The Hunter Biden Guilty Verdict and A Preview of The Next Big Lie for 2024
A condensed overview of 26 hours of Fox News for the week ending 6/16/24
Last week Hunter Biden was found guilty on all three federal felony gun charges for lying about his illegal drug use on a gun application. I knew Fox News would be gleeful about the verdict, so I decided to capture and analyze as much of their coverage as possible.
Starting at 9:00 a.m. I captured “America’s Newsroom,” and didn’t stop until Hannity at 9:00 p.m.
At around 11:00 a.m. Harris Faulker made the announcement on “The Faulker Focus,” that Hunter Biden was found guilty. For the next four and a half hours every single segment on Fox News was dedicated to the trial and verdict.
The producers didn’t include any other stories. Every program featured the same expert guests - the usual paid Fox News legal contributors - Jonathan Turley, Andy McCarthy, Gregg Jarret, along with Fox News employees - Judge Jeanine Pirro, Kerri Kupec Urbahn and Trey Gowdy.
There wasn’t much to talk about as the case was fairly simple. It was the nothing burger of nothing burgers as if a stencil of a burger was run on an old school mimeograph machine that was running out of ink.
Hunter Biden checked a box on a gun application stating he did not use illegal drugs while he was in the throes of drug addiction. His lawyer tried to argue that Hunter Biden thought he was sober when he filled out the application but the jury didn’t buy it.
The fact that Jill Biden attended nearly every day of her stepson’s 7-day trial was presented as some kind of scandal. Fox News host and attorney Emily Compagno seemed to think Jill Biden shouldn’t have attended a single day of court.
“Trotting in the First Lady as a clear, in my opinion, attempt at intimidation or persuasion that was far outside the confines of a reputable courtroom,” said Compagno on “Outnumbered.”
Fox News personalities also kept trying to draw false equivalence between Hunter Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.
A jury just found Trump liable for sexual assault and he faces criminal charges in both state and federal courts. Trump is a former president who is the Republican nominee for president in 2024. Hunter Biden is the son of the current president who has never worked in his father’s administration and has no political ambitions for himself.
Trump also attempted to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power when he promoted the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and he did nothing while his supporters ransacked the Capitol building in a violent riot on January 6th 202.
Although Fox News treated the trial as if it was the most important story last week according to a recent Ipsos poll 86% of Democrats, 78% of Independents and 72% of Republicans said that Hunter Biden’s legal troubles would not impact their likelihood of voting for Joe Biden.
Anyone watching Fox News exclusively last week might have missed out on a Supreme Court ruling that will at least temporarily protect the use of abortion medication, a federal ruling that protects gender affirming care in Florida and updates to both the Israel-Hamas War and the war in Ukraine.
Shows I covered last week:
Fox & Friends
The Five
Jesse Watters Primetime
America’s Newsroom - Tuesday (2 hours)
The Faulkner Focus - Tuesday
Outnumbered - Tuesday
America Reports - Tuesday (2 hours)
The Story with Martha MacCallum - Tuesday
Your World with Neil Cavuto - Tuesday
Special Report with Bret Baier - Tuesday
The Ingraham Angle - Tuesday
Hannity - Tuesday
Judge Jeanine Appeared Extremely Confused About When Joe Biden Became President
On the day of the verdict, on “The Five,” Judge Pirro tore into her co-host Richard Fowler, one of the rotating liberals on the show.
“This is so disingenuous, Richard. Give me a break. It was the Biden White House. The Biden Department of Justice that had this case from 2018 allowed the statute of limitations to run, so Hunter Biden could not be accountable for the worst tax, violations and the worst tax crimes that were connected to when his father was a vice president and when he was getting money from all over the world to that then is funneled to everybody who was sitting in the front seat of that courtroom. You wonder why they're so unified.”
I was so confused by her statement that I played it back a few times before I posted it on social media.
She might have meant charges from 2018 but the way her statement is phrased it appears she meant that Biden was president in 2018.
A Quick Timeline of Events
January 20, 2017 - Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president of the United States.
April 2019 - Hunter Biden drops off three laptops at a computer repair shop in Delaware. One computer needed more work than the others, so Biden agreed to leave it at the shop. He signed an agreement that he would give up ownership of the device if he did not pick up after 90 days after the work was completed.
December 2019 - John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the repair shop contacted the FBI because he was alarmed at what he found on the computer. The FBI seized the laptop sometime in mid-December 2019.
