2020 election.
“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” Ziegler explained  “And related to the President’s son. So not even the candidate. And we weren’t allowed to do certain investigative steps.” (IRS,DOJ and others declined to comment)
The findings from our investigation on X, called “Bucking the Bureaucracy: The Cost of Coming Forward in the Hunter Biden Tax Case,” were amplified by new reporting from the republican-led House Judiciary committee.
They allege the Hunter Biden laptop reporting was suppressed leading up to the 2020 election to curry political favor, “Facebook executives discussed calibrating censorship decisions to please what they assumed would be an incoming Biden-Harris administration…”
With these new developments, I can’t help but reflect on my own experience with the Hunter Biden laptop in the fall of 2020 after the New York Post broke the story (and bravely stayed with it.)
It’s the question I get asked the most.
“What happened with the Hunter Biden story at CBS before the 2020 election?”
I believe it’s best that the account comes directly from me.
On October 23rd, 2020 about 10 days after the story surfaced, I was contacted by senior CBS News executive Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews for “confirmed reporting” on the Hunter Biden story.  She said the confirmed reporting was for Evening News Anchor and Managing Editor Norah O’Donnell.
Days earlier, I had been tasked with vetting the laptop and its contents after multiple platforms had suppressed the story. Due diligence included working the phones, reaching out to people on the Hunter Biden emails for corroboration and cross-referencing court records.  The vetted documents I collected also indicated the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.
Million Dollar Retainer from Chinese Energy Firm
Signature Page
I told Ciprian-Matthews the vetted materials included a million dollar retainer from a Chinese energy firm, emails with Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski as well as Hunter Biden text messages.
Asked by Ciprian-Matthews if there was a “Hunter connection,”  I responded, “Yes, all of them.”
I then provided some of the vetted records directly to Ciprian-Matthews.  We did speak briefly on the phone. I don’t know at this point what happened next.
QUESTIONS FOR CBS NEWS/SEEKING A RESPONSE
This weekend, on Saturday, I reached out to CBS News PR with questions for Ciprian-Matthews and Norah O’Donnell. I followed up with a voice mail, and text message to confirm CBS had received our questions as well as the Sunday noon deadline.
When there was no response, Sunday morning, I forwarded our questions, adding the head of CBS PR and O’Donnell’s agent, writing:
“We are taking the extra step this morning of reaching out to you for comment and as a courtesy, extending the deadline until 2pm eastern.
We have copied Ingrid and Norah.  If the email addresses are not accurate, we ask that the queries be shared with them so there is full opportunity to respond.
Thank you in advance for the consideration and confirming receipt of our questions.”
As of this writing, there has been no response, nor the courtesy of acknowledging receipt of our questions.  For transparency, you can read the questions here.
Questions provided to CBS News
Based on my reporting, and as the network’s senior investigative correspondent,  the CBS News investigative unit was not tasked in October 2020 to develop more reporting on the laptop.  That would have been standard practice.
In the 60 Minutes interview with then President Trump, correspondent Lesley Stahl said of the Hunter Biden laptop, “It can’t be verified.”  As I watched the broadcast, I felt sick.
I knew the laptop records could be vetted and confirmed. I was confused by what seemed a disconnect between the CBS News division and 60 Minutes.
OUR FORENSIC REVIEW OF HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP DATA
It took an additional two years for the network to broadcast a forensic review of the Hunter Biden laptop data.  I advocated for the report which determined that both the data belonged to Hunter Biden and it had not been tampered with.  Our report was broadcast in November 2022, after the midterm elections.  I may have more to say about the delay in the future.
Analyzed Laptop Data
By contrast, in October 2020, there seemed little push back to claims from 51 former intelligence officials that the laptop had “classic earmarks” of a Russian information operation.
According to the published transcript of the edited 60 Minutes interview with then candidate Joe Biden, Norah O’Donnell asked, “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?”
Candidate Biden responded, “… And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani– the president, together– it’s just what it is. It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about. What is he running on? What is he running on?”
CBS News executives make the final call on editorial. In October 2020, I believe the preliminary reporting provided to senior CBS News executive Ciprian-Matthews showed the laptop was worth digging into, and more facts should be gathered. I saw it as an opportunity for CBS News to lead on a major story and to rebut disinformation claims.
I was eventually assigned to the Hunter Biden case.   I was encouraged that the most senior corporate executives told me privately they wanted reporting that spoke truth to power on both sides of the aisle.  They even provided additional resources, but based on my experience, it seemed their corporate objectives were frustrated by CBS News executives and other employees who were reluctant to take on a story about the President’s son.
INTEREST WANES
In 2023, the CBS investigative unit did exclusively interview the same IRS whistleblowers, Shapley and Ziegler. But I found, after the July 2023 plea deal for Hunter Biden fell apart and he faced felony gun and tax charges, that the network’s interest waned.
As a senior investigative correspondent at CBS News for more than 4 years, our award winning reports were a catalyst for legislative change, impacting a million service members and their families.
We helped secure 50 Purple Hearts for soldiers who were wrongly denied the award under the Trump administration after an Iranian ballistic missile attack on their base in January 2020.
We obtained the audio tape of former President Trump seeming to brag and discuss secret documents about Iran at his New Jersey golf club.  CNN was first to report the recordings.
We helped right a decades’ old wrong so that retired Col. Paris Davis, one of the first Black officers in the elite Green Berets, could be recognized with the Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam.
Two weeks before my position was terminated in February,  army whistleblower Nick Nicholls came forward with new evidence that service members were exposed to toxic agents at their overseas base after 9/11.
Since, with the help of veterans’ advocates, Nicholls’ courage has opened the door to long overdue VA benefits and recognition.
While I remain proud of these projects, I also believe that prior to the 2020 election, the Hunter Biden laptop was a missed opportunity for CBS News.
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Catherine Herridge

