Clay Talks with Miranda Devine

This week on Wins & Losses, Clay Travis is joined by journalist Miranda Devine. Clay and Miranda go through all the details, from start to finish, in regard to her story about Hunter Biden and his infamous laptop.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Fox Sports for you, Welcome in Wins
and Losses. I'm your host, Clay Travis. We are joined
now by Miranda Divine of The New York Post. You
may have heard her interviewed on Clay and Buck some
over the past few years. You certainly have probably seen
her on Fox News. I believe they should rescind all
of the Russia Collusion Politzer Prizes and give them to her.

(00:24):
Um And during the course of this conversation, I bet
you're going to end up agreeing with me. So thank
you to Miranda for joining us. And Miranda, before we
dive into your book, Laptop from Hell, the whole New
York Post story, all of that, what's your background? How
did you come to be writing for the New York Post? Uh?
Where did you grow up? What is your journalism background?

(00:46):
Kind of let people know more about you. Honestly, I
would like to know too. I'm not that expert on
on your past history here. Well, Clay, thanks for having
me and um I suppose it will be confusing to
tell you that I was born in Jamaica, Queens, even
though the accent is obviously not from there, and my

(01:08):
parents were journalists here, and then we moved to Tokyo,
where I spent six years at an American school and
they had a very strong American accent. And then we
moved to Australia, which is my parents or my mother's homeland,
and I got an Australian accent overnight pretty much. And um,

(01:29):
then I did a mass degree as a as a detour,
and always wanted to be a journalist, and my parents
had said no, no, don't do it, but I ended
up they were back in America. My father was um
working to the Reader's Digest, he was an editor there,
and UM, I ended up coming back here to go

(01:51):
to Northwestern University. I did a journalism degree or master's
um to one year, and then I bounced around a
bit and ended up at the Boston Herald and where
I spent a very pleasant couple of years three years,
and then I went back to Australia, got married, spent

(02:13):
twenty years there, pretty much raised our sons um and
then my editor at the time and the newspaper was
at in Sydney, was transferred to New York to become
editor of the New York Post, Carl Allen, and he
was the legendary editor in Australia and then here um,

(02:34):
and he at the end of his tenure, he said
to me, why don't you come over and just come
over for eighteen months covered the election and that was
the twenty twenty election. So I came here in and
basically the post minister. So we've been here ever since. Okay, So,

(02:56):
first of all, Australia, and this is a stupid American question.
We're gonna be married and unless my wife leaves me
in the next year, which is always possible. Um, we're
gonna hit twenty years. We've got three boys. Everything else.
Before we even dive into the New York Post story,
if I were going to Australia for two weeks and
I was taking my family fourteen twelve, eight, three boys,

(03:20):
where would you say you should fly into Where would
you say you absolutely have to see? Like if I
had two weeks to go to Australia because I'm thinking
about taking my wife on our twentieth wedding anniversary and
I've always wanted to go, I've never been, what would
you say as an Australian to me an American who's
never been before, you absolutely have to see this well,

(03:42):
I'm biased because the city that I've spent the most
time in his Sydney, and it's absolutely beautiful. Um. But
with your kids, I would definitely take them up to Queensland,
to the Gold Coast. There are a lot of you know,
sort of Disney World Star style placed absolutely stunning beaches. Um.
And then you can go further north and into some
pretty wild sort of crocodile country and meet some aboriginals

(04:06):
and um, and you know, go into sort of out
back Australia, which is pretty cool. I mean, if you
could get onto a station and out back station, um,
you know, a huge like a huge cattle ranch sort
of thing, but we're probably cheap, um, that would be
an amazing experience. But I would also say, if you've

(04:28):
got two weeks, you should, um explore the region. So
go to New Zealand go to a place called Queenstown,
which is just absolutely spectacularly beautiful. Um. So yeah's my advice.
All right, that's on my that's on my list. I
literally jotted all of that down as you were talking.
I bet there's a lot of other Americans who similarly

(04:49):
would love to take a trip to Australia and also
maybe New Zealand, although it's been so crazy during COVID
in both places that kind of turned me off a
little bit. UM. But I want to now dive into
So you come to the United States in UH to
work at the New York Post. We know, and this
is kind of putting the time frame out there, and
it certainly jump in and correct me if at any

(05:12):
point I'm wrong. In December of the Joe Biden son,
Hunter Biden's laptop is turned over to the FBI. Right
the John Paul, the laptop repairman, says that Hunter Biden,
he thinks he's not gonna have great vision, shows up
with this laptop, turns it into him to get repaired. UH.

(05:34):
And while it is there it is UH. He comes
and becomes aware of what's on this laptop, contacts the
FBI after Hunter Biden doesn't show up, doesn't pay for it,
doesn't come back to reclaim it, and shares it with
the FBI. In December, you become aware that this laptop exists,
allegedly exists, let's say at the time. When when do

(05:57):
you first become aware, Hey, this thing is out there.
Not until the beginning of October when I got a
series of text messages from Rudy Giuliani's lawyer Bob Costello,
and uh Rudy Giuliani had been UM sent them the

(06:19):
sort of hard drive, the copy of the laptop UM
in August. So um this this is now nine months
after John Paul mac Isaac has handed over the device
the laptop to the FBI, but very cleverly kept a
copy of it. UM and he only contacted the FBI

(06:41):
eight months after U Hunter Biden abandoned the laptop at
his store and it became his his legal property. And
so I get this text message late at night. I've
been talking to Rudy as soon as I came to
New York. I cultivated Ruddy Juliani because well because I

(07:03):
knew of his proximity to Donald Trump and that he
knows everybody in New York. But also I had lived
here back in the the you know, the bat old
eighties with my parents, when New York was just a hellhole,
and so I had a huge amount of respect for
what he had done to clean up the city. So
to me, he was an icon of New York. And

(07:24):
I was going to work for the New York Post.
I wanted to become his friends. So I was sort
of doing that, and he now was trusting me and
given the interviews and so on, and so, um, I
think I was top of mind when they had had
some difficulty. That's a long story, but you know, they

(07:44):
had contacted a send of mine at the New York
Post earlier and she'd um she didn't have a copy
of the hard drive, but she had been working on it.
But the whole project to hit a sort of legal
stumbling point, and so I think Rudy Giuliani and Bob
Costello wanted it to go to the Post, but um,

(08:05):
they were just they come to the end of their
tether because it was now so close to the election,
was a month before the elections, so they were going
to hand it over to the Daily Mail or some
other organization. And at the last minute, Rudy Giuliani said
to Bob just try him around it. So he tried

(08:25):
me late one night, and I loved it, and and
you know, spent some time the next day talking to
both of them about it and resolved that this was
kind of above my pay grade. So I uh sent
some of the information and talked to my editor in
chief Kyle Allen, the Australian editor that I had that

(08:45):
I had this very good, long standing relationship with, so
it was a mutual trust situation and he immediately saw
what a you know what, what potential there was in
this story. So he just put his all the best
journalists in the newsroom onto um tracking it down. We
sent someone down to Delaware to interview jump On mac

(09:07):
Isaac and it was all systems go, and within five
or six days, UM we had the first story up
and running. Okay, so you have been doing journalism for
a while. Every journalist has to have in some way
a bullshit detector, right, for lack of a better way
of describing it, because you've probably over the years been

(09:30):
pitched all sorts of fantastical. This is the once in
a lifetime story. This is incredibly compelling, and probably over
time you do some research and you're like, okay, this
isn't as it was initially conveyed to me. When did
you start to look at the documents yourself and say,
holy crap, this is a monster story. The data is

(09:55):
just voluminous of Hunter Biden, this being officially his laptop,
the videos, the pictures, everything else. Because in the back
of your mind. You had to know that the Biden
team was never going to be like, yeah, you know what,
you caught us red handed? Kind of take me through
that process in your mind of hey, this thing exists,

