Media

Monday Evening Open Thread: News of #NerdProm

by Anne Laurie| April 25, 20227:21 pm| 36 Comments

This post is in: Civil Rights, Media, Open Threads, President Biden

These two @WHCA members were pioneers of American journalism.

We’ll be honoring the legacies of Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne at our dinner on Saturday night.

They’ll be the first receipts of the new Dunnigan-Payne Prize for Lifetime Career Achievement, our first such award. pic.twitter.com/cqykNqsy0f

— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) April 25, 2022

Nice of them to announce this in time for Trevor Noah to rework his routine for this Saturday.

Yeah, I too would prefer President Biden not attend a potential superspreader event, but you pick your battles. The poor man does love him a proper craic… and events like this are as close as he’s allowed to get, these days!

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Monday Evening Open Thread: News of #NerdPromPost + Comments (36)

FTFNYTimes Open Thread: New Editor Unveiled — Much ‘Inside’, Very ‘Man’

by Anne Laurie| April 20, 20225:42 pm| 68 Comments

This post is in: Media, Our Failed Media Experiment

One might think it's impossible to write a 6,000-plus-word story without quoting a single woman, but … one would be wrong! https://t.co/JQFOTmanq1

— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) April 19, 2022

Shawn McCreesh does his best to make this very long beat-sweetener exciting, but it had me nodding off at every third paragraph:

Abe Rosenthal, the totemic New York Times editor who published the Pentagon Papers, used to say that there was one path to the executive editor’s office — over the dead, burned, and maimed bodies of the ten other people who wanted the job. So I turned to Joseph Kahn, the new top dog at the Times, and asked whom he incinerated to get here.

“I didn’t kill anybody,” he said, suppressing a sly smile. It was late last Friday afternoon — just days before it would be announced that he had ascended to journalism’s Iron Throne — and we were sitting in a conference room high above the empty newsroom. “The truth is that we’re in a bit of a different era, and some of the transitions in the past admittedly have been rocky, and there have been more abrupt changes in leadership. I think we’re going to have a really smooth change in leadership.”…

After Abramson, Dean Baquet took over in 2014 and became one of the most popular executive editors in the paper’s modern history. Kahn is no prom king, but nobody is much surprised that the paper’s proprietors picked him. He is the ultimate inside man, so sturdy, disciplined, and reverential to the mission of the Times that the very notion of him self-destructing seems improbable.

Kahn had led me into the elevator and down the hallway lined with photographs of the paper’s Pulitzer Prize winners and into this room adorned with black-and-white pictures of the old printing press. The place was desolate, but the Times has never been bigger. It can hardly even be called a newspaper anymore. The company has some 5,000 full-time employees, and it produces documentaries and podcasts, newsletters and cooking apps. It bought the podcasting company Serial, the sports site The Athletic, and a daily chunk of your procrastination time since it got ahold of Wordle.

“It’s just a big responsibility,” said Kahn, 57, looking trim in a blue polo shirt, gray cardigan, and jeans. “I’ve been Dean’s partner for five years now, and I’ve seen the way that he navigates the challenge of editing the Times when we’re under as much, or more, scrutiny than we ever have been in history.”…

My inner peasant is tempted to speculate on the horrors due to emerge from Kahn’s closets: Hentai-anime-level sexual perversion? Murder victims rotting in the crawl space of his ‘expensively modernist’ second home upstate? Most unforgivable, peculation from the Rosenthal piggy bank?…

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FTFNYTimes Open Thread: New Editor Unveiled — Much ‘Inside’, Very ‘Man’Post + Comments (68)

Excellent Journalism Open Thread: #LibsofTikTok, MAGAt’s Madame Defarge

by Anne Laurie| April 20, 202210:23 am| 165 Comments

This post is in: domestic terrorists, Excellent Links, Media, Republican Venality, social media

it's getting to the point that you can't even incite a pogrom against queer teachers without someone revealing the name that appears in public documents related to the licensing of your personal brand

— mark (@kept_simple) April 19, 2022

Here's a piece of good, old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting that examines the role of an increasingly powerful figure in conservative media, revealing the human behind an anonymous account that directs waves of hate and harassment at ordinary LGBTQ folks. https://t.co/cTQYil8jO3

— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) April 19, 2022

On March 8, a Twitter account called Libs of TikTok posted a video of a woman teaching sex education to children in Kentucky, calling the woman in the video a “predator.” The next evening, the same clip was featured on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program, prompting the host to ask, “When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”

Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage. Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right.