September 2020 - Mac Issac gave a copy of the hard drive from the laptop to Robert J. Costello, who was Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer at the time.
October 14, 2020 - The NY Post publishes the first article about the laptop. Costello provided the NY Post with another copy of the hard drive.
The Department of Justice had the original laptop for over a year before Joe Biden was sworn in as president of the United States. It was Trump’s Department of Justice that didn’t investigate Hunter Biden or his father.
As far as I can tell from researching the laptop and its contents most of what it contains are embarrassing videos of Hunter Biden smoking crack cocaine, having sex with sex workers, and giving long winded confessionals.
Biden also taped phone calls he had with his ex-wife as they were going through their divorce.
The laptop was used as evidence in his criminal gun trial because it contained proof of Biden’s extensive use of crack cocaine.
So far despite four years of aggressive investigations and scrutiny no one has been able to cobble together any credible evidence of crimes from the emails, text messages, recording and documents found on the computer.
The tax charges against Hunter Biden are also not as serious as Fox News makes them out to be. Hunter didn’t file a tax return for two years while he was heavily using drugs. He has since paid the IRS the amount he owes plus penalties and interest from this time.
He is charged with six misdemeanor counts of failure to file his tax returns and pay taxes, one felony count of tax evasion and two felony counts of filing a false return.
Juan Williams Said What No One Dared to Say
On the day of the verdict on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Juan Williams, a liberal Fox News contributor, was the only person to point out that crimes like the one Hunter was found guilty of were rarely prosecuted.
“I just wanted to say in response to what you said earlier. Do you know that in this case, I think it's like the millions, 20 plus million people lie on that form and it's like only 3% get prosecute. You think Hunter Biden suffers less than three per okay. Less than 3%. You think Hunter Biden suffered because his last name is Biden? I think if you want to say something was political, is not this. I think.”
According to reporting by ABC News charges like the ones brought against Hunter Biden are usually included as part of a larger case involving more serious crimes.
“that according to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 25 million applications for gun transfers or permits were filed in 2020. Only about 1.6% of them — roughly 398,000 — were denied, and about half of those denials were because the applicant had a felony conviction, indictment or arrest. Drug use or addiction accounted for about 8.6% of the denials, according to the bureau.”
Charlie Hurt and Jesse Watters Claimed Undocumented Immigrants are Voting in Large Numbers
On Friday Jesse Watters and Charlie Hurt made outrageous claims about illegal voting on Jesse Watters Primetime.
“The idea that you actually have the federal government, signing up these illegals for free welfare, free health care, free housing, free travel, and then pressuring them to sign up, to vote, to register to vote illegally. You can't tell me that that is an argument against trying to stop this, that they're designed the whole thing is designed to get these voters to vote illegally. Democrats know exactly what they're doing, and that's why they're doing. They know what they're doing.Democrats know exactly what they're doing, and that's why they're doing,” said Hurt.
Hurt provided no proof that the federal government was pressuring undocumented immigrants to illegally register to vote. Hurt didn’t cite a study or an investigation to back up his claims.
Then Jesse Watters made another baseless claim that didn’t make a ton of sense.
“They know what they're doing. And Johnson made a good point when he said, what happens if all the Chinese nationals come here and they're all getting electricity bills, pay stubs, and they register and they all vote for Joe Biden to save China from the Trump tariffs. And there you go, that’s the election interference right there,” said Watters.
“Yep. And every single one of those five votes is deprives another citizen of their right to vote because it cancels out that vote. These people prefer illegals over U.S. citizens,” said Hurt.
“Biden's open borders are disenfranchising real American voters,” said Watters.
Earlier in the segment Watters pointed to a largely unknown loophole in New York State voter registrations that allowed people without a state issued ID or Social Security number to register to vote.
This is the exact wording from the NY State voter registration form.
If you do not have a DMV or social security number, you may use a valid photo ID, a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check or some other government document that shows your name and address. You may include a copy of one of those types of ID with this form.
The form then states that the state of NY will attempt to verify the person’s identity.
On the same voter registration form it states,
To register you must:
be a U.S. citizen;
be 18 years old
not be in prison for a felony conviction
not claim the right to vote elsewhere
not found to be incompetent by a court
Most undocumented immigrants are not going to hand a state agency proof of their address while committing a crime.
