We are reliably informed that “elections have consequences,” and House Republicans are eager to prove it by using their new majority to reveal Biden family corruption. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, incoming chairman of the Oversight Committee, was blunt about his goal. 

“The president’s participation in enriching his family is, in a word, abuse of the highest order,” Comer said. “I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where our focus will be next Congress.” 

That’s a very big idea, which guarantees he will face very big resistance in trying to reveal the evidence and shape public ­opinion. 

The White House is lining up a social-media defense operation and Democrats in Congress will rally to the cause, but the biggest hurdle for Republicans will be the lefty overlords who control Big Media and Big Tech. Already the Praetorian Guards are signaling their allegiance to the president and a willingness to use their power to downplay, distort or hide the facts, just as they did with The Post’s initial laptop revelations in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign. 

They got Joe Biden elected and they’re not likely to abandon him now. Besides, telling the truth about the president would be admitting that Donald Trump was right about something, and that is forbidden. 

Boring & untrustworthy 

The most dramatic expression of the current willful blindness comes from The Associated Press. As I have noted, the wire service used to be boring but trustworthy. Now it’s boring and untrust­worthy. 

An AP weekend story about the GOP plan picked up by numerous outlets was full of the usual tropes about “conspiracy theories” regarding the Bidens and ignored Comer’s statements about probing Joe Biden, making it seem as if the focus would be only on the son. 

The story also contained the following: “Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and nothing the Republicans have put forth suggests otherwise.” 

Fake news alert! 

As pure opinion in a news story, the clause is a breach of the AP claim to be a purveyor of straight news. 

More important, the breezy statement that there is no evidence that Joe spoke to his son about the business is easily disproved by well-known facts AP reporters and editors must be aware of. 

There are scores of emails, ­photos and messages on the laptop and elsewhere showing Joe was directly involved in helping his son’s business. They traveled to China together in 2013 on Air Force Two when Joe was vice president, a trip where Hunter scored a $1.5 billion investment from a Chinese bank controlled by the Communist Party. 

Does the AP believe they never once discussed Hunter’s reason for being on the round-trip flight or his meetings in Beijing? 

It’s a preposterous idea and ­although a later version of the same story on the AP’s own site omitted that fake-news clause, Republicans should heed the lesson. This is what they’re up against. 

Another step by CBS News shows a different version of the same partisanship. In a move that produced as much derision as information, the network reported this: “Data from a laptop that the lawyer for a Delaware computer repair shop owner says was left by Hunter Biden in 2019 — and which the shop owner later provided to the FBI under subpoena — shows no evidence of tampering or fabrication, according to an independent review commissioned by CBS News.” 

Breaking news, huh? As The Post put it: 

It took CBS 769 days to verify what this paper reported in October of 2020. 

Yet for any serious news organization, authenticating the laptop should only be the first step. A number of major outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, also beat CBS in that effort, but aside from one or two stories, they’ve all failed to pursue the central issue: What role did Joe Biden play in Hunter’s foreign influence-peddling scheme, and did he personally profit from the tens of millions of dollars paid to Hunter and Jim Biden, Joe’s brother? 

Their lack of interest is all the more egregious in light of claims by Tony Bobulinski, a partner of Hunter and Jim Biden, that Joe Biden was “the big guy” in line for a secret 10% cut from a joint venture with a Chinese ­conglomerate. 

One deal only? 

To my knowledge, not a single outlet has disputed Bobulinski’s claim, nor has the White House. So are we to believe Joe was going to get a cut of one deal only? 

Even if true, it matters because that deal was arranged during 2015 and 2016, while Joe was vice president. That is evidence the president is compromised when it comes to China. 

And what do the media handmaidens make of laptop emails showing money moving between checking accounts belonging to Joe and Hunter? What about the emails showing Hunter paying for Joe’s household expenses in ­Delaware? 

Again, there’s been no claim from the media or the White House that any of those emails are anything less than legitimate. 

The media’s failure to either report or challenge the evidence showing Joe’s involvement suggests there is a lane for Republican investigators to follow. With their new subpoena power and ability to take confidential testimony, they must methodically build an airtight case. 

If they go too fast and make public claims they can’t support, the media will have the excuse it wants to ignore everything that follows. 

Of course, no matter how much evidence the GOP finds, the Justice Department will ignore it for the next two years. Merrick Garland, the bitterly partisan attorney general, will instead stay fixated on the only target Dems approve of, Trump. 

Still, that’s no excuse for Republicans to back off. They need only recall a key lesson of Watergate: Follow the money.

A thankful perspective

A reminder that it’s the season for gratitude comes from a conversation Andrew Yang had with Eboo Patel, the founder and president of Interfaith America. In a mass email, Yang, who ran for mayor and president as a Dem before leaving the party, quotes Patel as saying: 

“One of the things that strikes me about the fancy colleges . . . is that they are most likely to teach you a language of criticism and deconstruction, a language that encourages you to think of yourself as oppressed. I think this is a useful pair of glasses to put on from time to time, but it’s a terrible idea to do permanent surgery on your eyes such that you only see the bad things that happen to you. 

“First of all, you are not oppressed. To use that word in reference to yourself [as an American college student] is to announce to the world that you utterly lack perspective. Most of the world would trade places with you in an instant.” 

Happy Thanksgiving.