House Republicans are seeking to interview the CIA’s former chief operating officer (COO) about his role in approving the discredited letter by 51 former intelligence officials suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop archive resembled Russian disinformation.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R., Ohio) wrote a letter Wednesday to Andrew Makridis, the CIA’s COO from 2018–2022, asking him to provide testimony about his apparent role in approving the discredited letter. Emails obtained by the committees appear to indicate Makridis was sent a draft of what became the letter from a committee inside the CIA.
“On February 7, 2024, the CIA made a limited production to the Committees containing unclassified emails,” the letter reads.
“The documents show that the CIA’s Prepublication Review Board, upon receiving the draft public statement, raised the statement to the Office of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for consideration. It is our understanding that it is rare for the COO, the third highest ranking official within the CIA, to review such publications.”
Former CIA official Michael Morell, one of the signatories, testified last year to the Judiciary Committee about the central role then-Biden adviser Antony Blinken played in orchestrating the letter. The Republican lawmakers cited Morrell’s testimony as evidence showing Makridis’s decision to review the letter was abnormal. Morell and Makridis now work together at global advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies.
“As such, we believe that you possess critical insight into the CIA’s potential involvement in and approval of the October 2020 statement. Your testimony is necessary to further our oversight. Accordingly, we request that you appear promptly for a transcribed interview with the Committees,” the letter adds.
Politico published the letter in October 2020 after the New York Post reported on emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive related to his foreign business dealings. Then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden referenced the letter at the final presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump to dismiss the seriousness of his son’s business enterprise.
The Justice Department said in January that federal investigators verified the authenticity of the laptop contents in late 2019 by cross-referencing it against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud database.
“In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account,” special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors said in a court filing.
“Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple,” the prosecutors explained. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, an agent who spent years on the Hunter Biden tax case, gave a similar explanation of how the laptop was verified when he delivered closed-door testimony last year to the House Ways and Means Committee.
Numerous media outlets authenticated the Hunter Biden laptop archive prior to Shapley’s testimony and the Justice Department’s public admission. No evidence has been presented publicly to credibly dispute its authenticity.
Hunter Biden faced questions from House lawmakers last month about some of the major revelations from his laptop archive, including an email from one of his former business partners suggesting “the big guy” receive a 10 percent stake in a proposed joint venture with Chinese firm CEFC. He implied his father was “the big guy” in question and called the 10 percent stake a “pie in the sky” idea that never came to fruition.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) invited Hunter Biden and three of his former business partners Wednesday to testify publicly later this month about the role Joe Biden played in his son’s foreign business dealings.