(10:18):
but could it really be real? And working your way
towards your own determination of the documents. Yeah, well, you're
absolutely right, Clay that you know, after three decades or
more in journalism, I've wasted so much time when I
was younger in um you know, being a little too
or not skeptical enough. You know, people come to you

(10:41):
with their stories and voluminous documents, and I've wasted so
much time until I find out at the end that
you know, it's just not worth a story. Um So,
I now, you know, the last ten years or so,
I just on the side of, um, just ultra skepticism.
I just anyone comes to me with the story. I
just admitted it was young. Yeah, sure, I'm not gonna

(11:03):
waste my time on this. I'll have a quick glance
at it. Um So, you know, of the stuff that
comes to me, I will just dismiss this was different because,
um first of all, Rudy Giuliani in the sort of
a year and a half a couple of years I've
come to know him. He'd never steered me wrong. Bob

(11:24):
Costello is an incredibly legitimate person, you know, former assistant
head of UM Criminal Investigations at the Southern District of
New York, very eminent lawyer, brain like a steel trap. UM.
So the two of them were very legitimate. The material
they were showing me, even before I had the laptop,

(11:45):
UM just checked out, you know, just quick Google sort
searches of dates and times and photographs and so on,
just on a very cursory level checked out. UM. And
then you know, John Paul mac Isaac was a legitimate guy.
He he um, you know, and as I've come to
know him, I mean, he's a very genuine person, a
real patriot. He's a Trump supporter, but that doesn't outlaw

(12:09):
someone from having an opinion, UM, and and having legitimate material.
And he was very concerned. The reason he contacted Rudy
Giuliani in the end, and after originally contacting the FBI,
was because he saw the president, President Trump, who he
voted for, getting raked over the coals over the Ukraine impeachment.

(12:31):
And he knew that in the laptop there was exculpatory
evidence about Ukraine, about the rhythma UM, you know, chapter
and birth. He he did a really good forensic deep
dive on that, and that was very impressive. I mean
I had his material, his email that he turned to
Bob Costello initially in August, which really, I mean even

(12:52):
today stands the test of time. He pulled out of
that laptop three of the most crucial documents UM and
narratives to do with Ukraine that are as danning today
or you've probably more than they were then. So all
of this again, you know, we then UM uh you know,
other reporters UM, Emma Joe Morris, a terrific journalist fan

(13:16):
of mine. UM, she did some some excellent kind of
a due diligence UM, and other journalists that we had
did as well. UM. And so we were very confident
with those first UM, that first week of stories that
the emails UM that we were referring to were legitimate. UM.
And then you know, I get a chance to actually

(13:38):
do it, a longer, deeper dive in it, and I
end up talking to Oh, sorry, from the very beginning,
I also had UM. I forgot to other UM tiny
Bob Lynsky's UM material, all his that he had handed
over to the FBI. I came into UM possession of
that early on, so I was able to cross match

(14:01):
the emails that came from UH. You know that really
that Tony bob Lynsky and Hunter Biden had in common.
And on top of that, Tony bob Lynsky had WhatsApp messages,
UM and other documents that sort of butterst and augmented
what was on the laptop. And then you know, obviously
talking to Tony bob Lynsky and other people who were

(14:23):
recipients of those emails, it just was just incontrovertible. This
was a legitimate UM laptop. This was Hunter Biden's laptop.
On top of that, you know, the night before we
published Octo, the night before we had contacted that earlier
that day UM Hunter Biden by his lawyer George Musir,

(14:49):
and UM that evening, UM John Paul maciaac gets the
phone call from George Musir. We know it was George
Musir because John Paul mc guys like in his computer shop,
had the presence of mind to say, look, I don't
know if you are who you say you are. Can
you please send me an email and your work email,
so then I know you're actually had to bind lawyer

(15:12):
to just verify who you are. George Musir did that.
And what George Muz asked jump On mac Isaac for
was he said, I understand that you have a computer
belonging to my client, UM, and we like to have
it back. So you know, they were just it wasn't
like one bombshell. It was just a thousand points of light.

(15:35):
With any of these UM, it's material. We have vast
trobes of documents. UM. There's always, you know, countless ways
that you verify it, and I've just told you a
few of them. And now you know, I wrote a
book on it, and I've spent now over two years
um in depth looking at it. And there's not one

(15:59):
l element of this, this this laptop that I have
published or investigated that has not come out to be
completely legitimate. And of course the fact that Joe Biden
and Hunter Biden never never denied that this was Hunter's laptop,
and Hunter said, I could be in my laptop. You know,
I might have lost it, so I might have stolen it.

(16:20):
They've never denied it. They've never denied outrite any of
the information on it. And in fact, Joe Biden halfway
through I had the first story that we wrote from
the laptop was on that October fourteen story was an
email that was Hunter Biden's Ukrainian paymaster who was paying

(16:45):
him a million dollars a year, thanked him and his
email for introducing him to his father in Washington did
and that was when Joe Biden was Vice president. And
I managed to find that sorry game, and so I
managed to find later on as I went further and
further into the laptop. But this wasn't just any old meeting.

(17:09):
This was a dinner that Hunter Biden had organized in
April for his father, then the Vice president, to meet
his clients, prospective benefactors from the Ukraine but also from
Russia and Kazakhstan. And he organized this dinner at a

(17:30):
Georgetown restaurant called Cafe Milano. And you know, so many
emails and he says, I'll ostensibly this is supposed to
be about, you know what, the World Food program that
he's involved with. That don't you know my dad's coming.
Don't show anyone um And you know they denied that
this meeting ever happened. And then halfway through I published

(17:54):
the story about the Cafe Milano, and the Washington Post
decides that they're going to prospect check me Glenn Kistler,
and lo and behold, Glenn Kissler finds out that actually
the White House admits that Joe did go to the dinner,
but that he you know, didn't go for any nesarious
purpose and only stayed a short time, which is not true.

(18:16):
He stayed with the entire you know, I'm told by
people who were there, stayed for the entire you know,
just didn't drink. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports
talk lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows
at Fox Sports Radio dot com and within the I
Heart Radio app search f s R to listen live. Okay,
I love all of this. I want to dive into

(18:38):
the timeline. If we couldn't, We're talking to Miranda Divine.
I'm Clay Travis. This is Wins and Losses, a deep
dive into the New York Post story on Hunter Biden,
Joe Biden and how it came to pass and the
reaction to it. And my idea, by the way, for
everybody out there listening, is so many of these details
You may have come on to this story a year in,

(18:59):
you might have come in two years. A lot of
people out there are still trying to catch up. And
I told you before we started recording, Miranda, it's like
a television series that you might suddenly have watched an
episode of in year three and you're like, oh, this
is interesting, but you don't really know the background upon
which it's based. So my idea is to kind of
ground this inner reality, to get the timeline everybody understand it.

