News broke on Friday that the Biden presidential campaign and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken had prompted the crafting of the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials that falsely claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
Days after the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, the former officials released a public statement declaring the Post’s reporting “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Less than a week later, on Oct. 22, 2020, during the final presidential debate, then-candidate Joe Biden relied on that public statement to counter Donald Trump’s criticisms of the Biden family pay-to-play scandal.
“Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks,” who say it “is a bunch of garbage,” Biden seethed during the debate in response to Trump pouncing on the laptop scandal.
But it was the “intelligence folks” who were pushing “a bunch of garbage” about a very real laptop. According to Michael Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, Blinken, who was a senior adviser to the Biden campaign at the time, “set in motion” the events that culminated in the letter.
Blinken, Morell testified to House investigators, called him on Oct. 17, 2020, to discuss the laptop. Later the same day, Blinken emailed Morell an article from USA Today that claimed, “the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a ‘disinformation campaign.’” Then following the presidential debate, Steve Ricchetti, chairman of the Biden campaign, contacted Morell to thank him for putting the
