Former CBS Reporter Reveals How Executives Blocked Her Reporting on Hunter Biden Laptop
This confirms what many suspected.
This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Harold Hutchison
Former CBS investigative reporter Catherine Herridge said Thursday CBS News executives postponed airing her reports on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Herridge began working as an independent journalist after CBS laid her off in February 2024 while she was fighting a legal battle over whether she should be forced to disclose a source, after clashes with CBS executives at the time. Herridge said in the video posted on X that she clashed with executives over the timing of her report on the Hunter Biden laptop contents.
“When we did the story, we did it after the (2022) midterms,” Herridge said. “I argued against that because it was ready before the midterms and my training is that you should always do the story when it’s ready to go. You should not be dictated by the political cycle.”
WATCH:
“Once we got the laptop story on the morning news, I felt that there was so much there that we could still do,” Herridge continued. “For example, in the text messages, there’s unfortunately, uh, the use of the N word, the liberal use of the N word.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation confirmed the authenticity of some of the contents of the laptop in October 2020. The Washington Post and New York Times confirmed the authenticity of the data in March 2022 in articles about investigations into Biden by the Department of Justice.
Prior to discussing the delay, Herridge discussed the steps she took to obtain what she described as “a lot of effort to get the cleanest copy” of the data from the laptop in question.
A jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges in connection with the 2018 purchase of a Colt .38-caliber revolver in June 2024. Biden entered a guilty plea on federal tax charges shortly before his trial was scheduled to start in September 2024, but his father, then-President Joe Biden, pardoned him on Dec. 1, 2024.
Herridge faced civil contempt charges after she refused an order from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, to reveal her sources for a 2017 story she did for Fox News on a person investigated on suspicion of spying for the People’s Republic of China. Herridge later testified about the legal battle and her firing from CBS in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, has since been acquired by Skydance, which named The Free Press co-founder Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News.
CBS News did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the DCNF.
Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation
So nice of her to let us know all this now, after it's completely obvious.
Fantastic reporting on what so many suspected but couldn't prove. Tying story timing to elections instead of journalistic readiness shows pretty clear editorial interference. I've seen similiar gatekeeping at local newsrooms where politically sensitive stories get shelved until 'conveneint' timing. Once its no longer risky, suddenly the story can run, which totally defeats the purpose of accountability journalism.