Prominent former intelligence officials who sought to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation four years ago remain defiant about their willingness to abuse their security status to engage in election interference.
On Thursday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcripts of interviews with several of the 51 officials who signed the infamous 2020 letter to Politico writing the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Among those interviewed include former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen, and former CIA official Nick Shapiro, all of whom expressed no regrets about signing the letter.
“I don’t have regrets about signing the statement, given what was known at the time,” Rasmussen told lawmakers. “I regret that the statement has been drawn into a political controversy and regret that that is so.”
John Brennan, who ran the CIA throughout President Barack Obama’s second term, said he only regretted that the infamous letter had “given fuel to those who want to create this furor over it.”
“What the press of what individuals might have done to leverage it for their own purposes or leadership or whatever, that’s up to them,” Brennan told lawmakers in May last year. “I did this as a private citizen.”
Former Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, who resigned in September after his wife suffered a stroke, had pressed former National Intelligence Director James Clapper about any regrets related to the letter “with all the information available to you now.”
“You still don’t regret it?” Stewart asked in May last year.
“No,” Clapper said.
Except the letter from the more than 50 former officials also contradicted statements undermining claims of Russian interference from the incumbent director of national intelligence at the time. The laptop would later be officially entered into evidence to convict Hunter Biden.
House Republicans followed the transcript release Thursday with a video featuring then-candidate Joe Biden using the letter to escape credible accusations of corruption at the final presidential debate of 2020. The video also included footage of the Judiciary Committee’s interview with Morell testifying that a phone call from Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state who was a senior advisor to the campaign, “triggered” the public letter to Politico.
“There were two intents,” Morell said of the letter. “One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was to help Vice President Biden.”
The transcribed interviews were released after the Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government revealed Tuesday that several of the letter’s signatories were being paid by the CIA. According to House investigators, both Morell and former Inspector General David Buckley were both on agency payroll at the time the letter was published. Buckley was also a lead investigator on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6.
Jeremy Bash, who was previously married to CNN’s Thursday-night debate moderator, Dana Bash, was also a signatory named in the House report Tuesday as an “independent contractor” at the time of the letter.
Morell denied the accusations of working for the CIA while signing the letter with a statement to the New York Post. “If you write that, you would [be] wrong,” Morell said. But a House source delivered the CIA document showing Morell’s agency involvement to The Federalist on Tuesday evening.
“The evidence in our report speaks for itself and it seems that the spy who lied is continuing to do so,” Russell Dye, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, told The Federalist.
RealClear Investigative Reporter Paul Sperry chronicled Clapper’s efforts to weaponize the deep state against Republicans in the past two presidential elections Wednesday.
“On Oct. 7, 2016 – just two days before the presidential debate between Trump and Clinton – Clapper issued the unprecedented intelligence advisory with Obama’s personal blessing,” Sperry reported. “It seemed to lend credence to what the Clinton camp was telling the media — that Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election.”
The Russia collusion hoax would go on to undermine the first half of Trump’s presidency and ultimately lay the groundwork for the former intelligence officials to claim four years later that the Hunter Biden laptop was an instrument of Kremlin interference.
“In hindsight, Clapper’s well-timed pseudo-intelligence in 2016 and 2020 helped Clinton and Biden make the case against Trump as a potentially Kremlin-compromised figure, charges that crippled his presidency and later arguably denied him reelection,” Sperry wrote, adding post-election surveys revealed nearly half of Democrat voters in swing states were oblivious to Biden’s own scandals. “In effect, Joe Biden was elected president because millions of voters were steered away by Clapper and his intelligence colleagues from learning about the damning contents on Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
