The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop exposé was no doubt the October surprise of the 2020 election, but thanks to big tech censorship, the intelligence community, and lapdog media outlets armed with influential fact-checkers, the Hunter Biden laptop saga was suppressed and didn't affect the election's outcome the way some polls suggest it could have.
Among the most influential pieces to run in the wake of the New York Post’s laptop-from-hell report was a Washington Post fact-check by Glenn Kessler, which he later noted was “one of the most read articles in our 13-year history.”
But as RealClearInvestigation’s Paul Sperry pointed out this week, Kessler’s fact-check hasn’t aged well—particularly regarding the Post’s story about an April 15, 2015, dinner where then-VP Biden met Vadym Pozharskyi, a Burisma executive, at a time when his son, Hunter, was getting paid $83,333 per month by the energy company. The fact-checker tried to discredit the report about the dinner, but has since had to issue numerous updates, the latest of which came earlier this month following testimony from Devon Archer, Hunter’s former business associate.
But transcripts released last week reveal that Archer, who sat on the Burisma board with Hunter and attended the Cafe Milano dinner, confirmed the New York Post's reporting about the event.
In a recent deposition before the House Oversight Committee, Archer testified that not only did Pozharskyi attend the dinner, but so did Biden ‒ and not just for a brief “drop-by,” as Kessler claimed in the revised, 2021 version of his story. Archer recalled the vice president sat down and stayed for the dinner, which was held in a private room in the back of the restaurant.
After Democratic lawmakers and lawyers quizzed him about the Washington Post story, Archer said “that’s not correct reporting."
Asked last Thursday if the paper still stands behind Kessler’s story, Washington Post spokeswoman Kathy Baird told RealClearInvestigations that the paper was addressing Archer’s revelations. “Following up on your earlier inquiry,” she said, "this piece has now been updated.” (RCI)
As Sperry pointed out, The Washington Post updated its update but did not issue a correction.
In the latest version, published Aug. 3, Kessler added a parenthetical “update" several paragraphs into the piece that Archer in his deposition “disputed” the recollections of Kessler’s Biden sources about the dinner. In another update inserted later in the story, Kessler acknowledged that “Archer told investigators [Burisma official] Pozharskyi attended the dinner.” (This was an update of a previous update.) Finally, at the end of the story, Kessler again cited Archer’s interview to correct his earlier reporting about a dinner attendee who did not in fact attend the function. But he referred to it as an “update,” instead of a correction.
The New York Post's Miranda Devine commented on WaPo's latest update:
Says it all about the state of journalism: Kessler was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi award for fact checks in 2022 about Hunter Biden. The Society of Professional Journalists said Kessler gave “a very detailed, balanced analysis of a complicated and horrifically convoluted story…
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) August 9, 2023
Details here of the April, 2015 dinner which we reported in detail for the first time in May 2021. Kessler tried to fact check it false but ended up reluctantly confirming, albeit pretending Joe only popped by briefly and only for religious purposes 🤣. https://t.co/RGbJmpkm7I
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) August 9, 2023