We covered some of the latest developments in the Hunter Biden saga last week, including allegations from a would-be whistleblower at the IRS who claims to have evidence of improprieties within the handling of a federal probe into the First Son's alleged criminal activities. Attorneys representing the president's son have been busy engaging in elaborate misdirection-minded demands about investigations into other people -- and they're also reportedly meeting with the DOJ this week. As that component of the Hunter saga plays out, it's worth pausing to reflect on the additional confirmation we received late last week regarding the laptop story, which is one of the most corrupt episodes I can recall in my time covering politics. In the fall of 2020, with an election drawing near, damaging information discovered on Hunter Biden's abandoned personal laptop was reported by the New York Post.
Virtually the entire sphere of American elites immediately sprang into action to discredit, censor and bury the story. Many of them saw this as the 2020 version of Hillary Clinton's email scandal, late-breaking developments about which helped Donald Trump narrowly defeat her four years prior. This could not he allowed to happen again, in their minds. The veracity of the details was irrelevant. The report was labeled a conspiracy theory. It was throttled and outright blocked on social media. It was largely ignored by pliant journalists. The Twitter account of the Post, the nation's oldest newspaper, was suspended. When the issue came to a head at a presidential debate, in front of tens of millions of voters, the Democratic nominee asserted that the whole matter was disinformation being peddled by the Russians. To support his point and defuse the issue, Joe Biden cited the experience and prestige of dozens of former US intelligence community officials who'd rendered the assessment that the laptop-related allegations were "a bunch of garbage" and a "Russian plant," per Biden. Don't ask me, ask these highly-credentialed experts:
In a sane world, the media would be running this on a 24/7 loop. pic.twitter.com/80DkunRajG
— Hans Mahncke (@HansMahncke) December 10, 2020
Biden pointed to the authority of US intelligence alumni as proof that the Trump campaign was playing a political dirty trick served up by the Kremlin. Of course, the actual dirty trick was the widespread collusion to kill this accurate story, and we now have additional concrete confirmation that the scheme originated from the Biden campaign itself. The Wall Street Journal's editors lay it out:
The House Judiciary and Intelligence committees released portions of a deposition transcript exposing the origins of the statement from 51 former U.S. spies declaring that Hunter’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The admission came from Mike Morell, former deputy CIA director under Barack Obama. The letter served its political purpose of giving the media and Joe Biden the opening to dismiss the New York Post’s laptop scoop as Russian disinformation. It turns out the Biden campaign was behind the letter. Mr. Morell told Congress under oath that he received a phone call from Antony Blinken on Oct. 17, 2020—three days after the Post published emails from Hunter’s laptop. Mr. Blinken was then a senior adviser to the campaign and is now secretary of State.
According to a letter the House committees sent to Mr. Blinken last week, Mr. Morell said the call was “couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the Post story,” yet it “set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.” Committee question to Mr. Morell: “Prior to [Mr. Blinken’s] call, you—you did not have any intent to write this statement?” Mr. Morell: “I did not.” The letter says Mr. Morell also “explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.” Mr. Morell says he then contacted an aide to former CIA director John Brennan to say “the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post first and that he should send the statement to the campaign when he sent the letter to the reporter.” Mr. Morell acknowledged he had two goals with the statement: to “share our concern with the American people,” and to “help Vice President Biden” “win the election.”
An absolute scandal, from start to finish. The laptop was authentic. The reporting was real. The Biden political operation decided it had a problem on its hands, so it deployed a senior advisor -- who is now US Secretary of State -- to 'encourage' his intelligence-connected buddies to discredit the story by linking it to Russia. The dozens of signatories to the letter can talk until they're blue in the face about some of the CYA caveats they included in the missive. The entire point of that letter, manufactured at the behest of the Biden campaign, was to launder partisan damage control through the prism of 'expertise.' The former deputy CIA Director (twice serving as the agency's acting director) who was recruited as the point man in this political operation admitted under oath that one of its goals was to "help Vice President Biden...win the election." These influential former spooks lent their credibility to that cause, affixing their names and reputations to what was at best an erroneous, politically-explosive, election-impacting assessment. Also in on the plot, either directly or functionally, were big tech companies and much of the news media.
And thus, the intended beneficiary in all of this (the Democratic presidential nominee) was able to hold up in his own political defense a false but 'authoritative' counterattack that had been solicited and effectively fabricated by his own campaign. And it worked, because a lot of people saw to it that it worked. Sometimes, conspiracy theories are nutty and dangerous, spewed by people who mutter incessantly about the "deep state." Other times, the deep state is very real, and so-called "conspiracy theories" are just true. Furthermore, some of the people whose job it should be to expose this corruption are not doing so because they were heavily invested in the 'Russian Disinformation' narrative, largely driven by partisan tribalism. One of the journalists actually doing a serious job on this front is Fox News alum and CBS News Correspondent Catherine Herridge. Don't miss the very last line of her report:
Days after a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020, Sec. of State Antony Blinken, then a Biden campaign adviser, reached out to a former CIA official + “set in motion the events that led” to a statement from intelligence officials say House Republicans.pic.twitter.com/wYQ3uAYFQd
— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) April 21, 2023
"The White House accused House Republicans of weaponizing their power to relitigate the 2020 election rather than focus on the real problems Americans face." Absolutely shameless, in light of what has been discovered. Republicans won't win future elections by obsessing over previous ones -- but showcasing how the current regime and its many allies manipulated voters through corruption and dishonesty is not "weaponizing" anything. It's disclosing information that the Biden operation hoped would never see the light of day. And even if it did, they stood ready to demean is as old news that doesn't matter. The ends justified the means, and they have no regrets. Again, an absolute scandal, from start to finish.
UPDATE - Here's my radio monologue on this: