Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,
Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge has uncovered records pointing to Chinese blackmail efforts targeting the Biden family - documents that sat in plain sight for the legacy media, the FBI, and the CIA, only to be met with willful blindness.
In a recent appearance discussing declassified materials related to China's 2020 election influence operations, Herridge described finding references to blackmail by China that were prepared for inclusion in the president's daily brief.
"I found these records which are talking about blackmail by China," Herridge explained, adding "It was for President Biden's daily brief. I can conclude, I think, that it was probably about targeting his family."
She noted that the findings, along with broader evidence of suppressed intelligence on Chinese influence, were ignored and buried in order to protect Democratic power, stating tghat "in the media or legacy media there was kind of a willful blindness. They didn't want to look at the records. All you had to do was spend a couple of hours."
Full segment:
These findings come in the wake of President Trump's primetime address to the nation last week, announcing newly declassified intelligence detailing China's massive compromise of U.S. voter data and the intelligence community's efforts to bury it.
Herridge, a veteran Emmy-winning investigative reporter, has previously pursued stories on the Hunter Biden laptop, the Biden family's foreign business dealings, and related corruption allegations - reporting that put her at odds with CBS leadership and the broader media consensus.
In February 2024 she was among those laid off in a round of cuts. CBS then seized her reporting files, including materials involving confidential sources. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Herridge described the seizure in stark terms: "When my records were seized I felt it was a journalistic rape."
She added that "CBS News' decision to seize my reporting records crossed a red line that I believe should never be crossed by any media organization" and that "When the network of Walter Cronkite seizes your reporting files, including confidential source information, that is an attack on investigative journalism."
She has maintained that she simply "reported out the facts of the story. I called balls and strikes." The network eventually returned the files under pressure from the House Judiciary Committee and her union.
Earlier, during the 2020 campaign, the Biden team had already labeled her a "partisan, rightwing hack." Her treatment fits a pattern of institutional pushback against journalists who refused to look away from the Biden family's financial ties.
Those ties have been documented for years. House Oversight Committee investigations, led by Chairman James Comer, obtained bank records and witness accounts showing Chinese Communist Party-linked money flowing to Biden family members.
Comer stated that the documents demonstrated the family had received funds from CCP-connected entities and that family members "attempted to sell access & influence around the world."
A subsequent memorandum detailed more than $10 million in foreign money linked to Biden family members and associates, including previously undisclosed Romanian payments and millions tied to CEFC China Energy and related entities.
Republicans highlighted wires that reached multiple family members and questioned what services, if any, were provided in return. Comer accused the White House of running interference rather than correcting the record.
IRS whistleblowers later provided additional detail on Joe Biden's proximity to Hunter Biden's China deals. One text message from Hunter to a Chinese businessman read in part that he was "sitting here with my father" and demanded fulfillment of a financial commitment, warning of consequences involving "the man sitting next to me."
Business associate Rob Walker told the FBI that Joe Biden had stopped by a CEFC-related lunch at Hunter's request to bolster the deal. Whistleblowers described DOJ restrictions that limited questions about "the big guy" or "dad," blocked certain warrants on optics grounds, and produced a far softer outcome than the felony charges the IRS had recommended for millions in unreported foreign income from China, Ukraine, and Romania.
President Trump highlighted the same material in 2023, declaring that "Crooked Joe Biden Is Compromised, Owned By China." He quoted the Hunter text and noted the rapid transfer of millions from Chinese sources, arguing that Beijing understood the leverage it held.
Further evidence of parallel communication channels emerged when investigative journalist Peter Schweizer revealed that Hunter Biden paid for a secret AT&T global "burner" phone used by Joe Biden during his vice presidency.
When journalist John Solomon dialed the number, Joe Biden answered before hanging up. Schweizer shared the account details with the House Oversight Committee in hopes of obtaining records that could illuminate contacts with foreign executives.
Taken together, the pattern is consistent: large foreign payments, documented proximity of the then-vice president and later president to the deals, internal efforts to limit scrutiny, and a media apparatus that treated the most serious questions as radioactive.
Herridge's latest examination of the declassified China records simply adds another layer - references to blackmail pressure that reached the level of the president's daily brief - yet once again the institutional response has been to look away.
The American people were told for years that these matters were conspiracy theories or Russian disinformation. The bank records, the texts, the whistleblower testimony, the phone, and now the intelligence product references say otherwise.
Accountability still matters. The full scope of foreign leverage over the Biden family remains a question of national security.