WASHINGTON — Some of the 51 “Spies Who Lie” were active CIA contractors when they claimed files from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop had “the classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 election — a fact that was uneasily noted inside the agency at the time, new records acquired by The Post show.
Former CIA acting director Michael Morell, who previously told Congress he organized the Oct. 19, 2020, letter to give Joe Biden a “talking point” ahead of a debate against then-President Donald Trump, was a contractor at the time, the agency recently confirmed to Congress.
Former CIA inspector general David Buckley also was a contractor at the time of the letter, according to an interim report from two House committees investigating the matter.
Records suggest that at least two other letter-signers may have had active contracts at the time.
The terms of their contracts and compensation were not immediately clear and the House panels believe additional letter-signers may have been contractors — even though the letter described the signers as “former” officeholders.
“This frustrates me. I don’t think it is helpful to the Agency in the long run,” a CIA official whose identity was redacted wrote on Oct. 20, 2020 — the day after the letter was distributed to Politico — with a link to the outlet’s story.
“I also love that at least a few of the random signatures belong to individuals currently working here on contracts…,” responded another official, whose name also was redacted.
The federal Hatch Act bars most employees of the CIA and other spy agencies from engaging in partisan political activity, but the status of contractors is murkier.
The CIA indicated Morell and Buckley were contractors in a table which specified that former CIA director John Brennan and fellow letter-signers Nick Rasmussen and Marc Polymeropoulos had no such arrangement.
A separate agency-provided table showing officials who had either badge clearance or contracts at the time suggests that at least three other signers had formal relationships with The Company.
That table also indicates that Morell’s contract lapsed at some point after Oct. 19, 2020, and that he entered into a new contract on May 1, 2021, as an “independent contractor” — though that relationship was qualified as including “no fee senior advisory services,” making the financial component unclear.
Morell’s colleague at Beacon Global Strategies, fellow letter-signer Jeremy Bash, is identified in the second table as an “independent contractor” as well — serving as a “contractor/green badge” holder from April 2, 2019, through April 1, 2022, with a brief gap before receiving a new deal beginning in August 2022.
Another letter-signer, former National Security Agency deputy director, Richard Ledgett, was also listed as having the same status at the time of the letter.
The disclosures are contained within an interim report by the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — which also reveals that then-CIA Director Gina Haspel likely knew about the letter when it was submitted for review.
“The new information included in this report, based on new testimony and declassified documents, shows the potential dangers of a politicized intelligence community,” the interim report by the House panels says.
“Some of the signatories of the statement were on the CIA payroll at the time as contractors and others had special access to CIA facilities.
“Even Michael Morell — before the Committees learned of his contract with the CIA — acknowledged, ‘It’s inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer or contractor to be involved in the political process.'”
The report notes that: “Due to purported operational concerns, the CIA declined to declassify the entire universe of signatories who were on active contract.”
Then-candidate Biden used the intelligence alumni letter to falsely claim at his second and final 2020 presidential debate with Trump that The Post’s reporting on his role in his family’s international business dealings was a “Russian plant” and “garbage.”
“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant,” Biden said of Trump. “Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
Morell testified to Congress last year that he was inspired to organize the letter after receiving a call from future Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a longtime Biden adviser.
The Post’s first laptop bombshell — published five days before the 51-person letter was made public — revealed that Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father” — directly contradicting Biden’s 2019 claim that he’d “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings.”
The Biden campaign vaguely denied that the meeting occurred. But further reporting corroborated key details, including the fact that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner one day before the Burisma exec’s email. A group of his son’s associates, including Pozharskyi and a trio from Kazakhstan that posed for a photo with the Bidens, attended.
Hunter earned up to $1 million per year to serve on Burisma’s board from 2014 to 2019, beginning when his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post — published four days before the spies’ statement — described communications about Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden’s business venture with the Chinese state-linked company CEFC China Energy, a since-defunct reputed cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign.
A May 13, 2017, email from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the CEFC deal and former Biden family associate Rob Walker testified to Congress that Joe Biden met with the company’s chairman Ye Jianming before cash began to flow earlier that year.