Hunter Biden investigation: Intel laptop letter signers scored top jobs in Biden administration
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Three ex-intelligence officials who signed on to an influential 2020 letter baselessly linking Hunter Biden’s laptop to Russia later were tapped for top roles in the federal government under President Joe Biden, records show.
The October 2020 letter, which over 50 former intelligence officials joined and alleged Russia had involvement with the laptop, has since come back under the spotlight following ex-Obama CIA acting Director Mike Morell testifying to Congress that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken, now secretary of state, “triggered” him to organize it. Three signatories of this same controversial letter, Jeremy Bash, Russell Travers, and Nicholas Rasmussen, went on to be handpicked for senior Biden administration posts.
HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION: BRENNAN CONDEMNED ‘POLITICIZATION’ OF INTEL DAYS BEFORE LAPTOP LETTER
“It is deeply disturbing that signatories of what we now know is a piece of campaign propaganda laundered as an intelligence analysis have recently served in senior roles related to national defense,” Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel for the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, who recently worked on the Senate Permanent Investigations Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
The promotions of the ex-intelligence officials underscore the close-knit nature between Bidenworld and letter signatories, who have come under fire for contributing to the debunked narrative that reporting on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China and Ukraine were a product of “Russian disinformation.” Morell had no intention to organize the Oct. 17, 2020, letter, which Politico first published, until Blinken called him and suggested he wanted it “out” in the public that “the Russians were somehow involved” with the laptop saga, the Obama CIA official told House investigators in April.
Moreover, Morell testified to the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee that then-Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti, now counselor to the president, called him after an October 2020 presidential debate between Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump to thank Morell for “putting the statement out.” Joe Biden pointed to the letter in the debate, noting that “50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.”
Bash, who is now a managing director at the Washington, D.C.-based international strategic consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, had called Morell and got Ricchetti on the other line, Morell testified. Bash was previously ex-chief of staff for both the CIA and Defense Department under Obama, where he advised then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta — another signer of the Hunter Biden laptop letter.
In August 2022, Joe Biden appointed Bash to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, an independent body that “oversees the Intelligence Community’s compliance with the Constitution and all applicable laws, Executive Orders, and Presidential Directives,” according to an archived version of the board’s website under Obama. The White House did not reply to a Washington Examiner request for comment asking whether Bash is still on the board.
Bash appeared on Morell’s Intelligence Matters podcast in November 2021 and also suggested on TV in October 2020 that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation.” He also called the emails “mysteriously created” and claimed they were “probably hacked through a Russian intelligence operation,” adding it was “collusion in plain sight.”
“This looks like Russian intelligence. This walks like Russian intelligence. This talks like Russian intelligence,” Bash claimed on MSNBC on Oct. 19, 2020. “This effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic Russian playbook disinformation campaign.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee had earlier appointed Bash in April 2022 as a member of the Afghanistan War Commission, a body authorized by Congress in 2021 to review “key decisions related to U.S. military, intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021,” according to government records. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly slammed the Biden administration’s deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan, which saw billions of dollars in weapons fall into the hands of the Taliban.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, told the Washington Examiner that it’s a sign of government “despair” that the Biden administration would reward signatories of the Hunter Biden laptop letter after they have been “exposed” for “wrongdoing.”
“When you have an administration that has weaponized these agencies, it’s a dangerous time right now,” Nehls said.
Travers, former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, served as the deputy homeland security adviser for Joe Biden’s National Security Council from January 2021 to October 2021. He focused on border security, as well as “critical infrastructure resilience, global Embassy security, pandemic planning, information sharing, and [providing] support to vulnerable Afghans,” according to his LinkedIn account.
In April 2021, Travers also appeared on Morell’s podcast to discuss “the varied and diffuse array of terrorist threats to the United States,” according to an episode description. Reached by the Washington Examiner, Travers alleged he “had no contact” with the Biden campaign in connection to the Hunter Biden laptop letter “prior to or after signing it.”
“I received it, thought it was a prudent warning, appropriately caveated given the sourcing and what we did/didn’t know at the time, and agreed to sign it,” he wrote in an email on Thursday. “And as I’ve told the press and the Congress over the past year, I applaud any effort to get to ground truth.”
“And to be clear …. When I say no contact with the campaign, I also mean no contact with Mr. Blinken or President Biden,” Travers added.
Rasmussen, who directed the counterterrorism center from 2014 to 2016, became the counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security in November 2022. He also joined Morell’s podcast in September 2017 to discuss al Qaeda, ISIS, “and how the terror threat has evolved,” according to an episode description.
Meanwhile, another laptop signer recently made his way into the halls of government. David Buckley, the CIA’s inspector general from 2010 to 2015, went on to become staff director for the House Jan. 6 committee.
Buckley has been paid at least $220,000 in taxpayer dollars since joining the committee as a staff director in July 2021, according to the latest publicly released House disbursement records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. He worked for the committee until its shutdown in January 2023, one month after it released its final report.
“The signatories of the letter used their prior positions as intelligence officials to project credibility on the issue to the American people while falsely calling the Hunter Biden laptop a piece of Russian disinformation,” Brosnan added. “Intelligence and national defense matters should be above partisan politics and it’s deeply unfortunate that partisans have recently served in these positions.”
Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert, performed an analysis of Hunter Biden’s laptop for the Washington Examiner last year. The ex-Secret Service agent found “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.”
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Rasmussen and the Department of Homeland Security did not return requests for comment.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Bash through Beacon Global Strategies.