House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is investigating whether any of the 51 “spies who lie” who signed a statement in October 2020 claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely a Russian disinformation operation were on the CIA’s payroll at the time..
“[W]e understand that former intelligence officials often return to the intelligence community under private contract for their previous agencies,” Jordan wrote in a Dec. 4 letter to CIA Director William Burns obtained by The Post.
“It is vital to the Committees’ oversight to understand whether any of the signatories of the public statement were actively employed by CIA as contractors or consultants at the time they signed the public statement.”
Jordan gave Burns until Dec. 15 to reveal any of the 51 signers who have been on an active contract or consulting for the CIA at any time since Jan. 1, 2020, and in what capacity — especially if their work related to the Biden family.
Jordan also said the CIA has not complied with records requests that his panel submitted in May, citing “fundamental concerns about the role of the CIA in helping to falsely discredit allegations about the Biden family in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.”
The Judiciary chairman said that an earlier production of documents indicated initially unclassified records had been marked as classified before coming into the committee’s hands — and that the records related “directly” to “the CIA’s awareness of the public statement before its publication.”
“After a careful review of the classified production of documents that were originally unclassified and retained their previous unclassified markings, it is apparent that the classification of these documents was not for the purpose of protecting American national security, but rather to shield the CIA from potential embarrassment,” Jordan wrote.
“Thus, it appears that the CIA’s decision to baselessly classify these documents frustrates and impedes the Committees’ ability to fulfill our constitutional oversight obligations.”
Jordan had threatened to subpoena the CIA in May if it declined to hand over the information.
The Oct. 18 open letter sought to discredit The Post’s bombshell reporting that the first son had involved his father, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, in his lucrative overseas business ventures, according to emails found on his abandoned laptop.
The 51 officials said the leaked emails possessed “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” a claim which Big Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter used to suppress the story’s reach, saying The Post report violated their policies conerning hacked material.
The social media companies censored The Post even after having been informed by the FBI that the contents of the laptop were authentic.
The Post revealed many of the signatories on its March 19, 2022, front page, one of whom was later discovered to be a former CIA agent who was employed at Twitter on Election Day 2020.
Former CIA acting director Mike Morell had recruited the signatories after having spoken with then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken, now secretary of state.
Then-candidate Joe Biden referenced the letter during the second and final presidential debate against former President Donald Trump on Oct. 22, 2020, falsely claiming the laptop to be a “Russian plant.”
David Cariens, a former CIA analyst, revealed that Morell had asked for the analyst’s signature on the infamous letter when Cariens was speaking with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board about his forthcoming memoir.
That exchange and others about the CIA’s knowledge of the letter were disclosed by the House Judiciary Committee in a May staff report.
Under questioning from reporters, several former intelligence officials who signed the letter have chosen to defend the statement, with Obama-era CIA Director Leon Panetta telling Fox News in October, “No, I don’t have any regrets.”