The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community…

The account has been promoted by podcast host Joe Rogan, and it’s been featured in the New York Post, the Federalist, the Post Millennial and a slew of other right-wing news sites. Meghan McCain has retweeted it. The online influencer Glenn Greenwald has amplified it to his 1.8 million Twitter followers while calling himself the account’s “Godfather.” Last Thursday, the woman behind the account appeared anonymously on Tucker Carlson’s show to complain about being temporarily suspended for violating Twitter’s community guidelines. Fox News often creates news packages around the content that Libs of TikTok has surfaced.

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Throughout its increasingly popular posts and despite numerous media appearances, the account has remained anonymous. But the identity of the operator of Libs of TikTok is traceable through a complex online history and reveals someone who has been plugged into right-wing discourse for two years and is now helping to drive it.

Chaya Raichik had been working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok.…

In January 2021, Raichik started talking about traveling to D.C. to support Trump on Jan. 6 at the Stop the Steal rally. When violence broke out at the Capitol that day, she tweeted a play-by-play account claiming to be on the ground. “They were rubber bullets from law enforcement. 1 hit right next to me,” she said. She posted videos from the crowd and spoke of tear gas being deployed nearby. After saying she left the riot, she used Twitter to downplay the event, claiming that it was peaceful compared to a “BLM protest.”…

Just four months after getting started, Libs of TikTok got its big break: Joe Rogan started promoting the account to the millions of listeners of his hit podcast. He mentioned it several times on the show in August, then again in late September. “Libs of TikTok is one of the greatest f—ing accounts of all time,” he said. With his seal of approval, Raichik’s following skyrocketed.

Libs of TikTok gained more prominence throughout the end of last year, cementing its spot in the right-wing media outrage cycle. Its attacks on the LGBTQ+ community also escalated. By January, Raichik’s page was leaning hard into “groomer” discourse, calling for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be “fired on the spot.”…

When a reporter called the phone number registered to Raichik’s real estate profile and LibofTikTok.us, the woman who answered hung up after the reporter identified herself as calling from The Washington Post. A woman at the address listed to Raichik’s name in Los Angeles declined to identify herself. On Monday night, a tweet from Glenn Greenwald confirmed the house that was visited belonged to Raichik’s family.

Though Raichik has claimed to run the account alone, last August Grant Lally, a lawyer and Republican operative, filed a trademark for Libs of TikTok as a “news reporter service.” Lally said he is “not at liberty” to comment when reached by The Post.

“I don’t do this for money or fame,” Raichik told the New York Post (which, like all other outlets interviewing her, allowed her to speak on the condition of anonymity) in February while comparing herself to Project Veritas. “I’m not some politician or blue-check journalist. I feel like there are so many small stories that are so important that aren’t getting out — and that’s what I’m here for.” In other anonymous interviews she claims to have left New York for somewhere in California, recently turning the account into a full-time job. For a while she was soliciting donations through Venmo…

Raichik has said in interviews that she crowdsources the content for the feed from a flood of messages she receives every day. In that sense, Libs of TikTok is a collective, molded to the hive mind of the right-wing Internet. She views her account as giving a voice and platform to concerned parents and ordinary citizens.

“I see a shared spirit in Libs of TikTok, and the appetite for it in right-wing media more broadly, which is turning neighbor against neighbor and turning any individual into an enforcer of this very strict gender regime,” Branstetter said. “There’s a deep sense of paranoia this rhetoric inspires and is extremely volatile, it’s more than playing with fire. It inspires a vigilante spirit.”

