by John Solomon
In a rare and candid email exchange between two former CIA bosses, Michael Morell told John Brennan in October 2020 that he was organizing a letter of 51 intel experts claiming the emergence of the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian influence operation because he wanted to give Joe Biden’s campaign a “talking point to push back on” Donald Trump during the last presidential debate of the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by Just the News.
Brennan, who served as CIA director under President Barack Obama, willingly agreed to sign the letter after being told of its political intentions. “Ok, Michael, add my name to the list,” Brennan wrote Morell (pictured above) on Oct. 19. 2020. “Good initiative. Thanks for asking me to sign on.”
You can read that email here.
Intelligence professionals reacted swiftly to the news Wednesday night, saying the revelation that two former CIA chiefs used their professional credentials to influence the 2020 election was troubling.
“This wasn’t a ‘talking point’ to toss back at Trump, it was a premeditated and admitted lie to the American people designed specifically to deceive and hide the truth,” retired FBI intelligence chief Kevin Brock told Just the News. “And for what? To help elect a politician? What a steep and sad cost to the soul for such a meager goal.”
Morell testified to Jordan’s committee that a conversation he had with current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, then a Biden campaign adviser, “triggered” his effort to organize the letter, that his intention was to help Biden win the election and that the Biden campaign provided assistance spreading the letter to news media.
Blinken has since tried to minimize his role in the letter, insisting it wasn’t his idea. But he has not denied having the conversation with Morell or sending a subsequent email to the former CIA boss containing a USA Today article that provided the key passage in the letter claiming the laptop was possible Russian disinformation.
That claim proved untrue. The FBI had the laptop since December 2019, and U.S. intelligence had no evidence the laptop was a Russian disinformation operation, officials have admitted.
The new email to Brennan obtained by Just the News shows Morell had a more specific intention to help Joe Biden and his campaign to discredit the laptop during the final presidential debate.
“Trying to give the campaign, particularly during the debate on Thursday, a talking point to push back on Trump on this issue,” Morell wrote Brennan.
The email also shows at least one signatory of the letter, Brennan, knew of the political intentions of the project before adding his name to it.
The email also reveals some of the other experts whom Morell was trying to get to sign the letter, including former CIA Director Leon Panetta, former Homeland Security Chief Jeh Johnson, current Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and former National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.
Some, like Panetta, signed the letter, while others, like Rogers, did not.
Former CIA Moscow station chief Daniel Hoffman recently revealed he was approached and asked to sign the letter but chose not to sign because he knew of no intelligence or evidence to back up its claims
Former Assistant Secretary of State Robert “Bobby” Charles, a former Naval Intelligence officer, told Just the News that the belated revelation that the 2020 letter was a political operation and not a intelligence warning would cause even greater distrust among Americans of their intelligence community, a trust already tarnished by the discredited Russia collusion probe an election earlier.
“The notion that you would just somehow overnight gather 51 intelligence officers to attest to something that was uncorroborated and turns out to be utterly untrue leads you to the question: Why and how did those intelligence officers — most of whom were all Democrats — why did they step up and do that?” said Charles, now the national spokesman for the conservative senior group AMAC.
“And what these emails seem to be showing us is that it was a coordinated effort to damage the Republican and to defend and to support the Democrat,” he added. “And that is a scourge on those particular individuals’ reputations. It’s also a scourge on the campaign of Joe Biden.”
Former FBI agent and whistleblower Kyle Seraphin said some intelligence leaders have become increasingly politically brazen because there has been no significant consequence for people who were found to have committed wrongdoing in earlier controversies like the discredited Russia collusion narrative.
“I think it’s arrogance,” he said. “And I think it’s the arrogance that we’ve seen from the people who are in the upper reaches of whether the FBI or any other part of the intelligence community. They don’t see anyone falling on this stuff. You know, they’re able to retire, they’re able to walk away from it without any shame, they go get high paid corporate jobs when it ends.”
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John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author and digital media entrepreneur who serves as Chief Executive Officer and Editor in Chief of Just the News.
Photo “Michael J. Morrell” by Abovfold CC4.0.
