Staff Reports
Scott Pelley, the luminary of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” has found himself in a sticky situation over a questionable assertion regarding former President Donald Trump during a recent segment muddling through the ever-controversial saga of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The ongoing saga of this infamous device, which was unceremoniously discovered by Rudy Giuliani at a computer repair shop in the chaotic months leading up to the 2020 election, has become something of a rallying point for disinformation, particularly among those who can’t seem to let go of their disdain for Trump.
During his Sunday broadcast, Pelley attempted to clarify that veteran journalist Lesley Stahl, originally approached about the laptop’s existence, didn’t initially dismiss it out of hand as mere Russian disinformation. This narrative, rooted in the allegations from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and echoed by a covert coalition of ex-intelligence officials, seems to slip from absurdity into the realm of the comically ironic given the subsequent revelations about the laptop’s authenticity.
When it came time to discuss Trump’s apparent snub of “60 Minutes,” Pelley claimed that the former president had turned down their request for an equal time appearance, insisting that he wanted an apology from CBS over their contentious 2020 interview. Pelley maintained that Trump accused Stahl of implying the laptop was a product of Russian interference. Of course, the truth is that Stahl didn’t actually say that—though the murky waters of media narratives often drown out the details.
Trump’s backers wasted no time digging up highlights from his contentious interview with Stahl, showcasing her once distant stance on the laptop’s authenticity. In a moment conveniently ignored by many in the mainstream media, Stahl admitted, off-camera, that the device’s veracity could not be confirmed, despite Trump driving home the point that verification was entirely possible. Stahl’s claim that it couldn’t be ascertained whether the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden has long been a punchline in the ongoing joke of political cover-ups.
🚨 BREAKING: Scott Pelley, the signature host of CBS’s “60 Minutes,” is being called out for blatantly lying after falsely claiming that Lesley Stahl didn't dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation in 2020.https://t.co/Kd5GCyVUak
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) October 9, 2024
Adding to the layers of absurdity, special counsel John Durham conducted an extensive post-mortem of the laptop mystery after Biden’s election. He aimed to untangle the web of allegations claiming that Trump had ties to Russian operatives who supposedly handed over the laptop to Giuliani, while numerous photos and emails emerging from the device pointed to Hunter Biden’s entanglements in overseas ventures. These ties, alleged by Trump, suggested that Joe Biden used his vice-presidential influence within the Obama administration to benefit his son’s business dealings, a scandal rooted in considerable implications.
Durham’s report from 2023 put to rest the wild accusations tying Trump and Russia to the 2016 campaign while casting further shadows over the Obama administration’s questionable surveillance tactics on a Trump foreign policy advisor. The report also confirmed there was no substantiated evidence for the now-infamous Steele dossier, for which former British spy Christopher Steele was offered a princely sum by the FBI to corroborate the claims—a task he woefully failed to accomplish. As documents requested for investigation mysteriously went dark, it seems clear that the truth remains a rare commodity in the world of politics, especially when it comes to the tangled tales of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
