Former POLITICO Reporters Break Silence, Expose Outlet’s Shocking 2020 Cover-Up

Former Politico reporters Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri have come forward with claims that their former employer actively suppressed negative stories about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and the infamous Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 presidential election. Caputo and Palmeri, both seasoned political journalists, disclosed that Politico’s editorial leadership issued a clear directive to avoid coverage of the controversial laptop.

In October 2020, just weeks before the U.S. presidential election, the New York Post’s Emma-Jo Morris published a story alleging that Hunter Biden, son of then-candidate Joe Biden, had left a laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop. The laptop purportedly contained emails suggesting that Hunter had introduced his father to a Ukrainian businessman from Burisma, an energy company where Hunter served on the board. These emails raised questions about potential conflicts of interest and corruption.

“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,” Caputo revealed Thursday. “And I was told this came from up high at Politico: ‘Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, and don’t tweet about the laptop.’ The only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation at the least.”

Palmeri echoed Caputo’s account, relaying the challenges she faced in reporting on the Biden family. “I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted—the story on the gun,” Palmeri said.

“I spent three months on it. I went to the laptop shop, and I did all of the reporting in Delaware. But yeah, it had to be 100% nailed down. I had everything—the police reports. I’m a solid reporter, but I do wonder if it would have been published a little quicker, those different types of stories.”

Caputo also shed light on a story he had written regarding a tax lien against Hunter Biden, which was ultimately shelved. “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.”

“I wrote what would have been a classic story, saying, 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.”

In 2020, Hunter Biden’s laptop story was immediately contested. Over 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter stating that the release of the alleged emails had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” though they acknowledged they had no direct evidence of Russian involvement. This led to widespread media skepticism and limited coverage of the story.

Social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, took steps to limit the spread of the New York Post article, citing concerns over potential misinformation and the sourcing of the material. Twitter, for instance, temporarily blocked users from sharing links to the story, citing its policy against distributing hacked materials.

In the following months, forensic analyses authenticated some of the emails from the laptop, confirming that the device did belong to Hunter. Joe Biden would end up becoming the 46th president.