First the New York Times and the Washington Post, now NBC News.

Before we dig into the details of the NBC News report, let me note that it is once again a mainstream media news report digging into a story that the media denied so vocally in 2020 that it was censored across social media platforms as disinformation.

Now suddenly.

NBC News obtained a copy of Biden’s laptop hard drive from a representative of Rudy Giuliani and examined Biden’s business dealings from 2013 to 2018 based on the information available on the hard drive and the scope of the documents released by the Senate.

NBC News’ experts all have unflattering things to say about Hunter Biden.

Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI’s former assistant director for counterintelligence, said there is a national security risk when foreign powers like China see an opportunity to get close to someone like Biden. “It’s all about access and influence, and if you can compromise someone with both access and influence, that’s even better,” said Figliuzzi, now an NBC News contributor. “Better still if that target has already compromised himself.”

NBC News analyst Chuck Rosenberg, a former Justice Department official, said that Biden’s paying what he owes could even be seen as an admission of criminal violations. Not paying taxes for many years, rather than one or two, Rosenberg said, helps establish intent, which can otherwise be a struggle for prosecutors in white-collar cases.

Paying the bill, Rosenberg said, might help Biden if he faced sentencing and “mitigate some of the damage, but it doesn’t undo the crime. That would be like returning money to a bank that you robbed. You still robbed the bank.”

It’s almost as if Hunter Biden is a Republican.

NBC News is the latest in a series of mainstream media outlets to run extensive pieces digging into the laptop materials. Why? 

In 2020, the Hunter Biden stuff was opposition research against a candidate the media opposes. Now, it’s opposition research against a candidate some in the media would like to see step down after his first term.

Joe Biden keeps talking about running again. It’s no coincidence that the media got interested in Hunter Biden’s laptop as part of an emerging consensus that Joe Biden shouldn’t run again.

As I wrote in, The Democrat Plan to Stop Joe Biden, Biden’s son is the leverage. During the election, Democrats and their media feverishly suppressed any coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop only to now revive the story. In recent weeks and months, the New York Times and the Washington Post have legitimized the laptop.

Democrats and the media are best served with Schrödinger’s Hunter, not indicted or exculpated, but the subject of an ongoing investigation that can be used as leverage on his father, that holds out possible consequences for the son without severely damaging Joe’s election chances. 

They would like Joe Biden to say that he’ll be stepping down after one term and for the Hunter Biden investigation to go away with a slap on the wrist.