CIA had active contractors amongst cabal of intel officials who suggested Biden laptop was Russian fake
Scores of former intelligence officials ran block for Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election after the New York Post threatened his campaign with damning facts about his son's laptop and its contents. It turns out that active elements of the security state similarly conspired to cure the narrative and thumb the scales in Biden's favor.
Background
Less than a month ahead of the 2020 election, the New York Post reported about the incriminating contents of Hunter Biden's laptop and raised various questions about then-candidate Joe Biden, especially about his shady ties to Ukraine.
The report noted, for instance, that a Burisma board adviser thanked Hunter Biden for introducing him to Joe Biden about a year before Biden allegedly extorted the Eastern European country as vice president to get the prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.
The report also painted Joe Biden as untruthful and referenced other damning evidence on his son's laptop, such as videos of Hunter Biden having sex and smoking crack and suggestions of questionable business with China.
Elements of the intelligence community antipathetic to President Donald Trump swooped in to shield Biden in the final weeks before the election, releasing a public letter on Oct. 19, 2020, asserting that the Hunter Biden laptop story had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation" intended to hurt the Democrat's candidacy.
Not one of the intelligence officials had apparently seen the evidence of which they spoke before signing the letter, and no signatory has since expressed regret.
Biden used the misleading letter, which was further spun by the liberal media, to great effect.
In his Oct. 22 debate with Trump, Biden said, "Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he's accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four — five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani."
Michael Morell, one of the former CIA directors Biden referenced, later testified to Congress that he organized the letter to "help Vice President Biden," but more specifically, to help "him to win the election."
Morell also made clear that the Biden campaign was involved and "helped to strategize about the public release of the statement."
According to Morell, the call he received from then-Biden campaign official Antony Blinken got the ball rolling on the deception.
74% of Americans surveyed told the Technometrical Institute of Policy and Politics in a 2022 survey that the FBI and the intelligence community deliberately misled the public and voters. 79% of respondents said that a truthful interpretation of the laptop would have likely changed the election's outcome more in favor of Trump.
The CIA versus Trump
The House Committee on the Judiciary, its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a report Tuesday revealing that former CIA acting director Michael Morell and ex-CIA inspector general David Buckley were both active contractors with top secret clearances for the agency when they signed the letter.
The congressional investigators reached this conclusion on the basis of information provided them earlier this year by Robert Dugas, CIA deputy general counsel for litigation and investigations.
Morell has denied being a contractor at the time, telling the New York Post, "If you write that, you would [be] wrong."
Beside the possibility that unnamed signatories were similarly active spooks, the report noted that others "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."
According to the report, former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash, the ex-husband of Thursday's moderator in the Trump-Biden debate, and former National Security Agency deputy director Richard Ledgett, were both serving the agency at the time they signed the letter as independent contractors with top secret clearances.
Other active elements of the CIA were also peripherally involved.
"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," said the report.
The agency conveniently refrained from seizing upon the "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."
The report suggested that the revelation about the active status of Morell and Buckley "raises concern that these officials abused the access of their positions to curate, promote, and received expedited approval of the statement."
Indeed, the PCRB continuously requested quick decisions from officials within the CIA and partners at ODNI about the status of publication of the statement. This occurred after Morell specifically requested an expedited review process and during a time when he had contracting status and was under consideration to be named President Biden's CIA Director.
The report also indicated that the signatories' decision to leverage their titles in favor of a narrative favorable to Biden "inappropriately embroiled the Agency in the domestic political process."
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