Clapper says letter about Russian links to Hunter Biden laptop saga was ‘distorted’
Jerry Dunleavy
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The former director of national intelligence for President Barack Obama is blaming Politico for the “distortion” of a letter signed by more than 50 ex-intelligence officials that had baselessly claimed Russia’s involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop saga.
Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign quickly dismissed the laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation. After the New York Post published emails belonging to his son, Biden called the story “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan” during an October 2020 debate with then-President Donald Trump.
JORDAN & TURNER TELL EX-INTEL OFFICIALS TO HAND OVER INFO ON HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP DENIER LETTER
Biden said at the time: “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said this is, has all the — four, five former heads of the CIA. Both parties say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”
He was referring to a Politico report about the letter in an article titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The title was a bit misleading because the letter never directly called the story Russian “disinformation.”
Ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper complained about the Politico headline to the Washington Post this week. “There was message distortion,” Clapper told the outlet. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said.”
Clapper did not speak up about this during the 2020 election, however, despite the Biden campaign exploiting the letter to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop stories as a Kremlin disinformation operation, and he implausibly claimed in his new interview that he was unaware of how Joe Biden described the letter during the 2020 debate. “It could have been bad information, false information. But we had no evidence, no inside baseball that it was. The intent of the letter was that this could be Russian disinformation — emphasis on could,” Clapper told the outlet. “It’s a very important nuance … a distinction that people are always ignoring.”
Although the October 2020 letter hedged a bit at various times, it did repeatedly contend there was Russian involvement with the laptop stories, arguing that “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.” The letter claimed that the laptop saga “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
For its part, Politico defended its misleading headline and article this week.
“The article fairly and accurately reported on — and summarized — the intelligence officials’ letter,” the outlet said of the story written by now-CNN reporter Natasha Bertrand. “More specifically, the headline is a fair summary of their allegations.”
Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert and former Secret Service agent, conducted an examination of the laptop for the Washington Examiner last year, concluding that “my analysis revealed there is a 100% certainty that Robert Hunter Biden was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data” and that “the hard drive is authentic.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), now the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, originally sent information demands to many of the 51 former intelligence officials in April of last year, but those requests were largely ignored, so Jordan followed up with demands for information from a dozen of the ex-spy officials last week, which included sending a letter to Clapper. Jordan was joined by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), the new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
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“The Judiciary Committee made a prior request to you for documents and information about the public statement you signed in October 2020 that falsely implied the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden was the product of Russian disinformation,” according to the GOP letters.
Among those scrutinized by Jordan and Turner is Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the CIA and the Pentagon, who was picked by Biden to be part of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in August. Bash himself suggested on TV that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation.”