The Media Research Center was a big fan of Gal Luft in 2008, mainly because of his objection to importing oil.
- A March 2008 post by Ariel Cohen approvingly stated: “As Gal Luft, Director of the Institute for Analysis of Global Security recently wrote, at current oil prices the United States sends $460 billion per year overseas to finance its daily purchase of 12 million barrels of imported oil. This amount of money is about the size of our defense budget and three times the size of the ”economic stimulus” package recently passed by Congress. Dependence on imported oil threatens the U.S. with a long-term economic decline and loss of sovereignty, according to Luft.”
- A June 2008 post by Geoffrey Dickens included a quote of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stating that “we basically have an energy policy that Gal Luft has described, I think very accurately as the ‘sum of all lobbies.'”
- Julia Seymour devoted an entire July 2008 post to “energy security expert” Luft claiming that “The environmental movement stands to lose many supporters if it works against people’s economic prosperity.”
The next time Luft popped up at the MRC was in a February 2013 post by Brent Baker noting that an essay by Luft was among the contents of an issue of Foreign Policy that said too many nice things about Barack Obama.
Luft didn’t get renewed attention at the MRC again until his entanglement as an alleged whistleblower against Hunter Biden. A March 31 post by Dickens doing a time count of coverage of “Biden family corruption” repeated a claim by the right-wing New York Post that “Israeli energy expert” Luft was claiming that “Hunter Biden had an FBI mole named “One-Eye” who tipped off his Chinese business partners that they were under investigation,” also noting that Luft was “arrested in Cyprus last month on gunrunning charges” and made his claims after “being detained at a Cyprus airport as he prepared to board a plane to Israel.” Dickens also included Luft ranting that he was the target of a “politically motivated extradition request by the U.S.” and that the “DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim, and Hunter Biden.”
But the MRC never told its readers that Luft kinda disappeared after that, as Republican Rep. James Comer seemed to confirm in a May appearance on Fox Business. That’s not a good look for a would-be whistleblower, but the MRC doesn’t care. When he surfaceed while in fugitive-from-justice mode, Dickens cheered the development in a July 6 post:
An eyewitness with stunning claims about the Biden family scandals has come forward on a video, yet so far ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to report on them.
Israeli professor and former Israeli army officer Dr. Gal Luft in a 14-minute long video (released by the New York Post on late Wednesday night) claimed he was about to testify to the House Oversight Committee on the Biden family receiving payments from Chinese officials but was arrested in Cyprus, before he could deliver that testimony.
Dickens quoted the Post noting that Luft is a “fugitive” whose video was “filmed in an undisclosed location while he’s on the run.” The Post was even dismissive of Luft, calling him a “self-proclaimed fall guy.” But Dickens made sure to reward Fox News for helping to push this anti-Hunter narrative: “While the broadcast networks have yet to utter a word on this amazing development, FNC’s Fox & Friends did jump on the story this morning.”
Luft popped up one last time in a July 11 post by Curtis Houck, who was uncritically quoting a question at a White House press briefing by a New York Post reporter who noted that Luft had been indicted “for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act by working without registration for a company called CEFC China Energy. The President’s son and brother worked for the same firm without registration and the President was invoked in that infamous shakedown text message preceding the transfer of $5 million to the Biden family.”
But there’s a lot the MRC hasn’t told you about Luft. As Liz Dye at Wonkette pointed out, the original charging document against Luft was issued in November 2022 — before there was a Republican House to obsess over Hunter — meaning that it’s arguably untrue that Luft is being charged to shut him up about Hunter. She further summarized: “Luft didn’t get indicted because he tried to blow the whistle on Hunter Biden. He got indicted because he was wildly corrupt and because he made false statements about it to the FBI, including in March of 2019, during the very same interview in which Comer alleges that Luft blew the whistle on Hunter Biden.”
Allof which makes it strange that Comer and the MRC are hanging their credibility hat on a guy who’s clearly spinning stories in order to save himself from jail — in part for being a fugitive from justice — rather than out of any interest in telling the truth. But then, there’s a lot of Hunter Biden Derangement Syndrome going on at the MRC these days.