Raichik boasts that several teachers have been fired as a result of being featured on the account…

I have enough material collected for another post, just highlighting the performative hypocrisy of all the usual suspects suddenly discovering a new respect for other peoples’ privacy. And if nothing intervenes, you’ll probably get a late-night open thread with some of the best gems…

no you see it’s fine for libsoftiktok to rebroadcast publicly available information to a potentially hostile audience, but not the washington post, for some reason https://t.co/UVe0QHAq8U

— mike m ?? (@mmcgrath42) April 19, 2022

If you have over half a million followers and you are using your fame to shape national events, you wield power and it becomes a legitimate journalistic enterprise to put a name to that power. Especially if you are using that power to harass vulnerable people. https://t.co/haAASgP7bT

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) April 19, 2022

In general, we should let private citizens remain anonymous and not go around exposing people over petty disagreements, for revenge, or idle curiosity. But when someone achieves power on this scale their real ID is important to know.

— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) April 19, 2022

I feel like the fact that this person participated in 1/6 kind of sidesteps the whole debate about whether she should be ID'd for running a prominent hate account. https://t.co/XBAYZKTqwi

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) April 19, 2022

Broadly I think it's unnecessary to debate privacy norms when the person they're being applied to is a self-confessed violent extremist who uses her platform to incite others to violence

— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) April 19, 2022

"HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF PEOPLE TRIED TO DOXX U JUST FOR POSTING ONLINE!!!"

I dunno why don't we ask some of the thousands of people who have gotten doxxed by the alt-right over the past ten years without you ever giving a shit about it.

— Syndicalist Weedle Collective (@Weedledouble) April 19, 2022

“DOXXING” is a recurring fear of many on the right not due to any principled commitment for privacy but because people who call gay teachers pedophiles want to be welcome in polite company among people who rightfully consider that abhorrent bigotry. That’s really just it.

— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) April 19, 2022

Excellent Journalism Open Thread: #LibsofTikTok, MAGAt’s Madame DefargePost + Comments (165)

FTFNYT Open Thread: Once Again, Dean Baquet Steps On His Own… Message

by Anne Laurie| April 11, 202212:15 am| 37 Comments

This post is in: Media, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Our Failed Media Experiment, social media

New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet has issued a Twitter "reset" for the newsroom, urging reporters to "meaningfully reduce" their twitter time and reminding them that tweets and subtweets attacking or undermining their colleagues are not allowed https://t.co/kM0OldIVxS

— Steven Perlberg (@perlberg) April 7, 2022

When An Individual of Merit has built themselves a (very *nice*, in every sense of the word) career out of assiduous resume-polishing, it is perhaps understandable that they resent underbred upstarts ginning up ‘a following’ by sharing ‘snark’ on some random techno-toy pleased to call itself ‘a media’.

Up with such tomfoolery, The Dean Baquet will not put!

"We eliminated the Public Editor position because we wanted to rely on Twitter as a reporting and feedback tool, but it turns out we don't like either the reporting or the feedback"?? https://t.co/nVaHx55gNe

— andi zeisler (@andizeisler) April 7, 2022

Honestly? The NYTimes should pay DougJ a substantial amount to pre-view their headlines, and their headliners, as a way of avoiding some of the most egregious public #FAIL in their timeline…

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FTFNYT Open Thread: Once Again, Dean Baquet Steps On His Own… MessagePost + Comments (37)

Excellent Escape-from-Russia Read: ‘The Dots Were All There, We Just Couldn’t Connect Them’

by Anne Laurie| March 31, 202211:04 am| 100 Comments

This post is in: Excellent Links, Media, Russia

#UPDATE US State Department issues travel warning saying Moscow "may single out and detain US citizens in Russia".

Citing the potential for harassment of US citizens by Russian authorities, the warning repeats calls for Americans not to travel to Russia or to leave "immediately" pic.twitter.com/uMrcgTcypd

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) March 30, 2022

Published in Politico, but Michelle Berdy is actually a reporter for the independent Moscow Times:

… I hadn’t set out to spend my life in Moscow. After graduating from college in 1978, I came to Moscow to continue studying Russian and become a translator. Except for a few years in the 1980s, I’ve lived there ever since. I worked as a translator and interpreter, as a field producer and reporter in television journalism, a manager of non-profit communication programs, and at The Moscow Times newspaper for almost 20 years. I write a column about Russian language and culture, and since 2015 I’ve been the arts editor.