Watters also offered no evidence to back up his wild assertion that Chinese nationals were emigrating to the United States in order to illegally vote for president to rig the election against Donald J. Trump.
The stupidity in his statement is profound. For starters although the number of Chinese nationals illegally crossing the Southern border has spiked in the last two years it's still tiny group in terms of Americans of legal voting age.
In 2022 roughy 161 million Americans were registered voters. About two-thirds of the eligible voting population turned out to vote in the 2020 presidential election. The top two presidential candidates Biden and Trump received a combined a155.5 million votes.
Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S.
For this relatively small group of people to affect the results of the presidential election they would all have to move to the same swing state and every single one of them would need to vote. Even then it would be difficult if not impossible to predict which state would be close enough to throw the election.
In the last election the following states had the narrowest of margins.
Georgia: 0.2% - 12,670 more votes for Biden
Arizona: 0.3% - 10,457 more votes for Biden
Wisconsin: 0.6% - 20,682 more votes for Biden
Pennsylvania: 1.2% - 81,660 more votes for Biden
Nevada: 2.4% - 33,596 more votes for Biden
Michigan: 2.8% - 20,682 more votes for Biden
I also checked the requirements to vote in each swing state. Although the application requirements varied slightly from state to state every application included a statement that only U.S. citizens can vote. Pennsylvania even included the exact criminal penalties a person might face if they illegally voted.
Undocumented immigrants can also face deportation or prison time if they are caught voting in a federal election.
In the case of states that allowed residents to apply for voter registration without a social security card or state ID the application stated that the person’s identity would need to be verified before they could vote.
The Brennen Center conducted a study of non-citizen voting in the 2016 election and found across 42 jurisdictions, election officials who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, improper noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001 percent of the 2016 votes in those jurisdictions.
Greg Gutfeld Lays Track for the Next Big Lie
On Thursday, on “The Five,” Greg Gutfeld went on a rant about how Americans wouldn’t believe it if Biden won the 2024 election.
“I'm not even saying a good candidate. I'm saying a real candidate, which makes anyone with a brain wonder if they aren't that worried that Joe's going to lose, given his sorry state. What are they? What are they planning? What are they doing to save the day? What is up the Dems’ sleeve to drag that body back into the white House?What's the dog that's not barking? And then let's say, by some weird, miraculous chance that we didn't see coming. Given that Trump is ahead, has a 66% chance of winning. Looks like he's going to get the, the electoral count, and he, Joe, still wins. Well, then what do you do after you win? How do you convince anyone that's real? Have they even thought of that? Like even the Dems behind the scenes. Better hope he doesn't win because no one's going to believe it,” said Gutfeld.
The next day, also on “The Five,” he basically said the same thing.
“While the Dems kind of like created a moat around Biden to keep away actual challengers, and now they're stuck with this guy. And I'm going to repeat what I said yesterday. You got to reconsider your choice. Because if you somehow pull this out with some kind of shenanigans, I hate to use that word so lightly, but shenanigans. You're going to deal with a public who doesn't buy the election. You know, you get it. They're going to go like, how did that that put. How did that know? I'm pointing at Biden because he got it out. How did that win? We don't buy it. You're going to have to deal with that.”
Greg Gutfeld’s employer, Fox News, paid out a $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems in the largest defamation settlement in history for its role in promoting the idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
Last week the website FiveThirtyEight, which is focused on opinion poll analysis, gave Biden a 53% chance of winning the 2024 election.
Lawrence Jones Sounded Like He was Working for Trump
On Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” Lawrence Jones brazenly shilled for the Trump campaign.
“You know what I worried about, though? And so, when you look at the polling and you see minority voters, you see the business community, you see Republicans uniting behind the president. We still got a long way into the election. And so I worry with the polling data being where it is and everyone being on fire, that some people may stay at home. And I just think it's important as the the president, the former president campaigns, because the Republicans already have a problem with early voting and mail-in ballots as well. And to the former president's credit. He's telling Republicans now that they need to use all measures, all tools of voting. But you don't want your side to get too excited and to say, well, it looks like it's in the back. I'm going to stay at home.”
Jones sounded as if he was rallying Trump supporter to get out the vote or as most campaigns refer to as GOTV.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS NewsHour, the following list are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.
Updates in the Israel-Hamas War
Hamas rejected the latest ceasefire and hostage release proposal. Qatar and Egypt said they would continue their mediation efforts together with the U.S. Israel has also stated they want to continue to reach an agreement.