(19:22):
So you published the first story is in October four, Yeah, okay,
all hell breaks loose. I want to go into all
hell breaking loose as you published, but I also want
to contextualize a couple of things that we now know
that are very important. The FBI was at the time,

(19:43):
uh surveiling Rudy Giuliani. So not only did the FBI
have the Hunter Biden laptop since December of when it
was handed over to them by John Paul Maciaac, but
also they were surveilling Rudy Giuliani, so in theory, they
were aware of everyone in the media that he was
talking to. And as point of fact, and I'm sure

(20:06):
you've seen this as the Twitter documents have come out.
The FBI actually conducted a briefing basically the night before
this story was coming out, while saying there may be
some Russian disinformation coming out to seed in the Twitter
in the Facebook sphere. We've seen Mark Zuckerberg come out

(20:26):
and talk about these briefings. We've seen the actual documents
from inside Twitter. Did you have any clue that the
FBI had at the time Rudy Giuliani under surveillance and
was in theory aware of the communication that you were
engaging with Rudy Giuliani. Presumably they would have heard you
and or seen your interaction with him in some way

(20:47):
with him under surveillance. Did you know about any of
that at the time. I had no idea, And now
that did Rudy. Rudy Giuliani. This was a COVID surveillance
warrant um and the FBI was basically spying on his cloud,
so they had access to all his emails and messages
at that time for about two years. I mean they

(21:08):
started when he became President Trump's um private lawyer. Whether
or not they were really using Rudy Giuliani and now
and sorry, sorry to cut you off, Miranda would they
have been phone tapping him as well to hear conversations
or to your knowledge? Was this just like, hey, they're
getting every text message for in theory and email that

(21:31):
he would have been sending. Do you know I believe
it was just a cloud. Um. I think it's quite
easy for the FBI now to just send messages to uh,
you know, the Apple or whoever to get access to
people's because yeah, okay, that's interesting. Does that make you
feel as a journalist, as someone who was reporting on

(21:52):
a presidential election? I just want to focus on that
for a moment, like that feels insanely dirty to me,
because they have sense we should mention this too. Found
out that Rudy Giuliani violated no law, and they have said, hey,
we're not bringing any charges. So they got a wire
tap potentially. I think it's fair to say under unsavory

(22:13):
UH conditions, investigated him, determined that he was doing nothing wrong,
and in theory, I'm presuming you would have been texting
with Rudy Giuliani and emailing, right, so they were able
to then keep trapped tabs on you and any other
journalists that he was talking to. Does that make you
feel dirty that the United States government was able to
be basically snooping into all of your communications, especially when

(22:38):
you're a journalist trying to get a truthful story out.
Oh for sure. But I mean, I guess you know,
most of the sources that I speak to, um, you know,
for a long time now we just assume that someone's
listening in its unparanoid, but we use encrypto app um
and talking so um. You know, I think Brilly Juniorani

(23:02):
was always very careful about what he said. He's just
not someone who really um writes a lot on text
and neither way. I guess it makes you want to
just meet face to face almost right, so that in
theory you can you can talk open. How crazy is
that that you have to be concerned about the FBI
as a journalist, that you have to be concerned about

(23:22):
the FBI snooping on you such that you want to
meet in person as opposed to even engaging in a
phone conversation. Well, it's crazy, but we've seen that the
FBI have been raiding journalists rating lawyers um that you know,
attorney client privilege means nothing, um, journalistic sources meant nothing.

(23:44):
They rated Project veritas and took all their their phones
with all their confidential sources. Uh, there's just doesn't seem
to be any restrictions there are, there are no tabooze anymore. Um.
So look, what we know is that Rudy Giuliani was
under I call it false pretenses. He was under surveillance.

(24:08):
He his house was raided, his home and his office
were raided. I think it was all his devices were seized.
And then quietly two years later, more than two years later,
two and a half years later, they returned all his
devices and they just, um, you know, said that there

(24:28):
were no no charges. This he was being looked at
by the FBI over Foreign Agent Registration Act violations or
alleged violations, which they found there weren't any violations. But
ironically that's the exact same violations that Hunter bidens being
looked at by their Delaware U. S. Attorney. But anyway,

(24:51):
so Rudy Giuliani, we know he's under surveillance during the
time that I was speaking to him, but more importantly,
in August of he was under surveillanced by the FBI.
When John Paul maciasac sent that initial very voluminous and
detailed email to him with screenshots from the laptop talking

(25:14):
about Ukraine and his concerns about national security. So the
FBI had that say, well, I don't know if they
had it. I mean, maybe they're lazy and they had
the surveillance warrant and didn't see it. So I can't
I can't definitively say that the FBI saw that email,
but they certainly had access to it because they were
spying on Rudy. They would have also had access to

(25:36):
my messages with Rudy. One in particular. Most of them
were pretty anodyne, but one of them in particular would
have tipped them off that The New York Post was
going to publish. So um and and you know, the
FBI had had the laptop since December. They had interviewed
John Pool mac Isaac twice. They knew he was a
legitimate guy. Um. They they pretty only had done some

(26:00):
research on him. They knew that what was on the
laptop was genuine, and they had buried it. We now
know from FBI whistleblowers who came forward to Chuck Grasley
and Ron Johnson that they that there were there were
people within the FBI, within the Washington Field office, who

(26:21):
buried anything to do with the Hunter Biden laptop or
anything to do any any information that was deroctory about
Joe Biden for Inston's including Hunter Biden's former business partner
Tony Bobolynsky, who I mentioned before, who who I had
all his material. He had come forward to the FBI
a week or so before the election voluntarily handed over

(26:47):
the contents of his phone which I had, and also
um he had a five and a half hour interview
with them and told them about his concerns about the
influenced peddling um operation that Joe Biden and his son
and his brother Jim Biden had been carrying on to

(27:09):
do with China, because Tony bob Lynsky was involved in
the China deals. And so the FBI, also we know
from whistleblowers, buried that, Okay, and and they start to
cut you off. I'm gonna get into that in a second,
but just to me, the essence of the question here, Miranda,
and you've laid it out, but I just kind of
want to sum it up is the FBI had had

(27:30):
this laptop since December. They knew that it was real
based on talking to John Paul mciaac just based on
the voluminous degree of incriminating behavior and just also specific behavior.
This couldn't have the pictures, the video like it couldn't
have been made up, all right? I mean and and again, Uh,

(27:52):
they knew that it was real from December. They are
they then have trumped up charges basically to be able
to surveill Rudy Giuliani. As a result, they know that
your New York Post story is coming out. They are
telling all of the big tech companies, Hey, Russian disinformation
is coming out. So I'm curious how you would analyze

(28:14):
this someone at the FBI. It's possible, right that these
lower level FBI people who are giving these uh sermons
to the big tech companies about Russian disinformation, they may
not have known there there there's a possibility there's different
investigations going on and they didn't know about the laptop
or the specifics of it. Let's give them a little

(28:36):
bit of benefit of the doubt here. But someone at
the FBI, maybe it's Christopher Ray, someone certainly at the
very apex of the FBI knew this laptop was real
and allowed a false information campaign to be waged against
your New York Post story. To me, that's the essence

(28:56):
of this question. Who ordered that code read? Who knew
the laptop was real and then used every asset they could,
including the FBI itself, to protect Joe Biden Hunter Biden
from this truth to coming out. Is that kind of
to me? That's the essence of this story right now,
as all of this information has come out, somebody at

(29:17):
the FBI knew this was real and prevented the truth
from coming out. Who was that? That's the crux of
this story to me, that's the sixty four dollar question.
And like Watergate, the cover up by the FBI inclusion
with the social media companies and probably the CIA or
former CIA operatives, uh they they were involved in bearing

(29:41):
this story. The cover up is worse than even the
corruption that we've uncovered from the Biden family and the FBI.
UM basically had warned Twitter and Facebook during the weekly
meetings before the election to expect hack and leak operations
by Russia, and Twitter was warned that they would probably

(30:05):
involve Hunter Biden and probably happen will likely happened in October.
Facebook was told UM warned, we know from Mark Zuckerberg
talking to Joe rogan Um was warned also to be
on high Lerk for a dump pro Russian propaganda in
October before. And that's why I think this is so important, Miranda,

(30:26):
because I understand why people are angry at Twitter and Facebook.
But if you were a mid level employee at Twitter
and Facebook and your FBI came to you and said, hey,
we know based on our investigation that Russian dis info
is coming based on allegations surrounding Hunter Biden and Joe
Biden in their relationship, there's going to be doctor documents

(30:47):
and everything else. When your story dropped, they would have
seen this and said, oh my goodness, this is exactly
what we've been warned about, which is why the nefarious
actions of the f e I are so galling, because
they took advantage of I really think they played Facebook
and Twitter for fools. But also, if I'm putting myself

(31:10):
in this position, Miranda, if I had been twenty eight
or thirty two and I'm a mid level employee at
Twitter and the FBI is sharing this information with me,
and they've already seeded this idea of your democracies in
peril because of Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and everybody else. Like,
you can see why they reacted the way that they
did right now. I mean, it's easy to make them villains,

(31:31):
but I think the FBI is a supreme arch villain here,
and really Twitter and Facebook were just stooges getting played. Yeah,
I think you can say that, particularly when Twitter had
as its deputy general counsel a guy called James Baker,
who had seen the General counsel, which is top lawyer

(31:53):
at the FBI during all the Russia collusion hoax stuff.
You know, he was front and sent. He he was
the guy who drafted the memo for James Comey about
Hillary Clinton. He was the one who brought in the
Alpha Bank nonsense and all the other sort of nonsense
stuff that turned out to be false, the Steel glossier,

(32:15):
and someone about about Donald Trump being a Russian asset. Um.
That was James Baker. He's a you know, a dirty player,
and he somehow he gets basically has to resign from
the FBI and low and behold about a year before
the election or lest he shows up at Twitter as
their number two lawyer. And he was, we know now

(32:38):
from the Twitter files, instrumental in getting Twitter to censor
The New York Post after we published our first story
on the Hunter Biden laptop and lock the New York Post.
I'm sorry, I want to go to next So October
the story breaks. I'm sure you were expecting it to

(32:58):
be a bombshell, but all hell broke loose, even in
a way that I don't think you would have anticipated.
What was that experience like to have that story happened,
and then the results and maybe tell people who weren't
necessarily following this minute by minute what happened to The
New York Post when the story comes out to you?
To everyone involved in this story, well, we knew it

(33:22):
was a huge story. We knew that it was incredibly
damaging to one of the two candidates for president. It
was three weeks before the election um and so you know,
it took a lot of dusts for I have to say,
my top editor to decide to go with it, and
so we were bracing. We had decided rather than or

(33:43):
the editors have decided, rather than publishing the night before
as we normally do, like ten o'clock at night, we
would hold back and publish in the paper but online
only at five o'clock in the morning, and immediately journalists
on Twitter, um, you know, people like Maggie Happerman from
the New York Times and people from NBC and so on,

(34:06):
started talking about it and sharing the story because it
was huge on anyone's standards. This journalistically, this was a
massive scoop. Suddenly you had um, uh, the actually a
guy from Facebook who was a former Democratic operative. He

(34:26):
pops up and he says on Twitter and he says,
we are um, I can't remember his exact words, but
throttling or stopping the spread of this story, pending fact checks,
not going to make any comment, not going to link
on this story. And then shortly after that, Twitter did
the same thing, and effectively, I mean they've got all
sorts of words they used, like producing the the spread

(34:50):
or something. I don't know what their jargon is, but
effectively they just censored. They just killed the story. Um
there and then and you know, I don't know if
people understand, but with new papers now, so much of
um what we do is online and it cost us
a lot of money. The fact that our our you know,

(35:11):
our story was locked down. Our account was locked for
over two weeks until a couple of days before the
election Um, it really for the New York Post, which
is the country's oldest newspaper, the third largest bicirculation. It
was just an incredible audacity by these social media giants

(35:32):
to do this. And we now see from the Twitter
files the internal communications inside Twitter and some of what
Mark Zuckerberg told us went on in Facebook. They didn't
take this lightly. They knew that this was huge, but
they were massaged into it. The story had already been
prebunked by the FBI. If that grooming of Twitter and

(35:54):
Facebook hadn't been happening in the weeks before our story
was published, they probably wouldn't have been bold enough to
censor The New York Post. But because they felt that
they were operating on FBI instructions, basically to save national
security against Russian interference with the election. Um, they were

(36:17):
willing servants of the intelligence community. And there is something
really dirty about the fact that here was the FBI
intervening for the second election in a row. Uh and
and with just completely dishonestly, they knew that our story
was real. Um, you can't tell me that the people

(36:37):
who ordered the censorship of The New York Post from
the FBI did not also know that what we were
going to write was real, no doubt, And I think
that's what's so important. A lot of people focus on
Twitter and Facebook. Someone at the FBI, maybe a group
of people at the FBI at the top, again, just
to reiterate, they knew that your story was coming. They

(37:00):
had known that your story was coming for some time
because they had Rudy Giuliani under surveillance and they were
aware of much of his communications and the fact that
he was trying to shop this evidence from the laptop,
which they had been in possession of the FBI themselves
since December of So all Rudy Giuliani was shopping was

(37:22):
another version of the information that they already had, which,
by the way, if John Paul Mike Isaac hadn't made
a copy of what was on the Hunter Biden laptop,
no one would have ever believed him about this, right,
And the FBI would have probably destroyed the laptop and
never admit that there was anything on there that was
in any way incriminating. Right. So someone ordered a fix

(37:43):
in a big way. I think this makes and I'm
curious what you think, Miranda, And obviously you're involved in
writing this story. And you've done an incredible job. But
I've been saying this makes Watergate seemed like jaywalking, right,
like when you actually consider the complicity involved from the
f b I and where exactly and how many different
people were involved in this conspiracy of silence to protect

(38:06):
Joe Biden and potentially rigged election. I mean it is.
It is a story the likes of which most of
the people listening to us right now have never experienced
in our lifetimes. Yes, and it has the added element
of the threat national security that Joe Biden's and his
family's influenced peddling operation had during the eight years that

(38:31):
he was Vice president and his son and brother were
running around the world partnering with Chinese Belton road Front
organizations allied with the Chinese military and military intelligence. And
also were you know, a hunter was getting paid, as

(38:52):
I said, three thousand dollars a month from this corrupt
energy company in Ukraine, UM sitting on their board. And
you know the only reason that he was getting money
from any of these people was it was a bribe
paid to the family of the second most powerful man
in the world, Joe Biden. And Joe Biden had been

(39:15):
appointed by Barack Obama to be his point man in
China and his point man in Ukraine, and both of
those countries were extremely lucrative to the tune of tens
of millions of dollars to his family. And you know,
Joe Biden was involved in that. And that's what the
value of the laptop is, that it shows you how

(39:36):
much Joe Biden was involved. He met with Hunter Biden's
overseas business partners. He met them in Beijing, he met
them in Washington, d C. He invited them to his
home at the Vice Presidential Residents at the Naval Observatory. Um.
He met them, as I said, Cafe Milano. He met
them in his White House office. UM. So he was

(40:01):
intimately involved. He was described as the big guy and
one of their emails, who was going to get a
cut a ten percent cut of one of these Chinese deals? Um.
Tony Bob o Lynsky, hunter Biden's former business partner, swears
blind that the big guy is Joe Biden. And that's
backed up by other material on the laptop. There's so much, uh,

(40:24):
you know, invoices and bank statements that show you the
money flow, where it's coming from. The meetings, Joe Biden's involvement. UM.
And then you have to add to that the Treasury
Department documents, these so called suspicious activity reports that banks
are required to file when money that comes through into

(40:45):
their bank accounts of American citizens comes from a dodgy sources, suspects,
sources overseas um. And there were you know, dozens of
those suspicious activity reports filed about the Bidens. And that
was unveiled by Chuck Chuck Grasley and Ron Johnson when
they did their incredibly good investigation, which came out in September.

(41:09):
Before I even knew about the laptop. I read their report,
their first report, and it was chapter and verse. It
was like the prelude to the laptop. If you read that,
then when you saw the laptop, it became clear. This
was the flesh on the bones that Chuck Grasley and
Ron Johnson had already put together about the Hunter Biden

(41:30):
corruption and Ukraine and UM. Just as a little side note,
the FBI also intervened to try and derail and discredit
um that that Chuck Grasley and Ron Johnson's investigation. In fact,
when I started writing about it, I was warned off
and said oh, no, that's Russian disinformation. I was like,

(41:52):
why it wasn't what didn't seem to me to be so?
And um, And what Ron Johnson told me was that
he was amble by the FBI with a bogus defensive briefing,
um being nothing with August or late August, early September,
because Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff had complained

(42:15):
to the FBI that there was some sort of Russian
disinformation going on that was going to be derogatory about
Joe Biden in the Johnson Grasley investigation. And if you
think of the timing, August is when h John Paul
Maciaac sent that voluminous email to Rudy Giuliani that could

(42:37):
have seen I believe was intercepted by the FBI. So
somehow the Democrats panicked around that time and they went
to the FBI and they said, we need you to
do something about the Johnson Grasley investigation because it's Russian disinformation.
Johnson gets ambushed by by the FBI walking down the corridor.

(42:59):
His say, hey, there's a couple of SBI people in
your office. He goes back, say start talking to him
about his investigation and people involved in it saying warning
him that Russia is trying to spread disinformation. He smelled
a rat immediately, he said, that's not true, and if
I see this in the media, I'll know that you
are just setting me up. Sure enough, a day or

(43:21):
two later, what happened. Story gets leaked to the media
that the Johnson Gradually investigation has been polluted by Russian disinformation.
We're talking to Miranda Vine New York Post. I mean,
this to me is just incredibly compelling. And again I'm
just gonna keep saying. If they actually gave politzeers based
on real news, then Miranda and her crew at the

(43:43):
New York Post should get all of them that were
given out for Russia collusion. They should be rescinded. I
want to ask you a couple of questions here. Everything
in these details is the exact same except instead of
Hunter Biden, Donald Trump Jr. Is the one with the laptop.
How does the media cover it If Donald Trump Junior

(44:05):
had been accused on a laptop of everything that Hunter
Biden and Joe Biden, it's Donald Trump Junior and Donald
Trump exact same details. Otherwise, this story has covered how
in the United States media. It would have been wall
to wall, just like the Steel dossier, the Russia collusion
anything um that it would have been true. Unlike those Yeah, exactly.

(44:31):
So that's the irony is that they blew up and
one pullets as the Washington Post and the New York
Times one pullet surprises for their coverage of the Russia
collusion hoax, which was proven after a two year investigation
by Robert Mueller to be completely baseless and seeded by
Hillary Clinton's campaign to start with. So it was a

(44:54):
Democrat dirty tricks campaign that was aided in the by
you know, shadowy forces within the intelligence agencies. Probably the
same people covered up our story and covered up the
Hunter Biden laptop, and it would have been everywhere. But

(45:15):
what we got instead was the opposite. This time, we
had four days, five days after our their story was published,
there was this letter up one intelligence officials right who
say that this is all all Russian disinformation. Yet mostly
they were former CIA and of course led by John Brennan,

(45:38):
James Clapper, the usual truspect to perjured themselves in front
of Congress. Um. And these people, fifty one of them,
put the weight of their very high. I mean, I
think there were four or five former CIA directors or
acting CIA directors, and a whole lot of other very
high ranking former intelligence officials who should hang their heads

(45:59):
in shame for putting their name to a scoreless letter
that dishonestly said that the story that Hunter Biden's laptop
had all the earmarks of a Russian information operation in effect,
and the way that Politico, which was first leaked that
letter reported it was that this was a Russian disinformation operation.

(46:23):
But of course they used weazel words since pretending that
they weren't trying to convey that impression. Of course they were,
and it killed the story, um Stone dead in terms
of the rest of the media following it up. It
was a very convenient, figly for the media to say, oh, no,
we're not going to cover this, it's Russian propaganda and uh.
And then, of course, a couple of days later you

(46:44):
had Joe Biden had to appear at that last debate
against Donald Trump. Bad timing for him, because of course
Donald Trump bought up the Hunter Biden laptop store in
his meeting with the Ukrainian paymaster, and Joe Biden um
just used that letter from the one dirty intelligence operatives

(47:07):
and said, you know, the intelligence community says that this
is just a Russian plant, and turned the books back
on Donald Trump, and he got away with it. It
got him off the hook. He had gone to ground
after our story, refused to answer questions hidden the basement, um,
you know, ran away from any any questions. And after

(47:29):
that debate, he really was home free. So, Miranda, and
by the way, the Russian disinformation why, I'm sure you've
seen some of these reports, and I hope some of
the people that are listening to us right now are
finally seeing the light of day. But around fifty pc
of people up to six I think I saw on

(47:50):
a recent survey, actually still believe that this hoax, that
this was a Russian disinformation hoax, and the Hunter Biden
laptop is all made up. How frustrating is it to you,
not only that that argument was made, but that substantial
portions of the American population believe that this is all

(48:10):
a farce, that this entire story is not true. Well,
I mean, it's incredibly frustrating. I mean, it's very depressing
for America that that's happening. And it's not just on
the story it's on COVID, it's on Ukraine, it's on
all sorts of things. And the reason is because they've
been propagandized by a completely corrupt establishment media. And I

(48:35):
count the New York Times, in the Washington Post there,
but you know also ABC, CBS, VIACOM, UM, CNN and
the SNBC, etcetera. UM, they have a narrative. They have
hired as experts, as consultants. UM. These these totally discredited

(48:55):
deep state people, whether it be Brennan or Clapper or um,
you know, Peter Strock, Lisa Page. These people are treated
as heroes on CNN and MSNBC and as experts whose
whose word is impeccable. In fact, they lied and uh

(49:16):
and ran a complete propaganda mission. And on top of that,
you have social media has just clamped down on the
truth about these stories. So you know, you you have
at least half the country is ignorant. Um. They only believe,
they believe everything that they read in the New York
Times of the Washington Post. Um. And it's not just

(49:38):
in America. I know, you know from Australia that the
leading news organizations in Australia, UM, they they rely on
the reporting from the New York Times. They regard that
has been gold standard, and so they are completely ignorant
about what's been going on in America when it comes
to Russia's collusion, Donald Trump, the Hunter Biden laptop, Joe

(50:02):
Biden's corruption. Uh, they don't really know any of that.
And that's the same across Europe and the rest of
the world. I would say, because you're not getting your
information from social media, and you're not getting it from
what it regarded internationally as the most credible news sources,
because the New York Times and so on, resting on

(50:24):
the laurels of their former reputations. What Miranda, when you
now they're all suddenly coming out right, CBS, I think
that a story. I'm sure you kind of just arch
your eyebrows up and they're like, oh, we did a
research project and we determined that the Hunter Biden laptop
is authentic. And then the New York Times they cover it,
and then Washington Post they all cover it years later.

