This article originally appeared on WND.com
Guest by post by Peter LaBarbera
Senator: ‘None of them should ever be hired, work for, or paid by the U.S. government’
The 51 ex-Intelligence officials who signed a letter just before the final 2020 presidential debate strongly suggesting that a New York Post story exposing Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop was a “Russian [dis]information operation” not only have never been punished, they’ve never shown any remorse. A few have landed “plum jobs, including working with the federal government,” a leading Washington, D.C. news site reports.
Just the News reported Wednesday that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has “announced the creation of the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, which includes ‘private sector experts who will provide their unique perspectives on the federal government’s intelligence enterprise to DHS’s [Intelligence and Analysis] and the Office of the Counterterrorism Coordinator.’”
Three signers of the Oct. 19, 2020 “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails” – which was created specifically to provide a debate talking-point for then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to fend off critical discussion of a New York Post story on Biden’s son Hunter’s salacious, discarded laptop – are joining Mayorkas’ IEG group. They are: John Brennan, former CIA Director under Obama; James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence; and Paul Kolbe, former Senior Operations Officer at the CIA.
“Brennan is a distinguished fellow at Fordham University School of Law and University of Texas at Austin, Clapper is currently a CNN national security analyst, and Kolbe is a senior fellow and former Director of the Intelligence Project for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Neither Clapper nor CNN have disclosed how much he is paid,” reported JTN.
Another signer, Trump-despising former CIA Director Michael Hayden, ironically has been hired as an advisor at a left-leaning anti-“misinformation” group.
‘If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote’
In the now notorious ex-Intel letter, the 51 Trump-opposing security officials (plus nine anonymous officials) signed on to this wording, suggesting ominously that the laptop story was planted by the Russians (italics are in the original document): “Perhaps most important, each of us believes deeply that American citizens should determine the outcome of elections, not foreign governments. All of us agree with the founding fathers’ concern about the damage that foreign interference in our politics can do to our democracy.”
The Oct. 19, 2020 letter continues: “It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The letter was careful to state: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement – just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
Then it states, again in italics for special emphasis: “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
But of course they weren’t right. In fact, they were only providing the ultimate D.C. “gravitas” to the latest iteration of Hillary Clinton’s false “Russia” narrative-smear against Donald Trump by attaching the damning Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” – loaded with evidence of unsavory business dealings potentially involving his father (“the Big Guy”), as well as Hunter’s drug- and porn-infested, on-camera behavior – to sinister Russian forces.
The letter was made even more inaccurate by the Oct. 19, 2020 Politico headline(still on the site at press time) reporting it: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
As Just the News reported Wednesday, the “Russian disinformation” letter was “‘triggered’ by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, then a Joe Biden campaign adviser, and its organizer, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, wanted to create a ‘talking point’ to help Biden win the last presidential debate of 2020 and beat Donald Trump in the election.”
Barr says spiking laptop likely affected election
Of all the anti-Trump Democrat scandals, the organized letter from the pro-Biden ex-Intelligence officials stands out as especially galling to Trump supporters in that it is relatively simple to grasp and obvious in its undeniable effect in skewing the 2020 election.
JTN reports on a September 2022 Rasmussen Reports poll that found that 63% of American voters believed the Hunter Biden laptop story was important, and 44% believed it was “very important.”
Just the News links to a recent Hugh Hewitt interview with former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr. Hewett asked Barr about political interferences in presidential elections over the years. Barr answered: “Well, the ones that stick with me are [former Special Prosecutor Lawrence] Walsh and the [Hunter Biden] laptop, the intelligence officials suggesting that it was Russian disinformation in order to essentially keep a cork in it until after the election. I do think that that, given how close the election was, you know, I think that that probably affected the outcome, or at least is a very distinct probability of that.”
As another ex-Intel official who apparently received no blowback for his role in the “Russian disinfo” letter, Solomon reports on the hiring of (Ret.) General Michael Hayden, former Director of the CIA, former Director of the National Security Agency, and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence,” at a left-leaning, anti-“misinformation” group, Newsguard.
Newsguard describes itself as providing “transparent tools to counter misinformation for readers, brands, and democracies,” hired Hayden, a vocal Never Trumper, as an “advisor.”
Noting the Mayorkas appointments of the three 2020 letter-signers, Just the News founder John Solomon said in a JTN broadcast interview with Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc.: "These 51 keep getting rewarded. ... It's as though they're getting rewarded for what we now know to be bad behavior in 2020."
Johnson told Solomon: "First of all, every last one of those individuals should lose their security clearance. None of them should ever be hired, work for, or paid by the United States Government."
"What this indicates is literally how deep and corrupt the deep state truly is. They are so brazen ... and they have no shame! The Bidens – they have no shame," Johnson said. "Hunter is suing the IRS. I wouldn't be doing that if I'm facing tax evasion charges, but that's how brazen all these people are."
"They don't care what the American people think. They are the law, they believe they are above the law. They are quite confident the mainstream media will never hold them accountable, so they continue in these corrupt actions, and they reward corrupt actions by their buddies," he said.
A little-known part of the 2020 ex-Intel officials' letter is this sentence at the very end of it: "In addition, nine additional former IC [Intelligence Community] officers who cannot be named publicly also support the arguments in this letter."
Here are the 51 signers of the Oct. 19, 2020 letter who lent their name to the dubious Democratic effort:
• Thomas Finger
• Rick Ledgett
• Johm McLaughlin
• Michael Morell
• Mike Vickers
• Doug Wise
• Nick Rasmussen
• Russ Travers
• Andy Liepman
• John Moseman
• Larry Pfeiffer
• Jeremy Bash
• Rodney Snyder
• Glenn Gerstell
• David Buckley
• Nada Bakos
• Patty Branmaier
• James Bruce
• David Cariens
• Janice Cariens
• Paul Kolbe
• Peter Corsell
• Brett Davis
• Roger Zane George
• Steven Hall
• Kent Harrington
• Don Hepburn
• Timothy Kilbourn
• Ron Marks
• Jonna Hiestand Mendez
• Emile Nakhleh
• Gerald O'Shea
• David Priess
• Pam Purcilly
• Marc Polymeropoulos
• Chris Savos
• Nick Shapiro
• John Sipher
• Stephen Slick
• Cynthia Strand
• Greg Tarbell
• David Terry
• Greg Treverton
• John Tullius
• David Vanell
• Winston Wiley
• Kristin Wood
Copyright 2023 WND News Center
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