Hunter Biden laptop letter signers will ‘fully cooperate’ with GOP investigation, lawyer says
Jerry Dunleavy
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The lawyer representing ex-intelligence officials who signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter in October 2020 baselessly claiming Russian involvement says his clients will “fully cooperate” with the GOP investigation.
Mark Zaid, who most notably represented the Ukraine whistleblower in the impeachment effort against former President Donald Trump, is now representing six of the 51 laptop letter signatories, and he told the Washington Examiner that “we intend to fully cooperate, but we will not do so silently.”
HUNTER BIDEN SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTS CAN BE REVIEWED BY HOUSE INVESTIGATORS
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), now the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, originally sent letters to many of the 51 former intelligence officials in April last year, but those requests were largely ignored, so he followed up with demands for information from a dozen of the ex-spy officials in February and March of this year. He was joined by Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Jordan and Turner told the signatories this year that the letter “falsely implied the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden was the product of Russian disinformation.”
Zaid sent a response back to Jordan and Turner on Monday, calling the laptop letter “non-partisan” and saying the signatories “relied upon their decades of professional training and expertise.” Zaid said his clients have “agreed to timely produce responsive records pertaining to the creation and issuance of the Statement.” But he warned that “it is very likely the elicitation of information pertaining to the Statement will cross the lines into the classified arena.”
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, Joe Biden called the story “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan” during an October 2020 debate with Trump.
Joe 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 slightly misleading because the letter never directly called the story Russian “disinformation.”
“The Statement was very carefully crafted by former intelligence officers who served in the very highest positions within the Intelligence Community,” Zaid said. “That the contents may have been misinterpreted or distorted by third parties, to include politicians and the media, is not the responsibility of the signatories.”
He added that “we recognize and respect the authorities of the Committees” but claimed that “there is no conceivable legislative purpose behind this investigation” and that “we view this investigation as nothing more than a purely political, partisan exercise.” Zaid also argued that the GOP inquiry was “an effort to chill political speech.”
Jordan’s April 2022 letter had asked the ex-officials to “identify all people with whom you communicated about the inception, drafting, editing, signing, publishing, or promotion” of the letter and directed them to “produce all documents and communications referring or relating to” the public statement.
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Zaid is representing former senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos, former CIA National Clandestine Service veteran John Sipher, former Defense Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Douglas Wise, former senior CIA operations officer Paul Kolbe, former CIA officer Ronald Marks, and former CIA Political Islamic Strategic Analysis Program Director Emile Nakhleh.
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 “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.”
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