(50:47):
Is that validation for you or is it more frustration
for you when you see these stories being written years
after you had shared the truth? It's not not really
I it um, but uh, you know what I mean,
we know it's true. It doesn't matter whether they say
it is or it isn't. UM. I rolled my eyes

(51:08):
a bit, but I'm glad that they've come on board.
But I note always that um, that they're doing it.
It's it's like a limited hangout. UM. They just put
out enough information because they know it's coming out anyway.
They know their readers are starting to ask why don't
we know about this? It's leaking across the sort of

(51:31):
iron wall that they've built up between themselves and the truth. UM.
And they know that Hunter Biden has been under investigation
since eighteen by the U S Attorney in Delaware. They
know the Grand Juries Um, you know, has has interviewed
or had testified various important witnesses, former business partners of

(51:54):
Hunter Biden and so on. So they know that there's
going to be a story and a possible indictment out
of that, and they need to get ahead of the story.
That's why they've been, um, you know, saying that certain
limited parts of the laptop are authentic. But they always
put a boiler plate paragraph down eight or ten pars

(52:15):
which paragraphs which says, um, you know there's no evidence
that Joe Biden was involved. Well, that's just not true.
They now have the laptop. We've published voluminous information and
it's come from elsewhere of Joe Biden's involvement. Joe Biden
told the American people during the campaign that he knew

(52:36):
nothing about his son Hunter's overseas business dealings. Um, that's
just palpably false. There's evidence that is now on the
public record of his meeting with you. At least a
dozen of Hunter Biden's formed the business partners. There's also
some evidence that I've published that Joe Biden financially benefited

(52:57):
from Hunter Biden, that they were um, you know, shared
debit cards, mingled finances, um. And that Hunter was paying
to some of the bills in Joe's at Joe's mansion,
you know, the maintenance of a painting, new shutters, new
air conditioning, and so on, because it's a very expensive
um estate to maintain. Um. And it was also paying

(53:20):
for a cell phone for Joe Biden. I only have
the tip of the iceberg. There's just a little bit
of information of that in the laptop. But I'm sure
that the Republican investigators who have access to bank accounts
and so on. And that's important all that you're sharing there,
because you actually and the New York Post did not

(53:42):
cover as much of the sensational uh and ridiculous private
life of Hunter Biden, right. I mean there's scatters of
information on that laptop, nude videos, prostitution, the drug use.
I mean, all of that is very so acious. But
you guys, by your nature, said, Okay, he's not the

(54:03):
candidate who's running. What we're really focusing on is Hunter
Biden and Joe Biden's improper involvement in larger international affairs,
not on the personal peccadillos of a drug addict son.
And I think that's important because there is an attack
sometimes where they say, well, Hunter Biden doesn't have an

(54:24):
elected office, why should we care about anything with him? Uh,
And they try to focus on the personal failings. You
guys specifically avoided trying to sensationalize those. Yeah, we did,
and deliberately so because I mean a because the evidence
that Joe Biden was compromised by China, Russia, you know, Ukraine,

(54:49):
these other countries was so bombshell that the fact that
his son was a crack addict and you know, spent
millions of dollars on hookers and uh and drugs was
kind of irrelevant. I mean, that's a you know, that's
a salacious story, um, and ordinarily you'd run it. But
because the corruption angle and the national security angle just

(55:12):
vastly overwhelmed that, we didn't want to have the two
stories mixed up. We didn't want people to get distracted
by the pawn and the hookers and the crack um
and not see the real story. We ran, um, some
pictures we ran, you know, obviously a photo a Hunter
Um with the crack pipe in his mouth asleep, and

(55:33):
a couple of other things like that, because um, that
was just showing visually what we had that we had,
that this was really it's significant in the evidence to
your point, yes, that it is real, right that these
are Hunter Biden videos, and that it would be hard
to fake. And that's why that's important. But you're reporting
is on the significant nature of Joe Biden's involvement. And

(55:56):
I think that's so important because you'll get attacked now
as there is an anowledgement at the laptop is real,
some people will come out and say, well, why should
we care about Hunter Biden. He's admitted he was a
drug addict because of his relationships with foreign countries and
the way that has implicated his father, the President of
the United States. Yes, and also the fact that he

(56:16):
was a crack addict made it even more implausible that
these foreign countries and these oligarchs would give him tens
of millions of dollars. He was his life was a
complete mess during this period. He was incapable of even
answering emails. For a lot of this. He'd go up

(56:37):
on vendors, he'd be in rehab, he'd come back and
be compassed for a little while, and then he'd full
off the wagon again. So, um, you know his personal life,
you know his divorce, his affairs, his his his problems
were immense and so there was no way that he
was a proper businessman. And uh, you know that was

(56:59):
important to to make the point as well. But again,
this is not a story. We never made it a
story about Hunter Biden. It was always a story about
Joe Biden. And that's something that James Comer, who's the
chairman of the Oversight Committee now Republican, is always making
that point that this is about Joe Biden. But it

(57:19):
is a quite a a successful tactic by I guess
the Biden apologists to continually push that point that you know,
Hunter Biden isn't running for office under Biden isn't the president.
You know, why don't you leave him alone? You know,
he's had a terrible problem with addiction, and he's recovered,
and you're just tormenting him, and he's a human being

(57:42):
and so on. No, I mean, I feel sorry for
Hunter Biden, but the fact is his laptop is a
peep hole into a longstanding corruption problem that the man
who is now the president has had for over four decades.
As a very influential center stuff from Delaware, head of

(58:02):
the Foreign Relations Committee duchess by China in his very
earliest days back in the seventies, he was um, you know,
pinpointed by the Chinese Communist Party as a as a
likely ally. They invited him to China. Was one of
the first delegations to go over there. He went to
the equivalent of Martha's vineyards. He came back. He was

(58:24):
so embarrassing in his effusive praise of China that the
Weekly Standard at the time just made a mockery of him.
Uh and and as a Senator Um. He was instrumental
during the Clinton years in getting his reluctant Democrat colleagues
to agree to China joining the World Trade Organization. I

(58:47):
think it was in near two thousand one, and that
had a really terrible effect on the American working class,
from American manufacturing on on the American center at which
lasts obviously to this day. So that was Joe Biden.
And he's always carried water for China, boasted always about

(59:08):
his hours of face to face time with President Jujuing
ping Um. And so I just I just think that
that story is terrifying for America. And we know now
right to this present day, the classified documents scandal revolving

(59:29):
around Joe Biden now links uh and I think this
is why he's been so panicky. It links him to
the Hunter Biden investigation that's been going on in Delaware, because, um,
there there are there are items in that laptop that
could well appear to be only could have come from

(59:54):
classified information. And I'm not going to go too far
with that because I don't know for sure, but I've
published this week an email from the laptop that Hunter
Biden had written to his business partner Devon Archer UM,
and it was an uncharacteristic email. It was very long,
it was very detail, very informed. UM. It listed twenty

(01:00:18):
two points about Ukraine's political situation and had detailed information
geo political strategic information predicting an escalation of Rush's destabilation.
Destabilization came bang talking about you know, natural gas, what
will happen with energy prices in the UK, etcetera. And
that all comes to the fore when you know, UM

(01:00:42):
that in that first tranche of classified documents discovered at
the University of Pennsylvania in Joe Biden's office. UM, we're
told by sources who told CNN that those related to Ukraine,
to the United Kingdom and to Iran. And so two
of those trees are mentioned in this uh. You know

(01:01:03):
this this email that stands out because it's unlike anything
that Hunter Biden has written in the nine years of
this UM this laptop. It coincides with he's just about
to join the Barisma board, as Devon Archer is, and
his father is just about days away from going on

(01:01:27):
his first trip to or an early trip to the Ukraine,
and presumably Joe Biden got a classified briefing on the
situation in Ukraine before he went and Hunters email to
Devon Archer has a distinct flavor on an official briefing
and maybe even a classified briefing. Fox Sports Radio has

(01:01:49):
the best sports talk lineup in the nation. Catch all
of our shows at Fox Sports Radio dot com and
within the I Heart Radio app. Search f s are
to listen live. Miranda Divine is with us. I'm Clay Travis.
This is wins and Losses. You have a master of journalism.
You've been in journalism for decades. What does it say
about the state of United States journalism that the New

(01:02:13):
York Times and the Washington Post. Let's use those two
for example, because they consider themselves to be the paragon
of the journalistic establishment. You've referred to both here. They
put democracy dyes in darkness at the top of the
Washington Post. For God's sakes. When Donald Trump was elected,
the New York Times all the news that's fit to print.
What does it say about those two lions of the

(01:02:34):
liberal establishment that they wouldn't cover this story, that they
would consider this to be unworthy of contemplation by their
audience in the lead up to a election. Well, I
think it tells you that they have been thoroughly corrupted. UM.
And you know, I mean people will say, well, of

(01:02:56):
course she's going to say that because their arrivals. But
I think any fair assessment of the way that they
have handled themselves since at least since Donald Trump came
on the scene, UM publishing false stories, publishing anonymous anonymously
sourced from obviously intelligence sources that were planting misinformation, disinformation. UM.

