Panetta: I Don’t Regret Signing Hunter Laptop Letter, It Was to Warn People About Disinformation

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Source,” former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta said he has no regrets about signing the 2020 letter that incorrectly claimed that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian misinformation and claimed that he signed the letter “to make the American people aware that the Russians deliberately were engaged in a disinformation campaign” and he has “seen no evidence to the contrary that Russia has not engaged in that kind of disinformation campaign.”

Host Kaitlan Collins asked, “Three years ago, you signed your name to a letter alongside dozens of other intelligence officials saying that the Hunter Biden email saga had — the letter said, ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’ You noted that the people who signed it said you didn’t know for sure, of course, what it was. But given what we know now, do you wish that you hadn’t have signed that letter or been involved in it?”

Panetta responded, “No, not at all. I signed that letter for one reason: which was to make the American people aware that the Russians deliberately were engaged in a disinformation campaign in the United States and trying to impact on our election and trying to impact on our ability to have free and fair elections. That’s why I signed that letter. And, very frankly, I have seen no evidence to the contrary that Russia has not engaged in that kind of disinformation campaign.”

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