NBC’s Dilanian: Hunter Laptop Letter Has ‘Been Proven Correct’

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” NBC News Justice and Intelligence Correspondent Ken Dilanian argued that the signatories of the Hunter Biden laptop letter have “been proven correct” by the indictment of Alexander Smirnov because “we know now that Russian intelligence, at least according to the statements of this informant, bolstered somewhat by this indictment, were feeding him information, false information” even though the laptop’s contents “weren’t” made up and “Many of them have been now corroborated.”

Dilanian stated, “[T]hose 51 former intelligence officials, they paid a steep price for signing that letter. The House Republicans conducted an investigation. They brought some of them in to testify under oath. The Republicans said this was election interference, this was a bogus attempt to suppress a legitimate story. And, as it turns out, they were right, not in the sense — they said that the laptop was part of a Russian information operation or had all the hallmarks of a Russian information operation. They didn’t say that the contents of the laptop were made up, and, obviously, we know that they weren’t. Many of them have been now corroborated. What they said was they were suspicious about why that story was emerging in the middle of an election campaign, and whether Russian intelligence was flogging it or was somehow amplifying it. And now, they’ve been proven correct, in the sense that we know now that Russian intelligence, at least according to the statements of this informant, bolstered somewhat by this indictment, were feeding him information, false information.”

Later, he added, “But back to those 51 intelligence officials, obviously, what they were doing was trying to help Joe Biden. They’ve acknowledged that. They were Democrats. I knew it at the time. You could see it by who was signing the letter. But the point that they were making in that letter holds up over time, which is that the Russians were trying to flog a story that Joe Biden and his son were corrupt.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett