Catherine Herridge is a long-respected investigative reporter who worked at Fox News and then CBS News. Now, a year or so after getting fired by CBS, the New York Post reports that she is revealing the pressure CBS executives placed on her to quash the Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
Herridge said that she brought CBS News executive Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews evidence about the bombshell information contained on the Hunter Biden laptop, including material about “a million dollar retainer from a Chinese energy firm,” along with business texts and emails from Hunter Biden, son of then-Democratic presidential challenger Joe Biden. “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell was included in the meeting, which occurred in early October 2020, only weeks before the election.
Herridge expressed her shock and disbelief when, later that month, during a “60 Minutes” interview of President Donald Trump by correspondent Lesley Stahl, she saw Stahl claim the laptop “couldn’t be verified,” pushing back several times on Trump’s insistence it was real.
“As I watched the broadcast, I felt sick,” Herridge said in her recently launched newsletter this week. “I knew the laptop records could be vetted and confirmed.”
Herridge said she was surprised that “60 Minutes” didn’t work with the network’s news division to confirm her reporting. Herridge said there was a “disconnect” between the two entities. The long-running magazine show has been under fire recently after they appeared to edit comments made by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris about the conflict between Israel and Iran-sponsored assets in the Middle East.
Before the “60 Minutes” segment with Trump aired, Ciprian-Matthews contacted Herridge to ask if she had “confirmed reporting” on the Hunter Biden laptop story for O’Donnell’s “CBS Evening News” broadcast, the Post reported.
Herridge confirmed that she had been “working the phones, reaching out to people on the Hunter Biden emails for corroboration and cross-referencing court records.”
“I told Ciprian-Matthews the vetted materials included 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,” Herridge said.
“Asked by CIprian-Matthews if there was a ‘Hunter connection,’ I responded, ‘Yes, all of them,’” Herridge wrote. She wrote that she also provided some of the vetted records directly to Ciprian-Matthews. However her reporting fell into a black hole.
“I don’t know at this point what happened,” Herridge explained.
Herridge, who had years of investigative experience at Fox and CBS, found it strange that the network didn’t ask the investigative unit to conduct additional reporting on the laptop.
“That would have been a standard practice,” Herridge wrote.
At the time the laptop story was broken by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, no other media outlet touched the story. The New York Post was also given a strike by Facebook and Twitter, which banned the story.
It was two more years before CBS decided to broadcast a forensic review of the Biden laptop data, however, by that time, Ciprian-Matthews had been promoted to president of CBS News.
Herridge said she continued to push for her report on the laptop, which “determined that both the data belonged to Hunter Biden and it had not been tampered with.”
“Our report was broadcast in November 2022, after the midterm elections,” Herridge said.
The New York Post contacted CBS News for comment, but none was received.
Herridge was among many casualties at CBS News earlier this year, among cutting by parent company Paramount Global. The network seized Herridge’s reporting materials, including those from the Hunter Biden laptop story, upon her ouster.
Sources with knowledge of the decision said Ciprian-Matthews made the decision to seize her files. After pressure from the union representing Herridge, the materials were returned several days later.
The New York Post reported earlier this year that Ciprian-Matthews, who is black, has been accused of sidelining white journalists and actively blocking Herridge’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop. Ciprian-Matthews abruptly stepped down in August and is acting as senior adviser for presidential election coverage. She is poised to leave CBS News after the election.”
Comments
2024-11-07T17:54-0500 | Comment by: Rick
Catherine Herridge is one of the few investigative reporters I pay attention to. In my opinion, she is a straight shooter in her reporting.
2024-11-07T17:54-0500 | Comment by: Rick
Catherine Herridge is one of the few investigative reporters I pay attention to. In my opinion, she is a straight shooter in her reporting.
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