Peter Schweizer on Hunter Biden: 'He was flat-out lying to the national media' and they 'accepted it'

The mainstream media did Americans a "massive disservice" by failing to pursue the story surrounding the federal investigation into Hunter Biden before the election, Peter Schweizer told "Life, Liberty & Levin" in an interview airing Sunday. 

"We have a national media that wants to protect certain powerful figures and wants to go after other public figures," the "Profiles in Corruption" author told host Mark Levin. "And it's a national tragedy."

Hunter Biden, the 50-year-old son of President-elect Joe Biden, confirmed in a statement Wednesday that his "tax affairs" are being investigated by the Delaware U.S. Attorney's Office. A source with knowledge of the situation told Fox News the investigation began in 2018. Other sources added that the investigation was based in part on the existence of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) related to Hunter Biden’s business dealings in “China and other foreign nations."

"We're in a situation today, Mark, where a grand jury was impaneled in 2018 to look into Hunter Biden and his foreign dealings," Schweizer said. "It has a counterintelligence component. It has a tax fraud component. It has a public corruption component. This has been going on for two years and nobody in the national media took it upon themselves to actually pursue that story."

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Prior to the election, the New York Post published a series of reports on Hunter Biden's overseas business interests that were largely ignored by the mainstream media. In addition, sharing of the reports was restricted by social media giants Facebook and Twitter, the latter of which went so far as to lock the Post's main account. Both Hunter and Joe Biden repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, though Hunter Biden stepped down from the board of China-based BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co. in October 2019.

"What you have is a situation today where the Bidens have repeatedly lied to the media and the media doesn't care," Schweizer said. "They don't want to catch them in lies, they don't want to pursue the lies."

Schweizer then turned to a now-famous interview Hunter Biden gave to ABC News' "Good Morning America" in October 2019.

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"Hunter Biden goes on national television ... and said [he had] not received a single penny from the Chinese," he recalled. "Well, we now know, of course, that he got close to $5 million from CEFC, a Chinese government-connected energy company. We know he had a big equity stake in that private equity firm [BHR], a $1.5 billion private equity firm.

"We know there were other transactions involving Rosemont Realty and Rosemont Opportunities Fund, too," Schweizer added. "So he was flat-out lying to the national media. What's been the media's response? Nothing. They've taken it. They've accepted it. In fact, they not only covered it up, Ben Smith of The New York Times ran a piece right before the election bragging about the fact that the gatekeepers -- which of course, include the Times and other publications -- had effectively killed this story and how proud they were of it.

Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.