The New York Times on Monday quietly deleted a now debunked claim that an October 2020 New York Post article critical of President

The New York Times on Monday quietly deleted a now debunked claim that an October 2020 New York Post article critical of President and his son, Hunter, was ‚unsubstantiated.‘

The Times had reported on a recent Federal Election Commission decision that said had not violated election law when they blocked the sharing of the Post’s article about the laptop.

The files on ‚s laptop indicated that Hunter had introduced his father Joe Biden to Ukrainian energy company executives while he was vice president.  

The Times article had initially described the revelations as an ‚unsubstantiated New York Post article about Joseph R.

Biden Jr.’s son Hunter Biden‘. 

But the story was heavily edited later in the day without any acknowledgement. 

The updated article read:  ‚Twitter decided briefly last fall to block users from posting links to an article about Joseph R.
Biden Jr.’s son Hunter.‘ 

The Post article in question concerned files discovered on a laptop hard drive that belonging to Hunter Biden, which was provided to the outlet by Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer at the time.

It reported that emails on the computer pointed to an effort by Hunter to set up a meeting in 2015 between Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser at a Ukrainian energy firm, and his father, who was vice president at the time. 

Biden subsequently and successfully lobbied to have a Ukrainian prosecutor fired as he investigated the firm, Burisma, which Hunter held a position on its board from 2014 to 2019. 

The Biden campaign had dismissed the revelations as a smear and a Russian disinformation campaign during the 2020 presidential campaign.

At the time, liberal media outlets had cast doubt on the authenticity of the files contained in the laptop, which was found at a computer repair shop in Delaware.

That sparked Twitter to block sharing of the article, and their damaging revelations, ahead of the election. 

However, a Daily Mail forensic analysis of the computer’s hard drive revealed that the files were genuine, and subsequently published multiple exclusive stories regarding their contents. 

Hunter Biden himself has also admitted that the laptop could be his. 

Speaking to promote his memoir Beautiful Things on CBS earlier this year, he said: ‚Certainly, there could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me.

It could be that I was hacked, it could be that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me.‘ 

The Biden campaign blasted the report, with spokesman Andrew Bates saying, ‚We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.‘

Biden’s advisors, however, would quietly concede later that it w, the article was heavily edited, with the byline of tech reporter Kate Conger added to the story removing all mention that the Post article was unsubstantiated.   

‚We regularly edit web stories—especially breaking news stories—to refine the story, add new information, additional context or analysis,‘ a Times spokesperson told the Daily Mail. 

‚This story was completely revised to incorporate the news regarding Snapchat.‘

Dealings of Hunter Biden outlined in the emails include a March 2015 effort to organize am exclusive dinner at Georgetown’s Cafe Milano, where the meeting between Pozharskyi and Hunter’s father may have taken place, the  reported earlier this year.

International figures on the dinner guest list included Pozharskyi, and Michael Karloutsos, the son of the then-head of the Greek Orthodox Church with an email sent to them by Hunter saying, ‚Dad will be there but keep that btw us for now.‘

After, Pozharskyi sent an email to Hunter thanking him for the opportunity, writing, ‚Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.‘

The files on the laptop, which Giuliani said he obtained from a computer repair shop in Delaware, also contained compromising photos of Hunter, in which he appeared naked and using hard drugs with a number of women. 

Both the Democrats, and a number of news outlets claimed the files were part of a Russian disinformation campaign. The Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, however, would say that October that there was no evidence of foreign meddling 

‚Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,‘ he told .  

Multiple news outlets picked up on the Times‘ unsubstantiated line, including the website for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show and the Lawfare Blog, the Washington Examiner reported. 

Also deleted from the edited Times article was mention that the FEC in its decision reported that Twitter’s head of site integrity had ‚received official warnings throughout 2020 from federal law enforcement that ‚malign state actors‘ might hack and release materials associated with political campaigns and that Hunter Biden might be a target of one such operation.‘

The Times reported that the FEC, however, had found no evidence that Twitter had ‚coordinated its decisions with the Biden campaign.‘  

The F.E.C.

said it found ‚no information that Twitter coordinated‘ its decisions with the Biden campaign. In a sworn declaration, Twitter’s head of U.S. public policy said she was unaware of any contacts with the Biden team before the company made its decisions, according to the F.E.C.
document.‘

The full FEC decision has yet to be made public.

Two weeks after the Post article was published, Twitter eventually relented and unlocked the outlet’s Twitter account.  

Speaking before the Senate Judiciary Committee in November, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said:  

‚We made a quick interpretation, using no other evidence, that the materials in the article were obtained through hacking, and, according to our policy, we blocked them from being spread.

Upon further consideration, we admitted this action was wrong and corrected it within 24 hours.‘