Prosecutors in the gun case against Hunter Biden attested to the authenticity of a laptop he left at a repair shop in 2019, and a jury convicted Biden in part based on that evidence, even though at least two polls suggested that constant denials that the laptop was his from Democrats, social media, and legacy media helped President Joe Biden get elected in 2020. 

“This is not a point the news media wanted to acknowledge during trial coverage,” Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog, told The Daily Signal. “It was the shame of the liberal media since the FBI had the laptop all along.” 

Graham was referring to the fact that the FBI was in possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop and knew it was his when the story of its existence broke in 2020.

Had a sizable number of Joe Biden’s supporters been aware of the authenticity of the laptop that suggested the elder Biden financially benefited from foreign dealings that his son was involved in, a late 2020 Media Research Center/Polling Company survey shows that then-incumbent President Donald Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes. 

A TIPP Insights poll in 2022 also showed two-thirds of respondents believed the election would have turned out differently if the public had been more aware of the laptop contents. The survey was done after internal files from Twitter revealed the FBI’s efforts to block the story from getting out. 

“We did the poll, and it does show that suppression of this story on Twitter and the suggestion that the New York Post wasn’t real news impacted the election based on people who might have voted for Trump or just not voted,” Graham said. 

Prosecutors used the laptop, first reported on by the New York Post in 2020, in their case against Hunter Biden, who was found guilty Tuesday on three charges related to lying on a gun-purchase form about his drug addiction. 

But during a 2020 presidential debate, then-candidate Joe Biden called the laptop—which documented Hunter Biden’s drug use and questionable foreign business deals and also implicated the elder Biden in those business deals—“Russian disinformation.” 

Joe Biden’s claim was backed by 51 former intelligence officials who—at the behest of Biden campaign surrogate and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken—signed an open letter alleging the laptop had the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. 

The discovery of the laptop and its contents were largely suppressed on social media, and many large news organizations refused to cover the story. 

“The irony to all of this is that liberals get upset when you say something is fake news or is biased. But that is precisely what they did with the New York Post story,” Graham said. “The liberal media says if you don’t believe us, you don’t believe in democracy.”

However, by mid-2022, most legacy media outlets, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, acknowledged the authenticity of the laptop. Yet before the Hunter Biden gun trial, the government had not formally acknowledged it. 

In December 2022, TIPP Insights, a right-leaning polling outlet with a A+ rating from news and analysis website FiveThirtyEight, conducted a poll of 501 people and asked, “Would knowing the laptop contents were real and not ‘disinformation’ have changed your vote?” 

Over one-quarter—or 28%—answered “Very likely.” 

In late 2020, a Media Research Center/Polling Company survey of 1,750 self-described Biden voters showed that 45.1% did not know about Hunter Biden’s laptop and that 9.4% said had they known, they would have changed their votes from Biden to Trump, to a third-party candidate, or would not have voted at all. 

The analysis of the survey results determined Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes. Both the Media Research Center and the Polling Company are right-leaning organizations,

In February 2023, the left-leaning Washington Post’s Fact Checker column by Glenn Kessler questioned the methodology and questions of the Media Research Center/Polling Company’s poll and gave “Two Pinocchios” to Republican lawmakers who cited the poll as evidence that the lack of media coverage influenced the election. 

The emails on the laptop suggested that Joe Biden—despite his repeated denials—was personally involved in Hunter Biden’s business deals in China. There was also a reference to “10% for the big guy,” suggesting Joe Biden financially benefited from those business deals as well. 

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