Whistleblowers: Best Way to Bury Government Misconduct Is To Call In The Inspector General

Published on December 16, 2024

By

 

TOP LINE
I’ve heard complaints from many whistleblowers who allege the “best way to bury government misconduct is to call in the Inspector General.”
This week’s report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog delivers exhaustive detail, but it is light on accountability.
The Justice Department misled federal courts with no significant consequences.
DEEP DIVE
The new Justice Department Inspector General report suggests the federal courts rubber stamped DOJ subpoenas for phone records of congressional investigators – with no significant consequences to date.
In last week’s newsletter, I was among the first to predict the Justice Department IG would soon release its findings into government overreach, specifically the abuse of compulsory process (including subpoenas) to obtain phone and email records.
DOJ OIG Releases Report on DOJ Obtaining Records of Members of Congress, Congressional Staffers, and Members of the News Media using Compulsory Process
oig.justice.gov/news/doj-oig-releases-report-doj-obtaining-records-members-congress-congressional-staffers-and
This is NOT the first time that FBI and DOJ officials have misled the federal courts to obtain evidence for criminal investigations.   The FBI and Justice Department improperly used unsubstantiated claims, and news reports, to secure surveillance warrants for Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
A former FBI agent who has personally drafted FISA warrants told me he had never seen surveillance applications that cited news stories.
 
