The New York Times has stealthily deleted its false claim that a New York Post report about Hunter Biden’s laptop was “unsubstantiated.”
The outlet quietly removed the word “unsubstantiated” from an online article on Monday in its report revealing the Federal Election Commission’s ruling that Twitter did not violate election laws when it censored The Post’s reporting on the laptop ahead of the 2020 election.
“The Federal Election Commission has dismissed Republican accusations that Twitter violated election laws in October by blocking people from posting links to an unsubstantiated New York Post article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter Biden, in a decision that is likely to set a precedent for future cases involving social media sites and federal campaigns,” the initial Times report said.
The Times also tweeted out a link to the online article that contained the “unsubstantiated” claim.
But hours later, the report was updated to remove the word entirely from the article.
While it was deleted from the online article, the word is still visible in a tweet that the outlet pushed out.
The Washington Examiner was first to report the “unsubstantiated” assertion had been removed just hours after the Times posted the article.
The Times faced immediate backlash on Twitter, with some accusing the outlet of trying to cover for President Biden and his son.
“The ‘unsubstantiated’ Hunter Biden story is true and has since been substantiated. Pretty amazing that nowhere does this NYT article make those facts clear. It just lets the audience believe, misleadingly, that the story was either bogus or a Russian op,” the Daily Caller’s Geoffrey Ingersoll tweeted.
“Unsubstantiated? LOL…NYT desperate to continue to cover for Biden and sons …,” Fox News contributor Sara Carter tweeted.
Chuck Ross, a reporter at the Washington Free Beacon, tweeted: “A source familiar with this ruling tells me that the FEC does not call the Biden laptop article ‘unsubstantiated.’ That’s NYT’s language.”
The FEC’s ruling hasn’t yet been made public but was leaked to the Times.
The Republican National Committee was “weighing its options” Monday in the wake of the FEC’s decision to toss its complaint that Twitter illegally suppressed The Post’s October 2020 expose about Hunter’s emails.
“As Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said recently, it was a ‘total mistake’ for Twitter to suppress this important story,” RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said.
“Worse, it was also illegal and our complaint persuasively explains why.”
Vaughn added: “The RNC is weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the FEC.”
Dorsey admitted during a congressional hearing earlier this year that blocking users from sharing The Post’s story was a “total mistake.”
The social media giant had earlier claimed — without any evidence — that the contents of a laptop that held Hunter Biden’s emails, text messages, photos and videos were “hacked materials.”
In April, Hunter Biden — who has publicly detailed his drug and alcohol problems — admitted that a MacBook Pro computer containing the data, and which was abandoned at a repair shop in his family’s hometown of Wilmington, Del., could have been his.
“I really don’t know what the answer is, that’s the truthful answer,” he told “CBS Sunday Morning.”