Two of the most prominent signers of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, are slated to testify before Congress this month as House Republicans investigate the effort to discredit damning stories on Joe Biden's son just before the 2020 election.
Brennan and Clapper, longtime government veterans and harsh critics of former President Donald Trump who held their latest posts under former President Barack Obama, were among the 51 ex-intelligence officials who signed the October 2020 laptop letter which contributed to the baseless narrative that the stories on the contents of Hunter Biden laptop were nothing but a product of Russian disinformation — a narrative happily seized upon by Biden’s 2020 campaign and spread by some of the laptop letter signers.
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The news of the transcribed interviews with Brennan and Clapper, confirmed to the Washington Examiner by a source familiar with the sweeping investigation by the GOP-led House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees, comes on the heels of testimony by Mike Morell — the former Obama CIA acting director who said now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “triggered” him to write the letter.
Brennan will appear before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on May 11, and Clapper will appear on May 17.
Just days before signing the letter baselessly linking the Hunter Biden laptop to Russia, Brennan condemned the “politicization” of intelligence on Morell’s podcast.
Brennan appeared on Morell’s Intelligence Matters podcast a week before the New York Post published stories on President Joe Biden’s son’s shady business dealings in China and Ukraine. This was also less than two weeks before dozens of ex-intelligence officials, led by Morell and organized in part by longtime Brennan aide Nick Shapiro, signed a letter making evidence-free claims of Russian involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop saga.
A review by the Washington Examiner found that at least 17 of the 51 laptop letter signers appeared on Morell’s podcast over the years, with six of them joining the podcast in 2020, including two in the days leading up to the letter.
Brennan joined the CBS News podcast on Oct. 7, where Morell began by noting that “you and I are friends” and called him “one of the most ethical people I know.” Morell claimed that “thanks to the rhetoric and to the actions of President Trump and those who enable him is that a significant percentage of Americans now see the intelligence community, to include the CIA, as the deep state. And that’s not going to just go away with an election of a President Biden. … So how would you advise the leadership of the IC going forward?”
Brennan replied by saying that Trump is “dismissive of intelligence and denigrates” the intelligence community and said that “it is incumbent on the future leaders of the intelligence community to speak out.” If Biden won, there would be “much greater respect” for the intelligence community, Brennan said, calling it “so, so unfortunate that the intelligence work is now the subject of great partisan sniping on the Hill.”
Politico has said Brennan aide Shapiro provided them with the letter, and he said at the time: “The real power here ... is the number of former, working-level IC officers who want the American people to know that once again the Russians are interfering.”
Clapper, who appeared on Morell’s show in June 2018, blamed Politico in February for the “distortion” of the laptop letter.
Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign quickly dismissed the laptop story as a Russian disinformation operation. Joe Biden called the story “garbage” and part of a “Russian plan” during an October 2020 debate with then-President Trump. He claimed, “There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said this is, has all the — four, five former heads of the CIA. Both parties say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”
The now-president was referring to a Politico report about the letter in an article titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The title was a bit misleading because the letter never directly called the story Russian “disinformation.”
Clapper complained about the Politico headline to the Washington Post earlier this year.
“There was message distortion,” Clapper said. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said.”
Clapper did not speak up about this during the 2020 election, however, despite the Biden campaign exploiting the letter to dismiss the Hunter Biden laptop stories as a Kremlin disinformation operation, and he implausibly claimed he was unaware of how Joe Biden described the letter during the 2020 debate.
Although the October 2020 letter hedged a bit at various times, it did repeatedly contend there was Russian involvement with the laptop stories, arguing that “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.” The letter claimed that the laptop saga “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
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For its part, Politico defended its misleading headline and article in February.
Konstantinos "Gus" Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert and former Secret Service agent, conducted an examination of the laptop for the Washington Examiner last year, concluding that “my analysis revealed there is a 100% certainty that Robert Hunter Biden was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data” and that “the hard drive is authentic.”