by Jason Cohen
After Biden campaign officials coordinated a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officers casting doubt about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 presidential election, several signatories ended up with roles in the president’s administration.
Former Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morrell testified to the House Judiciary Committee that then-Biden senior adviser and current Secretary of State Tony Blinken contacted him and “triggered” the creation of the letter. Former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash, who signed the letter, put Morrell in touch with Biden campaign Chairman Steve Richetti, who thanked him for orchestrating it; Biden later appointed Bash to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board in 2022.
Bash was not the only signatory who received a role in the Biden administration. Biden also appointed Russell Travers as Deputy Homeland Security Advisor from January 2021 to October 2021 and Nicholas Rasmussen as Counterterrorism Coordinator for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in November.
While not an administration position, another signatory, David Buckley, was staff director of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Morrell did not intend to write the statement in the letter that the laptop was likely Russian disinformation until Blinken’s call, he told the House Judiciary Committee. Richetti also called Morrell following the final presidential debate on Oct. 22, 2020, when Biden cited the letter to cast doubt on the New York Post’s reporting regarding the contents of his son’s laptop revealing foreign business dealings.
“There were two intents,” Morrell said, discussing the letter. “One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was [to] help Vice President Biden,” he said, disclosing he wanted Biden to win the election.
The New York Post first reported Hunter Biden’s laptop contents on Oct. 14, 2020, and Twitter quickly censored it. The former intelligence officials signed and released the letter five days later, stating the laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“All of us figured that a significant portion of that content had to be real to make any Russian disinformation credible,” Douglas Wise, a former Defense Intelligence Agency deputy and signatory of the letter, told The Australian.
Signatories Stephen Slick, Michael Hayden and Mike Vickers all signed onto another letter released on Aug. 20, 2020, consisting of former Republican national security officials endorsing Biden for president and calling then-President Donald Trump “dangerously unfit” for another term in office.
The Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) verified the authenticity of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020.
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Jason Cohen is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Jeremy Bash” by Secretary of Defense.
