With every drip of revelations about his roles in the Joe Biden presidency, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s credibility has eroded.
He denies playing a role in a letter from former intelligence officials that all but called the Hunter Biden laptop a Russian disinformation campaign before the 2020 election. In the aftermath of the election, he flat-out lied to a Senate committee about his own contacts with Hunter Biden.
Now, according to a giant of the American legal profession, Blinken could well be impeached for those lies.
In a commentary piece published Tuesday by the New York Post, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, a fierce critic of the Biden administration, wrote that Blinken had skirted the bounds of “criminal and impeachable” offenses in his December 2020 statement to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
Blinken at the time denied, in no uncertain terms, exchanging emails with Hunter Biden while Blinken was serving as deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017.
During the interview, Blinken, who had previously served as then-Vice President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, acknowledged having lunched with Hunter once in Blinken’s office at the State Department but denied having telephone contact with him during those years.
“Did you have any other means of correspondence with him — emails, texts?” he was asked, according to a transcript of the interview.
“No,” Blinken responded, adding his personal contact with Hunter had been limited to chance encounters at Joe Biden’s residence in Delaware, at the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory or in Joe Biden’s office.
Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, however, shows numerous email exchanges between the two men, including one, according to the New York Post, where Blinken wrote on his personal account to Hunter, “You will love this: after you left, Marjorie, the wonderful african american [sic] woman who sits in my outer office (and used to be Colin Powell’s assistant) said to me: ‘He sure is pleasant on the eyes.’ Tell you [sic] wife.”
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That’s not exactly the kind of note anyone would write to a stranger.
In an interview Sunday on Fox News “Sunday Morning Futures,” Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson called Blinken’s denial that he’d emailed Hunter Biden a “bold-faced” lie.
“And now, because of more information that’s come out, we know that he lied bold-faced to Congress about never emailing Hunter Biden,” Johnson said.
“My guess is he told a bunch of other lies that hopefully we’ll be able to bring him and his wife back in, tell them to preserve their records. You cannot trust Joe Biden. You cannot trust Hunter Biden. You can’t trust the Biden family. You can’t trust so many of the people that they have surrounded themselves with.”
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Turley, when it comes to Antony Blinken, anyway, apparently agrees.
In the Post piece, he mocked Blinken’s contention that he had nothing to do with organizing a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials in October 2020 that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop that had been reported by the Post bore the “earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
In April, as Fox News reported, former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morrell — one of the signers of the letter — told the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees that Blinken was the “impetus” for the letter and that the letter’s goal was the election of Joe Biden to the presidency.
In a Fox News interview on Monday, Blinken denied soliciting the letter. He said that, as secretary of state, he doesn’t engage in politics, adding, “But with regard to that letter, I didn’t — it wasn’t my idea, didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it. And I think the testimony that the former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, put forward confirms that.”
It’s hard to see how Morrell’s statement that Blinken was the “impetus” for the letter confirms Blinken’s claim that it wasn’t his idea, that he didn’t ask for it and didn’t solicit it, but that’s why administrations have lawyers.
(It’s worth pointing out here that Blinken wasn’t under oath at the time of the interview. Morrell was when he spoke to the congressional committees.)
Turley, for his part, mocked Blinken’s statement in the very first sentence of his New York Post column: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken is claiming the political version of the immaculate conception.”
Social media users responding to Turley’s column weren’t buying Blinken’s story, either.
Blinken outright lied & we have the receipts. pic.twitter.com/FhaIKmbRBE
— Amerigo 🇺🇸 (@OKStormTrax) May 3, 2023
Do they just ignore the truth thinking it will go away?
— MollysMom (@MollysMom2012) May 3, 2023
We all know Blinken is a liar. If he had any shame, he would resign.
— Mary Place (@mlplace1012) May 3, 2023
He’s a Democrat. He’s knows that lying is acceptable in his world.
— Rick Knobloch (@bonbon69rk) May 3, 2023
Turley, a professor at George Washington University and one of the best-known legal scholars in the country, is no stranger to high-profile positions.
He supported the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton in 1998 on the grounds that Clinton committed perjury when he denied his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky under oath.
He represented House Republicans in a 2014 legal fight over Obamacare.
And in 2019, during the Democrats’ first, farcical, impeachment of then-President Donald Trump, Turley came down on the president’s side.
While he was supporting the political right in those cases, he also happened to be dead right.
And he’s right about Blinken now.
A man who engaged in numerous email exchanges with the notoriously disreputable son of the current president and flatly lied about it under oath has forfeited the minimum level of trust Americans should be able to have in a public official.
“We still need more details on the underlying facts, but, if true, the allegations could constitute both criminal and impeachable offenses,” Turley wrote. “Blinken reportedly made these statements as part of the process leading to his confirmation. If he lied, it could constitute making a ‘materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation’ to Congress under 18 US 1001.
“If Blinken lied or committed perjury, it could also constitute an impeachable offense. One complicating issue is that this did not technically occur while in office but in pursuit of that office. Moreover, there may be other statements since becoming secretary of state.”
This is the Biden administration — where the concept of truth is a stranger, as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre proves on a near-daily basis. It’s a virtual certainty that Blinken has told other lies since he’s been in his current office.
And it’s a virtual certainty he will lie again the next time he’s asked a question about Hunter Biden, the laptop and his own role in orchestrating a letter that became key to Biden’s presidential campaign in the final days.
His credibility at this point is about as easy to take seriously as Hunter Biden would be taking a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience.
If there’s justice left in the United States, Blinken will have an opportunity before too long to lie his way right into an impeachment trial — and just in time for a Joe Biden re-election campaign, too.
