Mark Hemingway of the Federalist questions media outlets’ refusal to label Joe Biden’s false statements as lies.
I don’t want to even go down the road of relitigating the veracity of various Trump statements. This has been debated and cataloged endlessly; Trump has lied. But I will say that there’s good reason why you don’t throw around the word liar with such abandon. That’s because ascertaining what constitutes a “lie” often depends on determining motive or circumstantial assessments that often reveal as much or more about the biases of the person making the accusation. …
… Which brings us to Joe Biden. It’s hard to think of a more categorical denial than the one Biden issued in August 2019 about his role in his son’s business dealings. “First of all, I have never discussed with my son, or my brother, or anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses, period. What I will do is the same thing we did in our administration. There will be an absolute wall between the personal and private, and the government,” said Biden. “There wasn’t any hint of scandal at all when we were there. And I will impose the same kind of strict, strict rules. That is why I have never talked with my son or my brother, or anyone else in the distant family about their business interests, period.” The House Oversight Committee has compiled another 15 more explicit denials from Biden during his campaign, and as recently as last year, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was issuing more blanket denials on his behalf.
This was never remotely believable, but now the evidence is overwhelming. The National Archives recently released 5,400 emails from his time as vice president, where he was using pseudonyms to, among other things, communicate with his son, Hunter Biden, about his questionable foreign business dealings.
