We saw the media do something very harmful when they sat on and suppressed the information about Hunter Biden’s laptop — something that was very important, but they did because they knew it would harm — and rightfully so — the political candidate that they preferred, Joe Biden.
Twitter tried to stop this story by suspending the Twitter account at the New York Post. This is the oldest U.S. newspaper that has been continuously published. They even locked the account of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, and locked the account of the Daily Caller’s Andrew Kerr for tweeting evidence that no, the laptop didn’t involve a hack. This was a shocking display of bias, if you stop to think about it.
You also received a letter signed by 51 ex-intelligence officials, including Leon Panetta and John Brennan, CIA Directors, Mike Hayden, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell and James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence. According to the letter, Russian disinformation was most likely on the laptop. Mind you, there was no supporting evidence and that is what they wrote in the letter. They just wanted to be open about their prejudices and make it seem like something was worth doing.
As former intelligence people, they could have gone to the least little bit of effort to determine the validity of the laptop — as the NY Post was able to do. They used their previous positions without evidence to influence people. But they didn’t care about that. So much for any reputation they may have.
But President Donald Trump isn’t leaving it there. He’s engaged attorney Tim Parlatore to take various actions regarding the intel letter. Parlatore has sent five letters to the agencies that had employed the 51 signatories to the letter, including the CIA, the NSA, the DNI, and the DOD, calling it an egregious breach that has gone “uninvestigated and certainly unpunished.” Parlatore termed it an “unauthorized publication and dissemination of an intelligence assessment, purportedly based on classified information, that was used wrongfully to influence the outcome of an election.” In other words, it wasn’t just the “word” of these people; they were using the weight of their prior positions to influence the election.
But Parlatore says they didn’t even check with their agencies to go through that process. “That would have destroyed the usefulness of the document,” Parlatore said. That would have caused delays beyond the election.
The letters state: “Leading up to the 2020 election, the New York Post published stunning revelations which were lawfully obtained from a laptop that formerly belonged to Hunter Biden, son of then-candidate Joe Biden.
“This information, which raises significant concerns about the financial dealings of a presidential candidate and his potential ties to our nation’s primary adversaries, China and Russia, threatened to undermine his candidacy.
“To undermine these revelations, 51 former intelligence officials … published an intelligence assessment in the form of a letter for dissemination to the American people through the news media. This letter purportedly relied on the combined and established credibility of these intelligence officials, through collective experience and knowledge of intelligence information, including classified material, to assess that the laptop was not authentic and ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’
“Over a year after the election, it is conceded that the laptop and its contents are authentic, and the judgment espoused by these 51 former intelligence officials is baseless and false. The implications of this security breach are still being felt. The media used the presumptively credible intelligence assessment to justify not covering this story. Some polls show that up to 17% of people who voted for President Biden would not have if they knew about the contents of the laptop at the time.”
Parlatore urges each agency to “proceed immediately with legal action to [ensure] that such breaches of vital security provisions do not continue to go unchecked.”
He’s calling for their security clearances to be stripped, and for them not to be allowed to get intel jobs again.
Parlatore’s second step is filing a letter with the FEC, asking that the intel letter be recognized as an “in-kind contribution” to the Biden campaign.
His next move would be to file legal action against 51 people, in an effort to uncover any communications between them and Biden’s campaign.
As the NY Post observes, Joe Biden cited the intel letter as support for his claim that this was “Russian” disinformation against him. This was even though he knew that the information was real, that he knew that that the particular story that was suppressed — of Joe meeting with Hunter’s Ukrainian business partner — was true. Biden relied on an intel letter to lie to Americans during the debate.
Then-AG Bill Barr said he was “very disturbed” by the obvious lie from Biden, “When you’re talking about interference in an election, I can’t think of anything more than that kind of thing.”
It is good that this issue will be addressed. It had an impact on the election and was used to deceive the public by Biden and other people in order to deny the truth. Biden deceived people by using this. Accountability is essential. After the Republicans have taken it back, more Congress action should follow. They must answer.