FBI VAULT – FISA Surveillance Warrant Cites Media Reports
I have reviewed the Inspector General’s report and singled out one of the most important findings on page 4. It found Justice Department officials obfuscated the true identity of their targets and the construct for their leak investigations which probed media outlets and congress.
Most IG reports pass with limited media attention, but this one titled “A Review of the Department of Justice’s Issuance of Compulsory Process to Obtain Records of Members of Congress, Congressional Staffers, and Members of the News Media,” drew attention across the board.
Two Factors: the report impacts reporter records, and it found that the FBI and DOJ collected phone records on then GOP-congressional staffer Kash Patel who is now nominated by President Trump to lead the FBI.
Pg. 8 Inspector General Report — DOJ/FBI Records Requests
What’s clear from the findings is that the Justice Department relied on “boilerplate” language in its Non-Disclosure Order applications to the court.  NDOs can block reporters and congress, as the report notes, from “learning about the use of compulsory process” to seek their records.  That delays, and in some cases prevents, the subjects from challenging the process in the federal judiciary.
The courts did not have the full picture from the Justice Department, and the blame squarely falls on the DOJ. The DOJ was not transparent about its efforts to secure records from members of Congress and their investigators who were probing the origins of the FBI’s probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
On its face, the DOJ’s withholding of information from the courts appears to be an act of commission.  If the courts had known the FBI and DOJ were seeking records from congressional investigators, the federal judges might have pushed back requiring immediate notification to the parties.
Patel seemed a prime target. Because of his extensive experience at the Justice Department, he understood and could expose defects in the surveillance (FISA) warrants for Trump campaign aide Carter Page, among other irregularities in the FBI/DOJ case.
According to Kash Patel’s 2023 lawsuit against Justice Department officials and FBI Director Wray, he didn’t learn about the subpoena for his google records until several years after the fact.
As I reported in last week’s newsletter, I faced severe push back, including the threat of attacks on my journalistic integrity from a justice department official when I reported allegations that in 2018 then Deputy Attorney Rosenstein threatened to subpoena Patel and others.
While the FBI and DOJ officials disputed the characterization of the 2018 clash between these two branches of government, this week’s report confirms that Justice Department had already sought the records for Patel and others months earlier.
Buried at the back of the report on page 81 are the top line recommendations.  The first recommendation calls for the expansion of protections and internal review protocols for obtaining records from the news media.  The second and third recommendations call for greater transparency when the DOJ investigates Congress which has oversight for the Justice Department.
Summary Recommendations
WHEN KASH PATEL GOT THE CBS NEWS TREATMENT
Kash Patel has always been a political lightning rod.
When I arrived at CBS News in November 2019, a senior executive told me that I brought a “fresh dimension” to the Network’s news gathering because I had deep contacts on both sides of the aisle.
We interviewed Kash Patel for a story in December 2019.  CBS News titled the report, “White House staffer Kash Patel denies he was back channel to Trump on Ukraine.”
The interview was roundly rejected by the CBS broadcast shows. A senior producer on the CBS Evening News told me the interview wasn’t “newsy enough” to qualify for their broadcast.
The story was eventually posted to the CBS News website.  At the time, I was taken aback by what seemed internal resistance to presenting all points of view on the Impeachment story.
At CBS News, I was surprised and disappointed to find a culture where many colleagues seemed content to confirm the reporting of other networks, rather than break news first.  There were exceptions, but when it came to politics, I experienced a “follow the pack” mentality.
I’ll have more to say about the blowback over the Kash Patel reporting.
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Best, Catherine
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Catherine Herridge

