Eleven Hunter Biden intel laptop letter signers have visited Joe Biden’s White House, records reveal
Gabe Kaminsky Jerry Dunleavy
Video Embed
At least 11 ex-intelligence officials who signed the infamous letter baselessly linking Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop to Russia have scored numerous visits to President Joe Biden’s White House, according to records reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Between October 2021 and January 2023, 11 letter signers frequented the White House a total of 24 times, White House visitor logs show. The letter has come back under the spotlight following a handful of revelations, including that its organizer, ex-Obama CIA head Mike Morell, was “triggered” by then-Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to write the letter and that a CIA official solicited signatures for it, according to testimony and an email obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.
HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP LETTER SIGNER SAYS ACTIVE CIA EMPLOYEE PUSHED HIM TO SIGN IT
“Everyone who signed that letter had something to gain,” a former top White House official under both Joe Biden and Trump, who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters and has relationships with multiple laptop letter signers, told the Washington Examiner. “They’ve washed themselves with the ability to say they were nonpartisan.”
The White House visits, which have not been reported on until now, provide a window into how several of the 51 ex-intelligence officials who signed the Hunter Biden laptop letter have maintained certain ties to Bidenworld. Three letter signers, Jeremy Bash, Russell Travers, and Nicholas Rasmussen, went on to be tapped for top Biden administration positions, the Washington Examiner reported.
Morell notably provided a draft of the letter before publication to the CIA, which told him it contained “no classified information and can be published,” according to emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee. The ex-CIA official and also ex-senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos co-authored the letter, which Politico published on Oct. 19, 2020. Three days after the letter was released, Joe Biden cited it in a debate with former President Donald Trump, noting that “former national intelligence folks” say the laptop was “a Russian plan” and “a bunch of garbage.”
Still, the Washington Examiner, the New York Post, and other news outlets confirmed later that the laptop is 100% authentic and hasn’t been tampered with.
While Morell is not listed in Biden White House visitor logs, Polymeropoulos is. He visited on June 14, 2021, with Marc Gustafson, special assistant to the president and senior director for the White House situation room, and almost one year later, on May 16, 2022, with Maher Bitar, senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, according to records.
Mark Zaid, a lawyer for Polymeropoulos, told the Washington Examiner that the meetings pertained to a purported “traumatic brain injury” tied to the so-called Havana syndrome he sustained in Moscow while at the CIA. Further, the lawyer alleged that the “meetings had absolutely nothing to do with the laptop or the statement.”
Zaid did not say which officials Polymeropoulos met with at the White House. He added that his seven laptop letter signer clients “stand by the contents that are within the 2020 statement,” and “no facts that have emerged since that time undermine any of their caveated assessments.”
Another one of Zaid’s clients who signed the letter is ex-CIA Directorate of Operations official Paul Kolbe, who went on to become a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center. Kolbe visited with Gustafson on June 4, 2021, and on Oct. 7, 2021, with Eric Green, then-special assistant to the president and senior director for Russia and Central Asia at the NSC, records show.
The visits were not related to the laptop or letter, according to Zaid, who noted that Kolbe “actually did not make the Oct. 21, 2021, event.” It’s unclear what event he was referring to, which is not listed in visitor logs.
When pressed over this, Zaid responded, “Whatever the date of that meeting was, it had absolutely nothing to do with the Biden laptop specifically or even Hunter Biden generally.”
Still, the Functional Government Initiative told the Washington Examiner it’s fair for the public to scrutinize any “continued contact” between the Biden administration and laptop letter signers, particularly because their actions, which were highly influential on a political level, were “debunked” as baseless.
“The White House should be forthcoming to address these concerns,” said Pete McGinnis, a spokesman for the right-leaning watchdog, which launched a Freedom of Information Act investigation in April after reports surfaced on Blinken setting up meetings with Hunter Biden while the now-secretary of state was former President Barack Obama’s deputy secretary of state in 2015
Travers, ex-acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center and also deputy homeland security adviser to Joe Biden’s NSC from January 2021 to October 2021, visited the White House on Nov. 5, 2021, with ex-counterterrorism senior director at the NSC Clare Linkins, records show. Linkins reportedly left the council and took a job at the Office of Director of National Intelligence in May 2022.
“My lawyer recommends against answering any more questions,” Travers told the Washington Examiner in response to questions about whether his visits were in connection to Hunter Biden or the intelligence letter. Travers also said recently that he had “no contact” with the Biden campaign, or Joe Biden himself, before the letter was sent.
James Clapper, another laptop letter signer and Obama’s final director of national intelligence, visited the White House on Sept. 7, 2022, with Joe Biden for a one-on-one meeting, according to records. Michael Hayden, a CIA director under former President George W. Bush who went on to sign the laptop letter, visited the White House on Nov. 2, 2022, with Rear Adm. Eileen Laubacher, the senior director for South Asia on Joe Biden’s NSC, records show.
Leon Panetta, a former Obama CIA director and defense secretary who signed the laptop letter, is listed as visiting the White House in back-to-back days in September 2022. On Sept. 7, he visited along with 195 other people on the same day of the unveiling of the Obama White House portraits, a day that saw Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Obama, and former first lady Michelle Obama making remarks. He also visited on Sept. 8 with Mariana Adame, a counselor to Joe Biden, records show.
John Brennan, Obama’s final CIA director who also signed the letter, visited the White House on Jan. 26, 2023, with a woman named Sarah May, whose Biden administration role was not immediately identifiable by the Washington Examiner.
Yet another laptop letter signer who has frequented the White House is Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel of the National Security Agency between 2015 to 2020. He visited on Sept. 13, 2022, for what appears to have been the South Lawn event celebrating Joe Biden’s signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, a major climate and energy spending bill.
Gerstell also visited the White House again on Nov. 10, 2022, with Xavier Ortega, an ex-Biden campaign field organizer who, as of September 2022, worked in the Office of the National Cyber Director.
Representatives or groups affiliated with Clapper, Panetta, and Brennan did not reply to requests for comment. Gerstell and Hayden did not reply.
“What is the reason for these meetings?” McGinnis asked. “Are they coordinating their stories on the laptop letter now that it has been debunked?”
David Buckley, the CIA inspector general from 2010 to 2015 who signed the letter and was staff director from July 2021 to January 2024 for the House Jan. 6 Committee, is listed as visiting the White House twice in 2022. The July 12 visit coincided with the White House congressional picnic, while the Dec. 5 one was the same day as the congressional ball at the White House.
Buckley also visited the White House on Jan. 6, 2023, along with 231 other people. The logs list a second visit by Buckley the same day with 169 people as well.
Rasmussen, who directed the counterterrorism center from 2014 to 2016 under Trump and became Joe Biden’s counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security in November 2022, has visited the White House at least seven times, according to visitor logs. Nick Shapiro, ex-deputy chief of staff and senior adviser to the director in Obama’s CIA and a letter signer, visited on Oct. 13, 2022, with Priya Singh, then-special assistant to the president and chief of staff for the domestic policy council, according to records.
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, the aforementioned former White House official who was granted anonymity said, “As someone who waved people in regularly for meetings,” visitor logs only capture a snippet of how high-profile guests may spend a given day at the White House. All in all, getting through the doors can lead to off-book meetings with those in the highest levels of government, the official said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“These people are seasoned D.C. intelligence players,” the ex-official said. “They know how to navigate the White House quite well.”
The White House did not reply to multiple requests for comment, nor did DHS. Buckley and a consulting firm led by Shapiro did not either.