Hezbollah fired multiple barrages of rockets into northern Israeli in retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed a senior commander. The IDF reported on more than 200 projectiles that hit Israel, some of which started fires. No casualties were reported.
Updates in the Ukraine War
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended a two-day conference in Berlin where he appealed for help. Germany promised new air defense systems and Italy said it would help rebuild Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
The U.S. issued new sanctions on Russia targeting the country’s financial system. Moscow responded by halting the trading of dollars and euros.
Vladimir Putin said he would end the war if Ukraine withdrew its troops from Russian occupied territory and agreed to not join NATO. His proposal was roundly rejected by Ukraine, its European supporters and the United States.
The Supreme Court said it would consider shutting down a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit against Facebook parent Meta stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
A shot that would contain a vaccine for both COVID-19 and the flu could be available soon. On June 10, Moderna reported that its combination COVID-19/influenza shot generated stronger immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 and influenza than those elicited by separate vaccines.
The Vice President of Malawi, Saulos Chilima, died in a plane crash last week in the northern region of the country. President Lazarus Chakwera called for an independent probe into his death.
A federal judge ruled that a Florida law that banned gender affirming care for transgender minors and restricted care for transgender adults was unconstitutional.
Johnson & Johnson reached a $700 million settlement with 42 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. over investigations into its marketing of baby powder and other talc-based products blamed for allegedly causing cancer.
Scientists remain concerned as the latest strain of bird flu continues to infect mammals. The virus is spreading rapidly through dairy farms where a few farm workers have been infected but quickly recovered. Federal officials reiterated last Thursday that the public should be “alert but not alarmed.”
The Southern Baptist convention narrowly rejected a proposal to enshrine a ban on churches with women pastors. Opponents argued that the church already had ways of ousting such churches as its official doctrinal statement saying the office of pastor is limited to men.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit filed by survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The court ruled that although the plaintiffs claims were legitimate they did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute. The lawsuit was an attempt to make recompense for the destruction of the once-thriving Black district that was destroyed by a white mob.
Inflation eased slightly in May the second month in a row. The Federal Reserve is still waiting for more progress before it lowers interest rates.
The Supreme Court rejected an attempt to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone ruling in an unanimous decision that the plaintiffs, a group of anti-abortion doctors, did not establish standing to sue.
A Department of Justice investigation found that Phoenix police discriminate against Black, Hispanic and Native American people, unlawfully detain homeless people and use excessive force, including unjustified deadly force.
The head of the FAA said to a Senate committee that his agency was too “hands off with Boeing and too focused on paperwork audits and not focused enough on inspections.
Brad Smith, the Vice Chairman and President of Microsoft, testified about his company’s security problems before a House Committee on Homeland Security. Smith accepted Microsoft’s responsibility for the intrusion that successfully compromised 22 enterprise organizations and over 500 individuals globally, including federal government accounts.
The U.S. government will let Native Americans of the Makah Tribe hunt gray whales. The tribe will be allowed to hunt and kill up to three eastern North Pacific gray whales per year over the next decade.
President Biden will nominate Christy Goldsmith Romero as the new head of the FDIC. This is following the resignation of Martin Greunberg after an investigation found widespread abuse and a hostile work environment at the agency.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee last week released documents showing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose three trips he took aboard billionaire Harlan Crow's private jet in 2017, 2019, and 2021. The trips were a gift to Thomas according to Sen. Dick Durbin.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops formally apologized for the church's role in traumatizing Native American children at boarding schools until the mid-1900s.
The South African president Cyril Ramaphosa was elected to a second term but his party did not win a majority of seats in Parliament. He secured his second term thanks to a coalition with the country’s second biggest party, the Democratic Alliance, and some smaller parties.
The high school building in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman fatally shot 17 people in one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history began to be torn down last Friday. Students and teachers were immediately relocated after the shooting but the building remained as investigators used it as evidence in the criminal trial against the shooter.
The U.S. cricket team advanced to the second round in the World Cup.
Rev. James Lawson Jr., a civil rights activist who studied non-violent protest under Gandi and then worked along Martin Luther King Jr., has died at 95.
Howard Fineman, a Newsweek political correspondent and television commentator, died at his home in Washington. He was 75.
Doing gods work ❤️
To borrow a line, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, otherwise known as Fox News