Is there a single journalist willing to say with a straight face they believe the emails relating to the Bidens are either fabricated or otherwise fraudulently altered, but the Bidens just aren't saying so? There has to be some limits to your willingness to go to bat for them.

When you report a huge archive, there's no way to prove the negative that none of it is altered. You investigate & confirm as much as you can, then use your journalistic judgment. The only way you get confirmation is when the subjects of the reporting don't deny the authenticity.

When we reported the Snowden archive, we knew it was genuine, but breathed a huge sigh of relief when NSA didn't claim the docs were fake.

The same was true with our Brazil reporting over the last year: publishing private messages from corrupt Bolsonaro officials & prosecutors.

As a journalist publishing private communications & docs that are incriminating, you know the subjects of the reporting will immediately claim they're fake *if the are*. Of course they will: that would kill the reporting!

There's a reason the Bidens aren't claiming they're fake.

I don't think that the emails -- so far -- reveal a huge scandal. They so far just establish standard sleaze and DC corruption.

The huge scandal to me is the blatant rank-closing and cone of silence -- a prohibition -- erected *by journalists* around this story to defend Biden.