House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) slammed the ‘Biden Crime Family’ after the revelation that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken spurred a letter from dozens of intelligence officials to discredit the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 presidential election.
In an exclusive statement to Breitbart News on Tuesday, Stefanik, who serves as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, addressed the recent bombshell revelation that Blinken — now State Secretary — had directly coordinated with former acting CIA Director Mike Morell to create the “bogus” letter to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, Saturday, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“The Biden Crime Family’s use of their political influence to pressure individuals into creating a bogus letter to hide Hunter Biden’s crimes is corruption at its finest,” she said.
In contrast, she continued, House Republicans “are committed to the truth, and we are shining a light on this abuse of power and will hold the Biden Crime Family accountable for their illegal actions.”
Earlier this month, an author of the now-debunked public statement from 51 intelligence officials casting doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop story revealed to Congress that Blinken, then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, was the impetus for the statement.
On April 4, former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell testified to the House Judiciary Committee that now-Secretary of State Blinken called him about the laptop story just days after the New York Post published it and that the call “triggered” Morell to draft the statement.
Morell testified in the closed-door interview with the committee that Blinken’s call to Morell was “couched as simply gathering Morrell’s reaction to the Post story” but that “it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.”
Blinken, at the time, served as then-candidate Joe Biden’s “closest” foreign policy adviser, according to the New York Times.
The campaign paid him more than $100,000 for his work in 2020, Federal Election Campaign records show.
During his testimony, Morell told the Judiciary Committee that he also communicated with other Biden campaign officials and that the campaign sought to help coordinate the public dissemination of the statement.
Michael Morell, former acting director of the CIA , prepares to testify to a House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill, January 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
The former CIA official also told the committee his motives for publishing the statement were to “share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue” and to help Biden win the election.
On Friday, a White House spokesperson attempted to deflect the accusations.
A poll from Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics polling in August revealed that seventy-nine percent of Americans believe former President Donald Trump would have won reelection in 2020 if Hunter’s laptop had been known to voters, according to Wednesday’s Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics polling.
Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.