"It was not the CIA that fabricated the story, it was a former acting CIA Director Michael Morell who drafted the letter and got 50 former intelligence community colleagues, all retired, to sign it," highlighted Giraldi, a CIA veteran who now serves as an executive director of the Council for the National Interest.
"The request to do the letter to make the Hunter Biden story go away and blame it on Russia came from Antony Blinken who is now secretary of state and was, at the time, one of Biden's campaign managers. The US media immediately suppressed the story about Hunter and picked up on the story by Blinken and Morell which protected the Bidens," the former CIA station chief continued.
According to Giraldi, Blinken de facto followed in the footsteps of the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign, which sought to use fabricated information from the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump and some of his advisors. Blinken suggested that Morrell promote the argument that the infamous laptop, unearthed by the New York Post in October 2020, should be dismissed as a "Russian disinformation operation." The CIA veteran stressed that at the time there was zero evidence to suggest that Russia had had anything to do with spreading fabricated information about the younger Biden.
The notorious letter, titled "Public Statement on the Hunter Biden emails" was signed by 51 former intelligence officials including CIA Directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Mike Hayden, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former Director of National Intelligence and James Clapper.
It claimed that the data on Hunter's hard drive "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." The document was delivered to Politico five days after the Post's bombshell exposé and three days before the final presidential debate of the election campaign.
"The US news media is dependent on the government for 'leaks' of information and other support, it does what the government wants, a tradition that goes back to 9/11 and George W Bush and his gang of neocons," Giraldi continued. "The media is liberal so it also tends to favor Democrats in how it slants its stories. If this story were to be picked up by the mainstream media and circulated, it would do serious damage to Biden's re-electoral prospects, but that is not likely to happen."
The ex-spies' opinion was quickly disseminated by the US mainstream press, while the Hunter Biden laptop story, shedding light on the Biden family's questionable business dealings and Joe's alleged involvement in the process, was suppressed by both Big Media and Big Tech.
In March 2022, the US mainstream media outlets abruptly returned to the story by saying that thousands of emails "purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden" had been proven to be "authentic communications."
In May 2022, Konstantinos "Gus" Dimitrelos, an ex-Secret Service agent who has testified in over 100 classified, criminal and civil matters at the state, federal, and international levels carried out a full forensic examination of Hunter Biden's infamous hard drive to determine whether there are any signs of tampering.
According to the US press, Dimitrelos cross-referenced thousands of files, photos, geolocation data, and other information on the drive using a technique called "digital sandwiching" and came to the conclusion that Hunter "was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data."
The laptop's data verification prompted conservative journalists and authors to raise the question about the former intelligence community officials' motives and accuse them of meddling in the 2020 elections.
In May 2022, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer representing former President Donald Trump, and his colleagues filed five letters of complaint with the agencies that formerly employed the signatories of the 2020 letter, including the CIA, the National Security Agency, the director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Defence.
Parlatore argued at the time that the signatories had to seek a prepublication review from the agencies they used to serve at. However, it appears that none of the intelligence agencies were involved in reviewing the letter, according to the lawyer. Nonetheless, the ex-spies in question stood by their claims and insisted that roughly two years ago they were really "concerned about Russian disinformation efforts."
However, an April 2023 testimony by Mike Morell shed some new light on the story. The former acting CIA director told the House Judiciary Committee led by Rep. Jim Jordan that back in October 2020 he was asked by Blinken to help discredit the laptop reporting.
As per the committee’s press release, "Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020, Blinken… reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. According to Morell, although [Blinken’s] outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the Post story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement."
The latest joint report by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees concluded that "the public statement by 51 former intelligence officials was a political operation to help elect Vice President Biden in the 2020 presidential election."
The report particularly quoted one of Morell's emails written in October 2020 to a former CIA officer: "The more former intelligence officers the better. Campaign will be thrilled."
"The Biden campaign took active measures to discredit the allegations about Hunter Biden by exploiting the national security credentials of former intelligence officials," US lawmakers underscored.
According to Giraldi, the "honorable" Secretary of State Antony Blinken should in fact offer his resignation "over the exposure of his blatant and possibly successful attempt to change the outcome of an election by conspiring to corrupt the electoral process with false information to sway voters." Citing US surveys, the CIA veteran emphasized that Biden would most likely have lost the election if the US press had accurately covered the laptop story.