CNN and MSNBC skipped airing live coverage of the House Oversight Committee questioning the explosive claims from the IRS whistleblowers involved in the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
IRS special agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who revealed his identity for the first time at Wednesday's hearing, doubled down on their allegations that investigators were repeatedly blocked and stonewalled from seeking further information that could implicate President Biden and that requests by U.S. Attorney David Weiss to bring more serious charges against his son were denied.
However, the two liberal networks that carried every hearing involving Russiagate, the Ukraine scandal, Jan. 6 and both impeachments of former President Trump, declined to cover the IRS whistleblowers that fuel corruption allegations against the Democrat currently in the White House. They instead aired limited segments recapping the testimony.
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NBC News correspondent Ken Dilanian appeared on MSNBC to downplay the whistleblower claims, echoing talking points from Democrat lawmakers at the hearing chalking up the testimony as being mere routine disagreements between investigators and prosecutors and invoked Shapley's legal team having ties to Republicans.
Meanwhile, CNN correspondent Zachary Cohen was invited on air to highlight comments made by Rep. Jamie Raskin. D-Md., stressing GOP lawmakers have "failed to connect any of those investigations to the president himself."
The decisions by MSNBC and CNN not to carry the hearing live is not a total shock. While MSNBC has long been a booster for the Biden presidency, CNN has quickly reverted to its partisan ways since last month's ousting of its president Chris Licht, who was given the mandate by his corporate bosses at Warner Bros. Discovery to restore CNN's journalistic credibility by eliminating the network's perception of having a liberal bias, a mission his rank and file vehemently opposed.
The liberal cable networks icing out live coverage of the hearing was perhaps foreshadowed by the softball interviews he granted to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace and CNN's Fareed Zakaria, who both avoided mentioning Hunter Biden's plea agreement with the DOJ and the claims made by the IRS whistleblowers.
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In the weeks leading up to Wednesday's hearing, the legacy media made efforts to shrug off the severity of the allegations leveled by the IRS whistleblowers, many news organizations even using scare quotes around the term whistleblower to suggest they only received the title from GOP lawmakers.
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, for example, attempted to walk back her own use of the term "whistleblower" for Shapley, pointing to how the GOP-controlled Ways and Means Committee declared him one and how she usually "defers" to the individual's title.
The IRS whistleblowers came forward after Hunter Biden reached what critics call a "sweetheart deal" with the DOJ involving him pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes and entered a pretrial diversion agreement regarding the felony gun registration charge.
A separate FBI whistleblower claimed the DOJ was informed about a potential bribery scheme involving Biden himself and a foreign entity as vice president.
House Republicans previously released findings alleging a web of financial ties between several Biden family members and countries like China and Romania through different bank accounts and shell companies.
The latest developments have fueled questions over whether President Biden allowed his family to profit off the family name during his vice presidency and after leaving office, as well as whether Biden himself received any kickbacks, as one email suggested that a deal would give "10% for the big guy."