Along the way, I got married and divorced, danced at weddings and attended funerals, was a godmother and an honorary auntie, bought an apartment and a series of Russian cars, spent my summers at the dacha, sang in a choir, traveled around the countryside with my Russian therapy dog, learned how to make Siberian dumplings, went to every art exhibition and museum, and had favorite seats at the Bolshoi. I have friends I’ve known for four decades and watched as their toddlers grew up and became parents with toddlers of their own…

On Friday, March 4, the eighth day of the war, the Russian Parliament passed a law on the media. “Fake news” about the war would be punished by up to 15 years in jail. The law’s definition of “fake news” clarified that the war could not be called “a war.” It had to be called a “special military operation.” The terms “invasion” or “aggression” were also prohibited. Anything that “discredited” the armed forces was illegal, but what “discreditation” consisted of was not specified. Only Russian government and state-media sources could be used by non-state media.

At the newspaper, we reported on the law and expected that it would be signed into effect that night. We didn’t think, however, that it was applicable to Western media like us; The Moscow Times was registered in the Netherlands.

That night I woke up like a shot at 3 a.m. In my kitchen, I groped in the dark for my television remote. My cable service had CNN, BBC, EuroNews and several other foreign news channels. The law was only a few hours old, but my TV screen lit up with an announcement that CNN was no longer available. BBC and the other news channels were still on the air, but when I flipped through my Twitter feed, it was a list of closures. Znak, an independent news outlet based in Yekaterinburg — one of the last internet publications still publishing — had closed. BBC, ABC, CBS were leaving at least until they assessed the situation. Apparently, the law would apply to non-Russian media, too…

It was time to leave. But I still wasn’t sure. Maybe I was being alarmist. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. I called my old friend, Yevgeniya Albats, known as Zhenya to her friends, a journalist and writer who always has a handle on the truth — and isn’t afraid of it. At her apartment, Zhenya made tea and opened a bottle of wine — because you never know what you need, she said — as I went through my panicked reasoning. Was I in danger?

Zhenya had just spent a couple of hours that morning discussing the new law with a lawyer specializing in media regulation. Theoretically, she said, it was the owner or editor who would be fined or punished for a violation, not the writer. So I was probably not in any real danger.

Pause. “On the other hand,” she said, “there’s always the risk of hostage-taking.”…

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Zhenya would stay. “I’ve already said or written everything I think a hundred times over. They know everything about me. If they wanted to arrest me, they would have done so already,” she said. “Besides, it’s my country. Someone has to stay and tell people what’s happening.”

Before I left, we poured glasses of wine. It was Saturday, March 5, the day that Joseph Stalin died in 1953. We raised our glasses and said the traditional toast: “That one died, and this one will, too.”…

…[A] friend in Latvia told me about a transport service she had taken: a van from Moscow to Riga via a smaller Estonian border crossing with fewer trucks to clog things up. One van took you to the Russian border; another picked you up on the Estonian side and drove you to Latvia. Pets welcome. No cages. She could pick me up in Riga, the Latvian capital. In fact, she could help find me an apartment and get me settled. Best of all, there was a van set to leave in four days, Wednesday night, and it would cost 190 euros — 90 for me, 100 for my dog. Riga had a large Russian population and a growing Russian diaspora. My dog would be more comfortable in a van…

By late afternoon on Wednesday, I was somehow ready: a big-wheeled suitcase filled with clothes I would need at first, a computer bag, a travel bag with food for my dog, a purse and a bag of children’s clothes a doting Moscow grandmother desperately wanted to send to her grandson in Riga. I had been told that we’d have to walk between the border posts, so I practiced hauling it all. Heavy but possible…

We piled out of the van. It was about 3 a.m. and bitterly cold — my phone showed 0 degrees Fahrenheit — and the asphalt was covered with thick, uneven layers of dirty ice. In my suitcase-hauling practice, I had failed to take that into consideration. First, we hauled our bags and dogs to one booth. The window opened and I handed over my passport and entry card; the guard handed it back and told me to go to customs. I dragged everything over another expanse of ice to a small building, hauled it inside, piled it all on the x-ray conveyer belt, and answered questions. No, I didn’t have anything forbidden. Yes, I had two computers. No, I had no plants or drugs. The Russian guards were polite. I took my passport and hauled everything outside again, on to the next booth.

