The CIA on October 7 released a heavily redacted file showing that a 2016 intelligence assessment about then-Vice President Joe Biden’s 2015 trip to Kyiv was withheld from normal distribution at the Biden office’s request, a disclosure that raises serious questions about transparency and the abuse of public office. Conservatives see this as vindication for years of probing into the Biden family’s foreign entanglements and a clear example of the swamp protecting its own. The fact that the agency itself put the documents on the public record makes it impossible for the media’s usual comfort-with-ambiguity routine to pretend nothing happened.
The declassified passages quote Ukrainian officials describing “bewilderment and disappointment” after Biden’s visit and privately suggesting the trip was little more than a photo-op rather than substantive diplomacy, while also noting concerns about Hunter Biden’s lucrative role at Burisma. Intelligence staffers say the assessment met dissemination criteria before it was suppressed, meaning this was not some trivial bureaucratic kerfuffle but an unusual intervention into the flow of intelligence. Americans who still believe institutions are neutral should take a long look at these internal emails and ask why their leaders thought shielding a vice president from scrutiny was acceptable.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer reacted exactly as any honest investigator would: he called it a cover-up and demanded answers, arguing that the declassification proves what Republicans have warned about for years — that the Biden circle used its power to bury inconvenient facts. Comer’s outrage is not partisan theater when the raw documents show officials trying to stop distribution; it’s a sober demand for accountability from people who answer to voters, not to a permanent governing class. If the left’s line has been that process matters only when it helps them, today’s disclosure exposes that argument as naked self-preservation.
Skeptics will point to the messy history of some early allegations — notably the FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who later pleaded guilty to lying about phony bribery claims tied to the Bidens — and rightly say not every smear should stand. But Smirnov’s mendacity does not erase the internal U.S. government records showing that a report assessing Ukrainian officials’ concerns was blocked from dissemination, which is a separate and far more troubling institutional problem. Conservatives should not live or die on a single witness; we want documents, and now we have them in black and white.
Watching the cable shows and hearing commentators shrug, you get the sense they’ve decided that anything involving the Bidens is either too complicated to explain or too dangerous to pursue. That’s exactly the kind of cowardice that allows corruption to fester until it becomes the norm, and yes, this is the stuff of Third World countries where elites rig the rules and then call it governance. Americans deserve better than double standards and protected families who treat power like a family business; fierce, relentless scrutiny is the only cure.
This episode also underscores why congressional oversight exists: to pry open closed doors when the executive appears to be protecting its own. Republicans in the House have been investigating the Biden family for years, producing thousands of pages of records and witness testimony that, until today, were dismissed by the chattering class as partisan noise. Now that the CIA itself has put these files into the light, political theater should give way to criminal referrals, sobriety, and proper legal process if the evidence supports it.
The moment calls for concrete action, not op-eds: sworn testimony, subpoenas where appropriate, and prosecutions if laws were broken. Patriots who love this country must demand that institutions serve citizens equally, not protect a president or his family because of party loyalty. If Washington refuses to police itself, the next generation will inherit a republic hollowed out by impunity, and conservatives will keep fighting until every last question is answered.
