Claim: CBS News Stalled Airing Hunter's Laptop Story

NY Post Composite

CBS News went to great lengths to squash correspondent Catherine Herridge’s reporting about the Hunter Biden laptop just weeks before the 2020 election, the award-winning investigative journalist claimed.

In her bombshell allegation, Herridge revealed she brought evidence to CBS News executive Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews and “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell in early October 2020 that the laptop contained material about “a million dollar retainer from a Chinese energy firm,” along with business texts and emails from the son of Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

But later that month, Herridge wrote that she was shocked to see “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl say the laptop “couldn’t be verified” during a tense interview with then-President Donald Trump.

“As I watched the broadcast, I felt sick,” Herridge, who was controversially fired by the Tiffany Network in February, wrote Sunday night in her recently launched newsletter.

Ten days after Stahl’s segment aired, she was contacted by Ciprian-Matthews asking her if she had “confirmed reporting” on the Hunter Biden story for O’Donnell’s broadcast.  Herridge assured the executive that her extensive reporting included “working the phones, reaching out to people on the Hunter Biden emails for corroboration and cross-referencing court records.”

“Asked by Ciprian-Matthews if there was a ‘Hunter connection,’ I responded, ‘Yes, all of them,'” she wrote. Herridge said that she then provided some of the vetted records directly to Ciprian-Matthews.

But her reporting was never aired, according to The NY Post.

The NY Post was the only mainstream publication to report at the time that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden — leading to a ban of the story by social media giants Facebook and Twitter.

It took an additional two years for CBS to broadcast a forensic review of the Hunter Biden laptop data. By that time, Ciprian-Matthews had been elevated to the role of CBS News president.