Wednesday will see the release of a Republican report that argues the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) solicited signatures for the 2020 letter from 51 intelligence officials falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.
The House Judiciary Committee’s 65-page “interim” report, a copy of which was seen by a US media outlet, will be published in conjunction with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
The report alleges that a CIA employee “may have helped in the effort to solicit signatures for the [officials’] statement” and accuses former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the CIA Mike Morell and the Biden campaign of conspiring to swiftly get the letter approved.
“One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it. The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date,” the report purportedly reads.
Morrell recently testified before the House Judiciary Committee that his phone call with Antony Blinken on October 17,2020 had “absolutely” triggered the US Secretary of State’s interest in coordinating the letter. In 2020, Blinken served as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign.
The top US diplomat, however, rejected the allegations, saying, “one of the great benefits of this job is that I don't do politics” and that “with regard to that letter - it wasn't my idea, I didn't ask for it, didn't solicit it.”
The letter, of which Morell was one of the signatories, argued that Hunter Biden's laptop had all the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Hunter Biden's 'Laptop From Hell' Story
The story originates with a bombshell New York Post (NYP) article from October 2020, which exposed alleged corruption by the former vice president's son and apparent involvement of Joe Biden in Hunter's business deals.
In the October 2020 article, the NYP mentioned two alleged emails that Hunter Biden purportedly received from a top official at the Ukrainian company Burisma while he was on the board of the firm.
In a May 2014 email, Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi purportedly asked Joe Biden's son to "use [his] influence" to politically support the Ukrainian company, while in another email, dated April 2015, Pozharskyi thanked the younger Biden for arranging a meeting with his father, then-US Vice President Joe Biden.
POTUS has repeatedly denied that he had any knowledge about his son's work or his financial dealings.
Most US news outlets and social media companies successfully shielded Joe Biden from the laptop-related revelations ahead of the 2020 presidential election campaign, when they were written off as part of a “Russian disinformation operation.” In 2022, however, two influential US newspapers made a U-turn, confirming that the laptop was authentic and that the damning information contained within the device was genuine.