On Dec. 9, the Press Herald published a letter from Gail Knowles of Falmouth, imploring it to excise Donald Trump photos because she finds his “self-satisfied smirk disgusting.” On Dec. 15, the Press Herald published my response criticizing the paper’s hypocrisy in publishing the Knowles hate-Trump letter and 40 column inches detailing Trump’s legal battles, while ignoring the “gusher of Twitter releases detailing the collusion between big tech, the intelligence community and the Democratic Party” in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. In her Dec. 19 letter, Susan Tobey of Brunswick wrote that my letter created a “false equivalency” between the scant coverage of Hunter’s laptop and my contention that an “orgy of media coverage” would have ensued if this had been the Don Jr. or Eric Trump laptop. “The difference,” she writes, is that the Trump boys “had official roles in their father’s administration,” whereas “Hunter Biden is simply a wayward son.”

Tobey’s assertion is factually incorrect. Brothers Trump held no official roles in the Trump administration. Regarding her comment that “there are better ways for Republicans to spend their time,” while his father was vice president, Hunter Biden netted $1 million a year serving on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Mary Harris of Slate said that Hunter Biden’s emails hinted at “cozy relationships between him and businesspeople from China and Ukraine.”

Investigating potentially compromising first family foreign financial entanglements should interest everyone – Republicans and Democrats.

Charles Todorich
South Portland