House Republicans are demanding answers from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after a whistleblower came forward with allegations of agency interference to thwart investigations into Hunter Biden.
On Thursday, the GOP chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees sent CIA Director William Burns a letter seeking records related to claims the CIA acted with the Department of Justice to protect President Joe Biden and his son.
“The information we recently received from the whistleblower seems to corroborate our concerns about DOJ’s deviations from standard process to provide Hunter Biden with preferential treatment,” lawmakers wrote. “According to the whistleblower, in August 2021, when IRS investigators were preparing to interview Patrick Kevin Morris, an associate of Hunter Biden, the CIA intervened to stop the interview.”
“Two DOJ officials were allegedly summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia for a briefing regarding Mr. Morris,” lawmakers added. “At that meeting, it was communicated that Mr. Morris could not be a witness during the investigation.”
Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and James Comer of Kentucky, who chair the Judiciary and Oversight Committees, respectively, gave Director Burns until April 4 to respond to the congressional inquiry.
In December, House Republicans began to probe CIA interference in the 2020 election over the agency’s potential involvement with the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter, which aimed to discredit the computer as an instrument of Russian disinformation.
“We understand that former intelligence officials often return to the intelligence community under private contract for their previous agencies,” Jordan wrote. “It is vital to the Committees’ oversight to understand whether any of the signatories of the public statement were actively employed by CIA as contractors or consultants at the time they signed the public statement.”
While the CIA faces scrutiny for protecting political allies, the same agency is accused of peddling fabricated conspiracies to undermine Republicans. In February, Substack journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag published a series of exposés on the CIA, revealing the intelligence agency responsible for Russiagate with pressure applied to allied nations to surveil the Trump campaign.
“The US [intelligence community] asked the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance to surveil Trump’s associates and share the intelligence they acquired with US agencies, say sources close to a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPCI) investigation,” they reported.
The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, the team of investigative reporters added, was likely an operation to recover material compiled in a binder that would expose deep state misconduct related to the Russia hoax.
“Multiple sources believe that Trump’s possession of the binder, or one of multiple binders, led the FBI to raid his home in Mar-a-Lago, which led to the prosecution of Trump by Justice Department special prosecutor Jack Smith,” they wrote. Former CIA Director Gina Haspel, however, who led the CIA under Trump, “repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation” as far back as 2018.