Kash Patel Reporting Most Media Missed

Published on December 9, 2024

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TOPLINE:
With Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI, an independent watchdog may soon bring needed transparency to allegations of government overreach targeting GOP congressional investigators, including Patel, probing the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe, “Crossfire Hurricane.”
The findings may tell us a lot about the power of Washington’s unelected bureaucracy.
DEEP DIVE: 
There are some stories you don’t forget because of the pressure that is brought to bear on you by the government bureaucracy to walk away from the reporting.
One of those stories came in 2018, when a review of congressional emails revealed a senior justice department official Rod Rosenstein had allegedly threatened staffers on the House intelligence committee, among them Kash Patel.
Context matters: At the time, Patel and his team were systematically dismantling the premise for the FBI’s 2016 “Crossfire Hurricane” probe that investigated alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Because Patel had deep experience at the Justice Department, he understood and could expose defects in the surveillance (FISA) warrants for Trump campaign aide Carter Page, among other irregularities in the FBI/DOJ case.
At the time, I was the chief intelligence correspondent for Fox News based in Washington D.C. The Fox story was headlined “(Rod) Rosenstein threatened to ‘subpoena’ GOP-led committee in ‘chilling’ clash over records, emails show”
It was straightforward, document driven reporting, but the response from the DOJ was severe and, in my experience, disproportionate.  We had reviewed emails that memorialized a January 2018 closed-door meeting between senior FBI and DOJ officials and members of the House Intelligence committee.
The 2018 report read, “The DAG [Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein] criticized the Committee for sending our requests in writing and was further critical of the Committee’s request to have DOJ/FBI do the same when responding,” the committee’s then-senior counsel for counterterrorism Kash Patel wrote to the House Office of General Counsel.”
The report continued, “Going so far as to say that if the Committee likes being litigators, then ‘we [DOJ] too [are] litigators, and we will subpoena your records and your emails,’ referring to HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and Congress overall.”
The pushback to the story was swift and severe.   Reps for the FBI and DOJ disputed the email account.   “The FBI disagrees with a number of characterizations of the meeting as described in the excerpts of a staffer’s emails provided to us by Fox News.”
“A DOJ official insisted Rosenstein ‘never threatened anyone in the room with a criminal investigation.’ The official added that department and bureau officials in the room ‘are all quite clear that the characterization of events laid out here is false,” adding that Rosenstein was responding to a threat of contempt.’’”
My understanding of the 2018 meeting would change when new claims were made public in a 2023 lawsuit brought by Patel against FBI Director Wray and former Justice Department officials.
At the time, I was working as a senior investigative correspondent for CBS News in Washington D.C. According to the 2023 lawsuit, a subpoena for Patel’s “personal information” had already been obtained before the confrontational 2018 meeting.
According to court records, “On November 20, 2017, while Mr. Patel was still in his role as Senior Counsel and Chief Investigator for the HPSCI (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence), the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) secretly sought a grand jury subpoena to compel Google to turn over Mr. Patel’s private email account data. They did so in complete contravention of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.”
The lawsuit continued, “DOJ sought the subpoena for Mr. Patel’s private accounts without a legitimate basis in a chilling attempt to surveil the person leading the Legislative Branch’s investigation into the Department of Justice’s conduct during the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. This was a blatant abuse and violation of the separation of powers by DOJ, a violation of Mr. Patel’s constitutional rights, and an attempt to find a way to silence an investigation into DOJ’s questionable conduct, as detailed below.  DOJ couldn’t subpoena Mr. Patel’s official accounts without sparking a public, political and legal battle; thus, they went for his personal accounts, in a non-public and unconstitutional manner, seeking dirt on Mr. Patel.”
Timing matters:  Based on the lawsuit, the DOJ sought Patel’s records BEFORE the 2018 meeting.  The lawsuit described it as a “politically motivated investigation.”
According to the 2023 lawsuit, Patel learned about the subpoena several years later, in 2022, when Google notified him the DOJ had sought information related to his personal accounts.
The court records state, “Mr. Patel was wholly unaware of this subpoena until December 12, 2022, when, in line with its policy, Google notified Mr. Patel that DOJ issued it a subpoena for information related to his personal accounts.”
In September this year, a Memorandum Opinion from the court, said the defendants motion to dismiss the complaint was granted.  Among the arguments, that these officials are “entitled to qualified immunity…”
A separate watchdog report may soon bring needed transparency to these allegations of government overreach.  In this case, claims that some senior FBI and DOJ officials abused their authority to gather information on congressional investigators scrutinizing the origins of the FBI Russia collusion probe.
I will have more to say, in the future, about my experience reporting the story and the personal blowback from government officials.
While this content is free, consider becoming a monthly member to support independent journalism and access future content.
Thank you for the consideration and, most of all, for supporting our work!
Best, Catherine
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