“‘Don’t Mention the Laptop!’: Reporters Claim Politico Buried Negative Biden Stories to Protect His Image”

Two former Politico reporters, Marc Caputo of Axios and Tara Palmeri of Puck, claimed there were instances in which they felt their ex-employer either killed or resisted negative stories about former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden on a podcast earlier this week.

Their conversation on Palmeri’s podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win arrived at that point after Caputo submitted that the press has lost the public’s trust by erroneously declaring true or plausible information “misinformation,” and cited the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story as an example.

“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation. Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true,” he observed.

“But then Facebook also pulled all stories down about the Hunter Biden laptop, and I think Twitter did at the same time, too,” jumped in Palmeri.

“Correct, they punished The New York Post, that didn’t help. I mean, Politico, my former employer and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors,” said Caputo. “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”

“Yeah, I mean, I had a hard time — you know I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted — the story on the gun” replied Palmeri, delving into her own trouble to publish stories that could hurt the elder Biden’s political prospects.

“Yeah! And I remember you consulted with me cause you had, you did the original report on the gun and you came to me like, ‘How do I write about this?’ I’m like, ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’” remembered Caputo.

“Cause it was hard to get it done. I spent three months on it, I went to the laptop shop, and I did all of the reporting in Delaware, and I did all of that. But yeah  it had, it had to be like much, it had to be 100% nailed down. I had everything, you know, the police reports, every, like, you know, I’m a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have, if it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type of story,” reflected Palmeri. “It was the beginning of his administration, it was a honeymoon period — you know what I mean?”

“Since we’re spilling tea about our former employer, I still have a copy of the story on my external hard drive. In 2019, a rival presidential Democratic campaign of Joe Biden’s gave to me the tax lien — the oppo research — the tax lien on Hunter Biden for the period of time that he worked at Burisma,” recalled Caputo. “And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.’”

“That story was killed by the editors, and they gave no explanation for that either,” he said. “So that general experience, you know, obviously the public doesn’t know about those things, but as a reporter having witnessed the way in which the two candidates-”

“We just get called, like, ‘the terrible mainstream media.’ It’s like you don’t understand the process there,” interjected Palmeri.

“Well, you also don’t understand the dumb decisions of cowardly editors that are made above us,” agreed Caputo.

Hunter Biden was found guilty of committing three federal felonies stemming back to Palmeri’s story about his gun last summer and pled guilty to three more felony and six more misdemeanor tax charges pertaining to Caputo’s spiked tax lien story.

Notoriously, Politico published a story echoing the suggestion of former intelligence officials that The New York Post‘s story about the younger Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinfo.”

In a statement given to Mediaite, a Politico spokesperson objected to Caputo and Palmeri’s characterization of the publication’s editorial processes and biases and provided links to a number of unflattering stories about the former president and his family.

The statement read:

Seems like a case of false memory, given that across the years they referenced, POLITICO journalists lead the way on wide-ranging reporting on the business dealings of Joe Biden’s closest relatives. Ben Schreckinger was probably the top reporter in the country reporting on these matters—he literally wrote the book on it.

Through deeply reported coverage—both pre- and post-election—POLITICO provided readers with a nuanced understanding of the dealings of James Biden, Hunter Biden, and other relatives of the president, along with the ethical questions they raised. Notably, POLITICO was the first to confirm that Hunter Biden’s laptop contained genuine material and to report on the gun incident that led to his conviction, as demonstrated in the stories below.

And to Tara’s point, yes, our editors uphold rigorous standards, ensuring every story is thoroughly vetted and ‘buttoned up’ before publishing. This approach reflects our unwavering commitment to accuracy and accountability—principles that have guided us and will continue to do so.