The CIA interfered in the 2020 election by colluding with the Biden campaign to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story, a congressional report found Tuesday.
“It’s inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer or contractor to be involved in the political process,” former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell acknowledged to Congress during its investigation of the incident.
WATCH — Karine Jean-Pierre Dodges Question About Whether or Not President Lied About Hunter Biden:
The White House / YouTubeIn 2020, 51 ex-spies signed an infamous letter that called reporting on Hunter’s laptop “Russian disinformation” ahead of the election. Current Secretary of State Antony Blinken allegedly coordinated the story for political purposes.
CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand wrote the infamous, and now discredited, Politico story that used “dozens of former intel officials” to push a false and misleading narrative about the origins of Hunter’s laptop.
President Joe Biden cited the story during a presidential debate with Trump to discredit the contents of the laptop.
WATCH — Vance: We Should Investigate “Collusion” Between Press, Big Technology, National Security on Hunter Biden:
The House Judiciary report on Monday alleged three key facts about the CIA’s involvement in the 2020 election:
• High ranking CIA officials, up to and including then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, were made aware of the Hunter Biden statement prior to its approval and publication. Because several former senior intelligence officials signed the statement, the PCRB sent the draft statement to the CIA’s then-Chief Operating Officer (COO) Andrew Makridis, who said he subsequently informed then-Director Haspel or then-Deputy Director Vaughn Frederick Bishop that the statement would be published soon. Senior CIA leadership had an opportunity at that time to slow down the CIA’s process for reviewing publication submissions and ensure that such an extraordinary statement was properly vetted.
• Some of the statement’s signatories, including Michael Morell, were on active contract with the CIA at the time of the Hunter Biden statement’s publication. Throughout the course of the Committees’ investigation, the signatories claimed to not have had access to any classified information when asserting that the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the hallmarks” of Russian disinformation. However, at the time of the statement’s publication, at least two signatories—Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley—were on the CIA’s payroll as contractors. Due to purported operational concerns, the CIA declined to declassify the entire universe of signatories who were on active contract. In addition, some signatories to the Hunter Biden statement also had special “Green Card” access to the CIA at the time of the statement’s publication, allowing them to gain entry to secure CIA facilities.
• After publication of the Hunter Biden statement, CIA employees internally expressed concern about the statement’s politicized content, acknowledging it was not “helpful to the Agency in the long run.” At least one employee found it “[i]nteresting to see what was submitted and approved” when discussing media talking points that the statement’s co-author, former Senior Intelligence Service Officer Marc Polymeropoulos, submitted related to the statement. When discussing Polymeropoulos’s talking points, another CIA official stated, “It appears [Polymeropoulos] is actively involved in a pro-Biden campaign and may be disclosing classified information in his efforts.” The CIA’s internal review board, known as the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB), determined that Polymeropoulos’s talking points contained classified information that had to be removed prior to publication.
The full report is here.
Seventy-one percent of Americans believe accurate reporting of Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell” could have altered the 2020 presidential election, TIPP Insights polling revealed in 2022.
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