(01:03:23):
They have they have swallowed hook line and sinker that
the whole far left cultural ideology. But they've also obviously
there's been a decision made to UM to just fall
in and lose their skepticism when it comes to any

(01:03:43):
dirt that they were provided when it came to Donald Trump,
and then become pure as the driven snow, and very
skeptical when it comes to any information that's derogatory about
Joe Biden, even if that information is backed up a
thousand different ways. They have never done a proper investigation

(01:04:04):
of the laptop. Never. The Washington Post talks about having
authenticated some of it, but even then, the copy of
the hard drive that they have came through a very
suspect avenue. It cannot suspect, but it came from. It
didn't come direct They didn't get one directly from John
Paul Maciaac. They got a copy of the hard drive

(01:04:27):
that had gone through several hands to do with a
guy called Jack Maxie and who you know, and people
who people who had copied it and added things to it,
and you know, and that gives the Washington Post um
a sort of get out of jail free card because
they can say, well, you know, the chain of custody
on and this isn't very good because the hard drive

(01:04:49):
that they've chosen to base their reporting on is not
the snow white, crystal clear original hard drive that John
Paul mac Isaac gave us. And so it's almost like
they're setting themselves up with a sort of a back
door to get away with it. It just seems otherwise
it's just incredibly sloppy reporting, because John Paul Maciaac would

(01:05:10):
have given them a copy. Um and jomp On mac
Isaac's now written a book. He's put in there a
lot of detail about um, you know, his interactions with
the FBI, and some of that's quite sinister. Now. When
he told me about how he felt that the FBI
agents who came and took the laptop and a copy
of the hard drive from him back in December twenty nine.

(01:05:33):
He felt that they were threatening him or warning him
to keep his mouth shut. And I thought, oh, you know,
he's he's just a bit paranoid, as a lot of
whistleblowers are, because they get scared and they haven't been
haven't dealt with law enforcement before, and and they get
frightened and um, and they've seen too many movies. So
that's what I thought, So I dismissed. I didn't him
write what he said. UM, But with the benefit of

(01:05:56):
hindsight now and now seeing from the whistleblowers from the
would have filed um just how dirty the elements of
the FBI were, certainly the Washington Field office. I now
really believe that he his his instincts were right, because
when those FBI agents were leaving him with the laptop,

(01:06:17):
one of them turned and said to him, in our experience,
nothing bad happens to people who don't talk, and he
just that just disquieted him, And as he thought about it,
he thought, well, that was a warning for me not
to talk. And I think they thought that he wouldn't talk.
And because they took the laptop, but plus the hard
drive that he'd made a copy of. They must have

(01:06:39):
thought that that was it, that they had everything. They
didn't realize he'd made another copy. Because he made a copy, Miranda,
they would have buried the story and claimed that this
laptop basically never existed exactly, because that's what they've done.
We haven't heard from the laptop. When I think it
was Senator Grassley or another senator asked, um, someone at

(01:07:01):
the FBI in a hearing under oath, where is the laptop?
They couldn't answer. Um. They they have. They have effectively
canceled the laptop. They've canceled Tony Bobolynski. Tony Bobolynsky, you
would think would be a prime witness for the grand
jury that's going on in Delaware looking at Hunter Biden's services,

(01:07:23):
business dealings, and Um, he knew all about the China,
one of these China deals, and that he's never been subpoena,
he's never been called as a witch. It's crazy, Uh, Miranda.
You mentioned John Paul Maciaac being feared for his safety.
Have you feared for your safety at all during the
reporting on this laptop? Um, Look, it's it's run through

(01:07:48):
my mind, but you know, I don't. I'm not I'm
not too worried. No, but who knows. You're not suicidal.
You're not contemplating death, by the way, for everybody out
there listening right now. Correct, No, exactly exactly. You're not
planning on jumping off a bridge. You're not planning on
on vanishing for everybody out there. You're you're of sound mind, exactly.

(01:08:11):
And I think there's so much of the story out
now that it's impossible to put the genie back in
the bottle. So it wouldn't really serve anyone. Uh any
any use to to boss me? Now? You mentioned Carl Allen,
and I just want to circle back around again to
what I would consider to be the bravery of the
New York Post to cover this, because I mentioned I

(01:08:32):
don't think the Times would write it. I don't think
the Post would write it. Um I I obviously people
can say, oh were you? Look out Kicks sold last
year to Fox. I do a lot of Fox News.
I'm not a Fox News employee. For radio. This is
an I Heeart production, this is not Fox. But in
my experience with Fox, no one and I've met Rupert
and Lochlan and everybody else. No one at Fox has

(01:08:53):
ever told me, hey, don't talk about this, don't share
your opinion on X or Y. That just doesn't have
upen in my experience. I bet it is similar for
you as well. What was it like working for Carl Allen?
How important is it that the New York Post exists?
Because who else is willing to even have the resources
and frankly, the testicular fortitude to actually write a story

(01:09:17):
like this that could create the massive uh you know,
blowback like it did. Yeah, you put your finger right
on really the most important part of this, which is
that you know, as a journalist, it's very easy. You know,
you you're health leather excited about a story. Uh you know,
you think it's real, You've done your work on it.

(01:09:39):
But it's going to be a huge bombshell and potentially
blow up the election. Uh and you know what if
it's wrong and it blows up in your face, that
you have huge ramisfications for the newspaper and the company.
So that decision um to be made by you know,
the top editors, and Carl Allen was at the top

(01:10:00):
um of the New York Post was incredibly courageous and uh,
but you know I've known him and worked for him
off and on, um for gosh, almost thirty years. I
had my first child when I was a baby editor
under him, and um, he's always been like the walls

(01:10:22):
of steel. Um. He's one of the real old school
newspaper editors. Uh and just you know, hasn't has a
nose for a story. He's as canny as they come,
street wise, can smell bullshit a million yards off. He's
incredible and he's the best editor I've ever worked for.

(01:10:42):
Lauren he Um, he just you know, he just he's willing.
He knows that all he cares about is the story.
You know, if the story is a great story, without
fear of favorite, doesn't matter whether it's helpful to to
the Republicans or the Democrats. He's just going to go
for He loves it. And that's what anyone who's a
real newspaper person, Um, that's what that's what they're about.

