(Ken Silva, Headline USA) House Republicans released new details this week about the CIA’s role in falsely deeming the Hunter Biden laptop as part of a Russian disinformation campaign before the 2020 election—including a bombshell revelation that Donald Trump’s own CIA director, Gina Haspel, greenlit the election-interference operation.
According to a report published Tuesday by the House Weaponization Subcommittee, Haspel approved of the infamous letter signed by 51 intelligence professionals that deemed Hunter’s laptop a Russian disinfo campaign.
“The drafters of the public statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop have long maintained that the CIA had no part in the approval of the statement beyond confirming that the statement contained no classified information,” the report said.
“Evidence obtained by the Committees shows, however, that both then-Director Gina Haspel or then-Deputy Director Vaughn Frederick Bishop were made aware of the statement prior to its publication.”
The Weaponization report follows revelations that some of the 51 signatories of the infamous letter—which alleged that the emergence of the laptop, incriminating then-candidate Joe Biden, was merely a Russian attack—were on the CIA’s payroll at the time they signed it.
Documents shared to Congress by the CIA exposed that former CIA acting director Michael Morell, the man behind the letter, was contracted with the spy agency when he led efforts to conceive the letter.
Former CIA inspector general David Buckley also received taxpayer dollars, according to an interim report from two House committees. Moreover, at least two other signees received CIA contracts when they signed the heavily partisan letter.
It remains unclear why the CIA allowed some of its contractors to play such a partisan role in leading a letter that sought to undermine the laptop’s exposé, which implicated Joe Biden in the business dealings of his embattled son, Hunter Biden.
The letter was used by Big Tech platforms to ban the New York Post’s first reporting of the laptop and any other individual who shared the report. Joe Biden would use the fake letter to defend himself from attacks.
“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except his good friend Rudy Giuliani,” Biden claimed at the time.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