This booth, I realized only afterward, was the Important Booth. Here you handed your documents through a window to the guards and waited. I stood outside with one of my van-mates, a middle-aged woman in a thin wool coat. The French bulldog family was delayed behind us. “The other two were taken inside,” my van-mate told me. We stood there for about an hour in the frigid cold. Every once in a while the booth window would open and they’d call one of us over. “What is your work?” “Did you leave the country in the last two years?” And then the window would close and they’d go back to their computers. Later the woman told me they’d asked her, “We see you were in Kyiv in 2013. What did you do there? Who did you see?”

I walked back and forth with my dog, jumped up and down to keep warm, and waited. Finally, the window opened, my van-mate got her passport and started walking toward Estonia. After another 10 minutes, I was called up and handed mine. Relief; I could go. I put the computer bag on top of the wheeled suitcase, draped the two bags with clothes and dog food over my shoulders and hung my purse around my neck. I dragged the suitcase with one hand and held my dog’s leash with the other. Estonia was at the end of a long, ice-covered road — about 800 meters, a half-mile, the guards said. “See those lights way off there? That’s Estonia.”

It is very hard to drag 150 lbs. of luggage across a half-mile of ice in the middle of the night in below 0 temperatures with a dog on a leash…

In the two weeks between the start of the war and my departure from Russia, I had wept constantly. I cried when I walked my dog in the park across the street, where I knew every bush and tree and patch of grass; when I sat at my desk looking out at my beloved Moscow courtyard; when I bought bread at my local bakery; when I drove a familiar route along the Moscow River, past the Kremlin, and then homeward along one of Moscow’s central avenues. I couldn’t imagine that it might be the last time I’d see places that had been the backdrop of absolutely everything important that had happened to me in my adult life, where there were so many people and so much that I loved.

But now work, the novelty of a new city, the daily battle with iPhones and computers, keep me in a continuous present tense. I don’t think about the future beyond next week; I don’t think about the past. Except to realize that even if I can go back to Russia, it won’t be the Russia I loved.

Maybe that superstition is right: Once you shut the door, walk away and don’t look back.

Excellent Escape-from-Russia Read: <em>‘The Dots Were All There, We Just Couldn’t Connect Them’</em>Post + Comments (100)

Late Night Open Thread: From A Safe Distance, the Media Craves War

by Anne Laurie| March 23, 20222:33 am| 33 Comments

This post is in: Media, Open Threads, War, War in Ukraine

LOL the NYT morning report thing was “Biden’s dilemma: look weak or start WW3” and that is not real nor is it a dilemma.

— Austin Gilkeson (@osutein) March 21, 2022

It is right and just to sympathize with the Ukrainian people. To offer them aid and asylum. It is evil to advocate war when you think you'll pay no price for it.

— Austin Gilkeson (@osutein) March 21, 2022

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If you're framing the escalation question as "Don't be afraid of Putin, he doesn't have the stones to use nukes," you're already burning the wrong straw man.
The question is whether we want to him to take nuclear risks that can cascade toward disaster. /1

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 21, 2022

I'm tired of this argument being put as some sort of test of bravery or decency. People arguing for restraint and caution aren't arguing for surrender. They're arguing for restraint and caution, especially now that strategic victory is already out of Putin's reach. /2

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 21, 2022

I understand the urge to saddle up NATO and blast the Russia invaders to hell. But if the argument is "don't be afraid of Putin," it's a stupid argument. There are plenty of risks involved here that have nothing to do with Putin and everything to do with risks in wartime. /4x

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) March 21, 2022

One problem with leaving nuclear planning in the hands of the venerated nuclear priesthood is sometimes the priests have indulged in too much sacramental wine. pic.twitter.com/1G4TI0CvUs

— Christopher Clary (@clary_co) March 22, 2022

Is it a coincidence that American Old White Guys In Foreign Policy keep describing war in terms of "impotence" and "muscularity"?

— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) March 21, 2022

People seem to be engaging with this seriously when in fact it’s a piece of mental masturbation that epitomizes how for so much of the never-leave-your-desk commentariat, war is just a game, rather than pure horror https://t.co/wl7CrcqJ8q

— Miriam Elder (@MiriamElder) March 18, 2022

Ackshually… Jack Shafer has been a proud sh*tposter since long before the term was invented, which means he’s an expert on this particular media failing:

… Accusing journalists of loving war is a little like accusing windshield wipers of loving rain. War, like rain, is inevitable. Journalists exist to report on bloody conflict just as wiper blades were invented to protect our vision from inclement precipitation. This isn’t to imply that the profession’s love of combat causes war. There were wars, you’ll note, long before there were reporters. All those claims that a war-mongering William Randolph Hearst and his New York Journal promised to “furnish” the Spanish-American War if his photographer would only provide the pictures are pure myth.

Still, that love of war is back in full bloom now thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the press fills its front pages and newscasts with the latest from Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv and Mariupol. But what drives that love? A few thumbnail explanations on that question.

War Sells. The news business has learned from experience that when war arrives, news interest spikes. Because it deals with life and death, war finds a pre-sold audience, and as long as combat lasts, the audience sticks around…

War Reporting Is Easy. Don’t get me wrong. Rushing to the front lines and reporting takes immense courage… But war rewards these daring men and women for their valor. Like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, war supplies reporters with an endless bounty of can’t-look-away stories, and that story is always changing. War offers scenes of raw human emotion, battlefield cliffhangers, tales about warring technologies and unbelievable visuals. (There’s a reason so many Hollywood blockbusters depict large, orange explosions.) The reporter who files eyewitness reports of tank battles or sniper exchanges can expect his copy to be painted Day-Glo orange by his editor and printed in prime space…

War Advances Careers. After surviving a tour of duty with honor, especially TV duty, a reporter can expect the career boost of a promotion or job dangles from competing outlets. Newspapers that previously declined to return your emails will now discover new interest in you. This is not to suggest reckless careerism on the part of war reporters, only to state the obvious…

But journalists aren’t war’s only lovers. As prefigured here a couple of times, there’s a demand side to the love equation that requires balancing. Readers and viewers covet “good news” stories about generosity and forgiveness. But few topics outside of war can attract a large, loyal audience for long, especially if the lines between good and evil have been drawn. Part of the appeal of the Ukraine war for both journalists and the news audience is that those lines are stark, allowing the audience to respond emotionally to the depiction of heroes and villains the clash creates. Journalists may love war, but so does the audience.

Late Night Open Thread: From A Safe Distance, the Media Craves WarPost + Comments (33)

Repub Venality Open Thread: Hunter Biden’s Laptop As A Weapon of Mass Delusion

by Anne Laurie| March 17, 20229:03 pm| 47 Comments

This post is in: Information Warfare, Media, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Our Failed Media Experiment

If you’re looking for the people who say it’s ridiculous Russia hacking the DNC had any effect on the 2016 election, they are RIGHT NOW arguing the media not publishing Hunter’s shadily acquired emails swung the 2020 election. LOFL.

— Grudgie the Whale (@grudging1) March 17, 2022

The Justice Department has exhausted all avenues of investigation into Hunter Biden and turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. Ace reporter Ken Vogel gives us the latest on this crippling failure of imagination on the part of the investigators https://t.co/w4jU03hNz4

— Comirnaty By Nature (@canderaid) March 17, 2022

Somebody should’ve told the NYTimes that But the emails!!! only works against *female* politicians…

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In the year after he disclosed a federal investigation into his “tax affairs” in late 2020, President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, paid off a significant tax liability, even as a grand jury continued to gather evidence in a wide-ranging examination of his international business dealings, according to people familiar with the case.

