Two former Politico reporters have spoken candidly about the efforts their bosses made to slow down or end their coverage of the Biden family during their time at the news outlet.
Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri, now reporters for Axios and Puck, respectively, reflected on their time at Politico on Palmeri’s “Someone’s Gotta Win” podcast.
Caputo called Politico’s “unfortunate headline” belittling Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election
“I mean, Politico, my former employer, and I knew at the time, didn’t do themselves any favors,” Caputo said in the exchange, which was posted Thursday on YouTube. “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember going to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we have to write about Hunter Biden’s laptop.’ And I’m told this came from the top at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop disinformation, which could at least be called disinformation.”
Caputo was referring to a Politico report titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, dozens of ex-intelligence officials say,” in an open letter signed by 51 intelligence officials that said material from Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the hallmarks of Russian intelligence.” operation.” The report comes days after The New York Post published a bombshell report about the laptop in October 2020.
In October 2020, Politico published a report stating that 51 intelligence officials had signed a letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story had “all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation”. (Main: (Photo by Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images), screenshot/Politico)
Caputo also shed light on a report he wrote in 2019 stemming from an opposition investigation by then-candidate Joe Biden’s rival Democratic campaign into Hunter’s “tax lien” related to his work at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
“And I wrote what would be a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son got a big tax lien for his time working for this controversial Ukrainian oil or natural gas company, which is hounding his father on the campaign trail.’ That story was killed by the editors,’ said Caputo, ‘They didn’t give any explanation for that either. So the general experience – obviously the public doesn’t know about these things.’
When it reaches Fox News DigitalCaputo provided a video showing the original Word document created on May 8, 2019 of his tax lien reporting on Hunter Biden.
Former Politico reporter Marc Caputo says his bosses “killed” a story about Hunter Biden’s questionable finances involving Bursima while his father, Joe Biden, was running in the May 2019 Democratic presidential primary. (William B. Plowman/NBC via Getty Images)
Palmeri similarly shared an experience with Politico regarding the “serious reporting” she did on then-President Biden’s son. She broke the story of Hunter Biden’s gun incident that led to a felony charge for lying about his drug use on a gun form.
“I spent three months on it, I went to a laptop store and I did all the reports in Delaware, and I did all that. But yeah, it was, it had to be so — it had to be 100% nailed down,” Palmeri said Caputo. “I had everything, you know, the police reports … I’m a solid reporter. But I wonder if it could have, would it have been published a little faster if it was a different kind of story.”
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Palmeri described how her bosses stalled before publishing her story.
“I must have been pushing really hard to get that report out. Like, it was a constant, ‘Hey, when are we going to do this? Hey, when are we going to put this out? Hey, when are we going to do this?’ Because it was so difficult. It was like there was a feeling that it was going to be difficult to report things that were very difficult for the Biden administration and the family. It’s like a culture.” Palmeri told Fox News Digital. “And I think that when the culture is such that a journalist has to work so hard, it just creates a feeling that there is no interest in that kind of reporting. And in the end, you know, we work to get published and to get our editors to support our work.”
Palmeri said she received the first police report shortly after Biden’s inauguration in late January 2021, but her story was not published until at the end of March 2021.
“I just think if it was about Trump’s child, it would have been announced much earlier,” Palmeri said. “I had to work really hard to like it — you ask ‘Hey, what’s going on with the story? Hey, what’s going on with the story? Like, what’s going on with the story?’ We gave the White House a lot of time, about a week to respond, I don’t know if that would be the case with Trump’s story.”
The former Politica reporter went on to cite the “honeymoon phase” of the Biden administration as a factor behind the slowed pace of her story.
“I think a lot of people there, including journalists, wanted to get on the good side of the new administration,” Palmeri said. “I could understand the reluctance to publish such an article in the first few months.”
Former Politico reporter Tara Palmeri told Fox News Digital that her story on Hunter Biden would have been published earlier if it were a “Trump kid.” (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Palmeri also suggested that her bosses would not release the story unless she could link it to a federal agency.
“It had to be about the fact that the Secret Service was involved,” Palmeri told Fox News Digital. “I just think that the fact that, you know, the president’s son was involved in a domestic dispute that involved a gun being thrown outside a school is pretty shocking. And the police had to be involved.”
“I think they liked that angle better because I think it increased the gravity situations. The fact that the Secret Service may have been improperly used to cover up what could have been a crime had the gun been found and used by someone else. The general fact that he lied on the gun form, which I had. I had the form with the gun and I showed him he lied on it. But we downplayed it and said, ‘Although many people lie on gun forms and don’t get prosecuted for it,’ which is true, by the way. But it’s not like the headline wasn’t ‘Hunter Biden Lies on Gun Form,’ which is a felony. It wasn’t the title even though I had the form with the gun in which he lied,” she continued.
“They felt it was worth publishing, it had to come to that point that a federal department was involved and they abused their power, basically. As if the crime itself wasn’t important — it wasn’t worth publishing the story just for that.” said Palmeri. “Frankly, they wanted to make sure the story was locked down, but they also felt it needed to be elevated above the crime, the obvious crime that we had from the form. We had to establish that element of the Secret Service part.”
Palmeri suggested Politico’s reporting was influenced by the “honeymoon” period that occurred in the early months of the Biden administration. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
A Politico spokesperson previously released a statement disputing Caputo and Palmeri’s comments on the podcast, praising how its reporters “led the extensive coverage of the dealings of Joe Biden’s closest relatives,” as well as its investigation of Laptop Hunter Biden, suggesting that former staffers have “a case false memory”.
“Our editors adhere to rigorous standards, ensuring that every story is thoroughly vetted and ‘pinned’ before publication. This approach reflects our unwavering commitment to accuracy and accountability—principles that have guided us and will continue to do so,” the statement said.
Politico did not immediately respond to additional questions sent by Fox News Digital.
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Several members of the media have reflected on their previous coverage of Biden in recent months, particularly after his disastrous performance in a CNN debate that put his cognitive decline on full display.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha compared reporters covering Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal to those waiting to address the former president’s mental decline and the legitimacy of the COVID-19 lab leak theory.
“It completes what has become a trend in the media,” he said.
