Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily writer Bob Unruh is clearly feeling a touch of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome, if a March 25 article is any indication:
A stunning report from the Daily Mail on Friday linked the scandal-plagued Hunter Biden to financing a "U.S. military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine."
Joe Biden's son has been in the headlines over the last year or two for multiple scandals, such as his being paid tens of thousands of dollars a month from the Ukrainian Burisma gas company – even though he had no industry experience.
What he did have was a father who was vice president at that time for Barack Obama and in charge of U.S.-Ukraine policy. And Joe Biden later ordered the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor looking into corruption at Burisma.
But details about payments to the Biden family from Chinese and Russian interests, Hunter Biden's dealings with prostitutes, and many other topics, have been revealed through a laptop he abandoned at a repair shop, which was turned over to the FBI, which is now investigating Hunter Biden's taxes and international business dealings.
The Daily Mail, with access to a copy of that hard drive, said that the Russian government's claims that "Hunter Biden helped finance a U.S. military 'bioweapons' research program in Ukraine" "may well be true."
That, the report said, is according to "emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter's abandoned laptop."
Unsurprisingly, Unruh is once again in stenography mode here and made no effort whatsoever to fact-check what was in the notoriously unreliable Daily Mail.
As an actual, reliable media organization reported, this claim is rooted in Russian disinformation about the U.S. running biolabs in Ukraine (which, of course, WND has spread as well).And the claim has been pretty much blown up:
First of all, as we have previously documented, these are not bioweapons labs, but biological research facilities focused on better detecting, diagnosing and monitoring infectious-disease outbreaks. Second, random emails can be easily misinterpreted without additional reporting.
We’ve dug into the records and discussed the deals in question with people involved. The reporting from those news outlets is false. Hunter Biden has come under scrutiny for business deals in places such as Ukraine and China that took place while his father was vice president. But he was not “financing” these labs. In fact, he was not part of a decision to invest in a company at the center of the Russian allegations, he did not profit from it as he was kicked out of the investment firm over cocaine allegations, and the company made little money from its tiny bit of business in Ukraine.
Needless to say, Unruh's bogus claim remains on the WND website live and uncorrected.
