Jordan Blasts Blinken's Response on Letter Undermining Hunter Biden Story

Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) expressed his dissatisfaction Tuesday with a response he received from Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding Blinken’s role in the statement 51 former intelligence officials wrote casting doubt on the Hunter Biden story in 2020.

Jordan accused Blinken of continuing to “deflect” on the matter after Blinken’s attorney rejected demands Jordan and Intel Committee chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) made to Blinken regarding the statement.

“Secretary Blinken continues to deflect responsibility for his role in misleading Americans about the Hunter Biden allegations,” Jordan told Breitbart News.

He added, “Especially in light of recent revelations, Congress should be ready to use all available options to get to the truth.”

Jordan and Turner had asked Blinken on April 20 for any documents and communications he had related to the ex-intel officials’ statement from 2020, when Blinken served as a paid senior adviser to the Biden campaign.

Dissatisfied with Blinken’s reply, the chairmen reiterated their requests on June 12, threatening to subpoena Blinken should he not comply with them by June 26.

In a letter to the chairmen written June 26 and obtained by Breitbart News, Jonathan Su, an attorney with Latham & Watkins LLP representing Blinken, laid out three reasons why Jordan and Turner’s demands were baseless.

First, Su repeated Blinken’s public position that he “did not solicit” the statement, which was published in Politico two weeks before the 2020 presidential election and served to discredit the bombshell New York Post story, written by now-Breitbart News Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris, about the Biden family’s business dealings.

Su went on to say that testimony the committees received from former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell corroborates Blinken’s position.

Morell cowrote the statement and signed it along with 50 other influential former intel officials.

It stated without evidence that the Post’s story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” and Biden relied on the statement in the final presidential debate when confronted about the story.

Morell had told the committees that while Blinken did not ask for the statement, a call from him is what prompted Morell to write it.

Su also disputed testimony the committees received from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the other coauthor of the statement, Marc Polymeropoulos, potentially implicating Blinken and the Biden campaign in the statement’s inception.

Secondly, Su questioned the legislative purpose the chairmen said they had in seeking the requested information from Blinken.

“The statement in question did not involve classified information or security clearances, and Secretary Blinken has never had any contact with a U.S. intelligence agency about the preparation of the statement in question,” Su wrote of the chairmen’s proposed potential legislative reforms.

As a third matter, Su said that even if the chairmen did have a valid legislative purpose for their demands, “there is no dispute that [Blinken] was a private citizen at the time the statement was issued, and since he did not solicit the statement, his conduct had nothing to do with classified information or security clearances.”

“I trust this satisfies your need for information on this matter,” Su concluded.

The chairmen have charged that the intel officials’ statement amounted to election meddling, saying it “deprived the American people of the opportunity to make a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election.”

As indicated by Jordan’s remark to Breitbart News, the chairmen are likely to continue pursuing information from Blinken using “all available options,” such as issuing a subpoena or threatening contempt of Congress.