A new report said payback could be coming for 51 national security officials who said in a crucial pre-election letter in 2020 that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop being released in the media were Russian disinformation.
Fox News is reporting that President Donald Trump will revoke the security clearances of the signatories to the public letter, which claimed the revelations from the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Those signing the letter included former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who later appeared as a national security analyst with CNN, and former CIA Director John Brennan, who has appeared on MSNBC as a security analyst.
A 2023 investigation by two House committees found that the Biden campaign and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken were both linked to the efforts to downplay the contents of the laptop in the days before the 2020 presidential election. Blinken was an adviser to the campaign at the time.
Since then, the contents of the laptop have been verified as authentic.
In a letter to Blinken asking for a response to the revelation of his role in the creation of the letter, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner quoted testimony from Michael Morell, a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, that a phone call from Blinken was the impetus for him to draft the letter.
“That same day, October 17, you also emailed Morell an article published in USA Today alleging that the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a ‘disinformation campaign.’ The very bottom of the email you sent to Morell included the signature block of Andrew Bates, then-director of rapid response for the Biden campaign,” the letter said.
Trump to revoke security clearances of 51 former intelligence officials https://t.co/z2IzjjXmcQ
— Axios (@axios) January 20, 2025
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Morell told lawmakers that members of the Biden campaign were deeply involved in the release of the statement, according to the letter.
The letter noted that Morell said the letter was intended, in part, to help former President Joe Biden win the 2020 election.
“Based on Morell’s testimony, it is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election,” the letter said.
“This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy,” the letter said.
A statement from the House Judiciary Committee noted, “Although the statement’s signatories have an unquestioned right to free speech and free association — which we do not dispute — their reference to their national security credentials lent weight to the story and suggested access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans.”
Calling them “Spies Who Lie,” the New York Post reported last year that some of the 51 signatories were active CIA contractors at the time of the October 2020 letter.
The letter was billed as being written by former members of the intelligence community.
The Post wrote that an interim report on the letter “shows the potential dangers of a politicized intelligence community.”
“Some of the signatories of the statement were on the CIA payroll at the time as contractors and others had special access to CIA facilities,” the interim report noted.
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