Fired CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge accused her former editors of “defying orders” to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop from their own bosses at the Tiffany Network — namely media heiress Shari Redstone and CBS CEO George Cheeks.

Herridge posted an explosive video on Tuesday that showed Cheeks telling her “several” times that he wanted her to investigate the Hunter Biden laptop scandal — a directive that came directly from Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS parent company Paramount Global, who followed up insisted it was ‘high priority’.

“George Cheeks said to me multiple times that this was a top priority story for the network and that it was a high priority for his boss, Shari Redstone. So I took on that assignment and I did it to the best of my ability,” she said.

Cheeks told her that CBS wanted to “take responsibility” on the issue and “speak truth to power on both sides of the aisle,” which the investigative journalist welcomed.

But the journalist said there was resistance within the left-wing network to her investigation into the president’s son’s laptop and whether its contents exposed corruption by President Biden.

“There were supports within the company for it and there were supports that understood the value of investigating the Hunter Biden story, but there were some elements within CBS News that were just resistant to it,” Herridge said.

“It didn’t matter what the facts of the case really were, and this really bothered me as a journalist.”

CBS did not respond to requests for comment.

Earlier this month, Herridge revealed in her newly launched newsletter that her immediate bosses, Washington bureau chief Mark Lima and CBS News president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, had pushed back on Herridge’s reporting, killing potential stories in the early days of the laptop scandal.

In her bombshell accusation, Herridge said that in early October 2020, she presented evidence to Ciprian-Matthews and “CBS Evening News” host Norah O’Donnell that the laptop contained material about “a million dollar provision from a Chinese energy company,” together with business texts and emails from the son of Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

But her reporting was never broadcast.

The Post was the only mainstream publication at the time to report that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden — leading to a ban on the story by social media giants Facebook and Twitter.

It took another two years for CBS to air a forensic examination of the Hunter Biden laptop data. By then, Ciprian-Matthews had been elevated to the role of CBS News president.

“When we did the story, we did it after midterms. I protested that because it was done before the midterms and my training is to always do the story when it’s ready to go,” she said in Tuesday’s video. “You shouldn’t let the political cycle dictate you.”

After the piece aired, Herridge was forced to continue reporting what she unearthed from the forensic investigation.

“For example, in the text messages, unfortunately, there is the use of the N-word, the liberal use of the N-word, and I thought this was worth a story, but I was told it wasn’t something that interested CBS News . she said, noting that CBS did not do that story, and also passed on information from the forensic investigation that showed “more than half a dozen emails were likely used by Joe Biden.”

“I thought that was a story, but the answer that came back was, ‘Well, we need to know what the contents of the emails are,’” she said, explaining that it would be a “years-long process” to that information and as a result she was told not to respond to it.

As the award-winning journalist continued her search for the laptop story, she was hit by a “disconnect” at the Tiffany Network.

“I didn’t understand how a senior executive like George Cheeks could tell me this was a high priority for the network and for his boss, and yet CBS News executives showed that producers-hosts could refuse that,” she said.

“I came to the conclusion that they must have felt that they were more powerful than George Cheeks, which to me was astonishing. I have never worked in a place where a directive from above would be so defied,” Herridge said.

Earlier this year, Herridge was fired following a series of major layoffs at CBS News parent company Paramount Global. The reporter said she was shocked to hear her head was on the chopping block because she had been consistently digging up shovels.

The investigative journalist said the timing raised eyebrows, noting that when she was fired, she reviewed the metadata of her resignation sheet that her resignation letter was written on Feb. 9, a day after Herridge closed the investigation and Special Prosecutor Robert’s final report Her had treated. about President Biden.

“I reported the facts of that investigation that it was very critical of the president, that it described him as a nice old man with a bad memory and that for that reason, among other things, he could not be prosecuted. So I thought the timing of that was quite telling, on top of the fact that I was given an assignment that was very difficult internally, but I was fully committed to it, and I did everything I could to put CBS first on a story that was not popular. among many people in that network,” she said.

CBS News confiscated Herridge’s reporting materials after her firing.

Sources close to the situation claimed that the decision to keep her files was made by Ciprian-Matthews. The network did not comment on the details.

The files were returned days later under pressure from the union representing Herridge.

Earlier this year, The Post reported that Ciprian-Matthews was accused of sidelining white journalists and blocking Herridge’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The director resigned abruptly in August, moving to the role of senior adviser for coverage of the 2024 presidential election before that. She is no longer with the network.