Mr. Biden’s failure to pay all his taxes has been a focus of the ongoing Justice Department investigation. While wiping out his liability does not preclude criminal charges against him, the payment could make it harder for prosecutors to win a conviction or a long sentence for tax-related offenses, according to tax law experts, since juries and judges tend to be more sympathetic to defendants who have paid their bills…

The investigation, which began as a tax inquiry under the Obama administration, widened in 2018 to include possible criminal violations of tax laws, as well as foreign lobbying and money laundering rules, according to the people familiar with the inquiry.

But prosecutors face a number of hurdles to bringing criminal charges, the people familiar with the investigation said, including proving that Mr. Biden intentionally violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires disclosure to the Justice Department of lobbying or public relations assistance on behalf of foreign clients.

The Justice Department has given no public indication that it has made decisions about any element of the case, and Mr. Biden has not been charged with any crime…

if the DOJ hasn't found evidence to support criminal charges, even after it widened the investigation, shouldn't the big takeaway be that people alleging criminal behavior, and those giving their claims massive media attention, are full of … uh … "it"? https://t.co/P8WexhHKsm

— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) March 17, 2022

Here are things that are true:

1) There is ABUNDANT public evidence that a good number of Trump associates, INCLUDING Trump, are being investigated.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 17, 2022

2) It is a good thing that an already existing investigation into the son of the most powerful person in the country can continue w/o interference–it’s what we wanted, but were deprived of, with Kushner and Don Jr and Trump and Stone and Rudy and Manafort.

3) We should be pursuing sleazy influence peddling in both parties.

Please, someone, give Lanny Davis the same scrutiny we want Paul Manafort to get!!

4) EVEN GLENN GREENWALD admitted that the back story to the Hunter Biden laptop story didn’t hold together, especially given the involvement of suspected RU agent dangle Rudy G, and DOJ was already investigating anyway. It was ALL about distracting you pre-trial.

5) There is zero evidence that David Weiss is conducting himself with the recklessness, the sloppiness, and the fundamental preference for Russian hackers over Hillary Clinton (or Joe Biden) that John Durham is investigating with.

6) Investigations do not always result in prosecutions, and often there are good reasons for it.

With Bill Barr, there were terrible reasons for it.

But there’s no reason to believe DOJ is not pursuing what it can as aggressively as possible.

Vogel was pretty much the only guy to actually believe Giuliani & his Russian spy partners

— Grudgie the Whale (@grudging1) March 17, 2022

More snark:

All the NY Times did today was confirm that some real Hunter Biden emails were planted on the laptop the republicans pretended was his. This means the fake scandal involved hacking and was an even bigger crime than we thought. Many republican operatives could go to prison for it.

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) March 17, 2022

The people who concocted this scandal were always going to argue that they honestly thought the laptop was really Hunter Biden’s. But that reasonable doubt argument goes out the window now that they apparently stole his emails and planted them on the laptop.

The DOJ doesn’t bring criminal charges in instances where it thinks it’s going to lose at trial due to a reasonable doubt defense. This new development could mean the difference in terms of the perpetrators of this phony scandal actually being prosecuted.

This developent also raises serious questions about the NY Post’s decision to run with this story. It’s one (bad) thing to have known the story was false. It’d be much worse if the NY Post knew that crimes had been committed in the name of falsifying evidence for the story.

Republicans are declaring victory over today’s developments, because they always declare victory on everything, even when it’s a clear loss. But that won’t help them any.

(As opposed to most liberal activists, who always declare defeat, even when it’s a clear win for their side).

Remember when Hunter Biden made 640 million dollars while working as an unqualified advisor to his dad the president?

Nope, neither do I.
That was Ivanka.

— Shari Lynn (@LynnSharig8) March 17, 2022

Repub Venality Open Thread: Hunter Biden’s Laptop As A Weapon of Mass DelusionPost + Comments (47)

Let there be snark.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

with the Kraken taking a plea, the Cheese stands alone.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Hunter Biden’s Laptop As A Weapon of Mass Delusion