(01:11:06):
It's not really being a media person's being a journalist,
particularly old school newspaper reporter. And um, you know, I
I grew up my father was one of them. Um.
Cole Allen was one of them. I just grew up
admiring and respecting those old school newspaper men, and most
of them were men, and uh, and you know, it's

(01:11:27):
it's a long gone era. And I think Cole's sort
of the last of those, um, those people, because obviously
the Internet has changed everything. But anyway, Cole's just amazing
and it never would have happened without him. And he
trusted me, and I trusted him, and that is because
we had many years of working together. Miranda. I come

(01:11:48):
back to this big question. Why was the FBI so
afraid of Donald Trump? Why was the New York Times
so afraid of Donald Trump? Why was the Washington was
so afraid of Donald Trump that they were willing to
rig elections against him? I'm sure in the back of
your mind you have thought a lot about this too,

(01:12:10):
because ultimately someone at the FBI had to make the
choice to engage in this rig job, right, And maybe
it's a group of people. What I can never quite
put my finger on is what did they find so
terrifying about this guy? Well, it was that they couldn't

(01:12:31):
control him. Um. If you remember, Um, there was a
Chinese professor after the election, a video that he had
made leaked out and was soon quickly wiped off YouTube.
But he in that said he was very close to
in the hierarchy. And in that video he said, Donald Trump,

(01:12:54):
you know, we've always in China had our friends in
Wall Street, but not but Wall Street could not control Trump.
And that's the essence of it, Wall Street meaning really
the establishment politicians because that's where the money comes from.
And um, the you know, Donald Trump was completely just.

(01:13:17):
He was just America first. He didn't want to go
into wars. He wanted to end the war in Afghanistan. UM.
He was a threat to the what Eisenhow called the
military industrial complex. UM, really an existential threat. And so
you know there's a lot of gravy trains in Washington
are hitched to to that wagon to having endless wars.

(01:13:41):
And that was one part of it. Also his belligerence
towards China, which you know a lot of the elites
they make their money from China, and he made it
crystal clear that he was going to screw them over
or make things fear screw them over when it came
to trade deals. All of that got derailed with COVID,

(01:14:04):
which came from China. UM and then in their cultural project,
you know, the woke ideology again, Um he was. He
was blowing that up. And so in every aspect of
Washington bureaucracy, the administrative state, he was starting to dismantle it.

(01:14:24):
Even even with the economy, you know, his tax cuts
and sign which proved to be successful and fuelled the economy. Um,
nearly part of his until covid Um. That also was
a rebuke to the kind of norms of you know,
economic sort of norms in Washington where um he was.

(01:14:49):
He was just challenging all those norms. And he was
also an embarrassment to them. I guests just with his
domeanor but they you know, they talked that up. Um.
And also, I mean the fact is Donald Trump's no saint,
He's no angel. He Um. He has a sort of
shambolic appearance. People were embarrassed by him. Um. He was

(01:15:13):
a little bit to queens for the stuck up people
in the state department and in in Washington. Um. And
so I think in every way he offended their sensibilities,
He challenged their um financial under pinnings and and really
their power base. He challenged their power and so he

(01:15:36):
became an existential threat to the people who really run
this country. UM, we're talking to Miranda Divine, and I
hope you will share this conversation because I think it's
super important, especially if the people you may be friends
or family with are in thet of population out there
that just doesn't understand the Hunter Biden story, the laptop
and has bought into this Russian disinformation argument put out

(01:15:58):
by so many people in positions of power. Um, a
lot of people who are listening to us right now
are red pilled. And I think that metaphor works so
well because it is true, Miranda, and I'm sure you've
experienced this now too, that once you start to pull
the thread here, you recognize how deep some of these
conspiracies go. And if we're really going to be a

(01:16:21):
functioning democracy, it's not things like January six. That's a
symptom of the dishonesty that I think many people in
this country innately feel from their leadership. Right And and
I give you tremendous credit because, without worrying about who
you were going to antagonize, you simply pursued the truth.

(01:16:42):
And I think you have told the I think it's
a more important story. I really do than Watergate, And
it's symptomatic of where our country has gone that the
Washington Post, which published the Pentagon Papers and was willing
to pursue Watergate, just pretends that this story basically doesn't
exist because it directly attacks their base. Which again, this

(01:17:03):
is a bigger picture story. But I think this has
a lot to do with the subscription model and the
fact that the New York Times and the Washington Post
basically make their money off far left wing people now
and they can't antagonize that base without threatening to destroy
the essence of their business. And even more than that,
I think there may be something sinister about the subscription

(01:17:23):
model that they have. UM. You know, you look at,
for instance, the New York Times, I think the numbers
of things like nine million subscribers they have, uh. And
you know, when the Internet Internet came into being, um
and basically stole the revenue base of these incredibly lucrative newspapers, UM,

(01:17:45):
they had to find another source of income or collapse.
And many newspapers, as you know, across the country collapsed.
And so for those papers, subscription models became everything for them,
and for the New York Times, incredibly successful and you know,
when you think about it. I spent a lot of
time reading the comments on columns and stories on the

(01:18:05):
Washington Post in the New York Times, and they have
a certain sameness to them which is reminiscent of the
sort of botch activity that you get in on Twitter. Um.
And so I started suspecting that, um, that a lot
of these subscriptions because you know, you can get a
subscription to the New York Times when they do their
deals for a dollar, So it would not cost very

(01:18:29):
much for the same people who are buying bots on
Twitter to buy, you know, thousands of subscriptions and then
set their people onto writing the narrative in the comments.
And then when you take that one step further. And
we don't know this because the New York Times the
Washington Post don't tell us who their subscribers are, but

(01:18:52):
there are bulk subscriptions, and um, some of these bolk subscriptions.
There is suggestion brought up by China and other of
our adversaries overseas, and I believe that the Republicans will
be looking into that. Oh, that's fascinating as well. Uh. I.
When I was practicing attorney Miranda and I appreciate all
your time. I know how busy you are. I think

(01:19:14):
that's gonna be compelling listening for so many people out there.
I used to always end my my depositions UM by saying,
what do you wish that I had asked you that
I didn't? Is there something else you'd like to say
to this audience that I didn't give you the opportunity
to close with that you think is important that they
might need to know. Not Really, you've been incredibly uh

(01:19:37):
forensic and your questioning. UM. The only thing I guess
I just leave with is that for four decades, Joe
Biden has sort of traded on this mythology that he's
honest Joe, that he's a family man, he's a devout Catholic,
um that you know, his entire career was wounded on

(01:20:01):
a terrible tragedy where his wife and his baby daughter
were killed in a car accident that injured his two sons,
Hunter and Bo Biden, and he used the photograph of
himself being sworn in at their hospital bed, these two
bandaged injured boys in the foreground um as the basis

(01:20:21):
of his campaigns ever since, and that elicited a lot
of sympathy across the country. But then when I started
doing the book, I thought, what kind of a man,
you know, why did he have to get sworn in
inside the hospital room? Such a great question. Even at
that time of great tragedy and grief, he had his

(01:20:43):
eye on the political payoff. And and then later on,
you know, I'm thinking he knew that his son Hunter
had an alcohol and drug abuse problem. I mean, Hunter
was arrested when he was eighteen. He he was a
troubled song and uh, and what kind of a father,
knowing his son is a terrible addict, puts him, makes

(01:21:06):
him the bag man, and puts him in front of
this unaccountable tient of cash from Barisma as well as
everything else. Um. You know, I just my entire I
used too many years ago. I think I'm Catholic. I
thought Joe Biden was an Irish Catholic, sort of tribally

(01:21:28):
like my people. Um. But but over time I've come
to see him as a very sinister figure. And I
think that his legacy, if nothing else comes out of
all of this, I think that at least his legacy
will be seen honestly, and that he will be seen
as one of the most malign people to become president.

(01:21:52):
Miranda Divine, you deserve all the Politzers. I appreciate all
the work that you have done. I appreciate the time today.
I would encourage people to go all of you at
Miranda Divine. If they want more details, I would tell
them to go buy your book Laptop from Hell. And
we appreciate your time. Keep up your good work and
given what the FBI is up to, stay healthy. Thanks

(01:22:14):
so look, Clay, I'm Clay Travis. This has been Thank you.
I'm Clay Travis. This has been wins and losses. She
was Miranda Divine. This was a lot of fun. I
hope you guys will share and listen to more episodes.