CBS News violated 'standard practice' by shortchanging Hunter Biden laptop review: fired reporter

Fired CBS News investigative journalist Catherine Herridge broke her silence on "the question I get asked the most" in her newsletter Sunday: "What happened with the Hunter Biden story at CBS before the 2020 election?"

The short answer is the Tiffany network did not direct the CBS News investigative unit "to develop more reporting on the laptop" in October 2020 after Herridge vetted materials including "a million dollar retainer from a Chinese energy firm, emails with Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski as well as Hunter Biden text messages," she wrote. "That would have been standard practice."

CBS fired Herridge and confiscated her reporting materials in February, only returning them after the House Judiciary Committee opened a probe of the network. She testified in Congress alongside investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson this spring to stop the government from forcing journalists to disclose sources.

Senior executive Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews had asked Herridge for "confirmed reporting" on the laptop story that would be given to evening news anchor Norah O’Donnell, so she started "working the phones, reaching out to people on the Hunter Biden emails for corroboration and cross-referencing court records," Herridge wrote.

Ciprian-Matthews asked Herridge explicitly if her findings showed "a Hunter connection," and she responded that "all of" the records showed that connection, providing some to Ciprian-Matthews. They had a brief call but nothing further happened to her knowledge, Herridge said.

When its crown jewel "60 Minutes" interviewed President Trump about the abandoned laptop, whose contents had been reviewed by the New York Post then suppressed across social media, and correspondent Lesley Stahl said the laptop "can’t be verified," Herridge said "I felt sick" because "I knew the laptop records could be vetted and confirmed."

She saw a "disconnect between the CBS News division and 60 Minutes," as further evidenced by the latter's credulous approach to the now-discredited letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials claiming the laptop had "classic earmarks" of a Russian information operation. 

O'Donnell repeated the falsehood that the material had not been confirmed to have come from Hunter Biden's laptop and asked then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden if this was "part of a Russian disinformation campaign," letting him answer that "the combination of Russia, Giuliani, the president together" proved it was a "smear attack."

"I was encouraged that the most senior corporate executives told me privately they wanted reporting that spoke truth to power on both sides of the aisle," Herridge wrote. 

"They even provided additional resources, but based on my experience, it seemed their corporate objectives were frustrated by CBS News executives and other employees who were reluctant to take on a story about the President’s son," she said.