During his first week back in office, President Donald Trump announced his intention to revoke the security clearances of more than four dozen former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop controversy resembled a “Russian operation.”
The squealing in Washington was immediate. John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, called Trump’s decision “bizarre.”
“He misrepresented the facts in that executive order because it said that we had suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation,” Brennan told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “No, we said it was for the hallmarks of Russian information operations.”
Brennan’s carefully crafted language contrasts with news reports at the time, which blared headlines such as this: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
Brennan says Trump’s executive order is an effort to “get back at” U.S. intelligence officials who criticized him, and this line was dutifully picked up by the Associated Press, which claimed without evidence that the action is designed “to exact retribution on perceived adversaries” in the intelligence community.
The word “perceived” is a nice touch because it suggests that Trump doesn’t have adversaries in the intelligence community. But he absolutely does.
Trump’s feud with the intelligence community is well-known to virtually everyone, except AP reporters, apparently. One needn’t be a reporter or a political junkie to remember the 2017 comments from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Trump was “being really dumb” by publicly mocking intelligence assessments of Russia’s cyber activities.
“Let me tell you,” Schumer smiled, “you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.”
The relationship between U.S. intelligence agencies and Trump hardly improved from there, as U.S. intelligence agencies pushed the infamous Steele dossier to make the case that Trump was a Putin stooge.
In 2019, the Justice Department’s own internal watchdog, in a 400-page report, sharply criticized the bureau over its unlawful surveillance of the Trump campaign, which prompted an apology the following year from then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, who described the surveillance as “unacceptable and unrepresentative of the FBI as an institution.”
The intelligence community was not done trying to undermine Trump, however.
In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, the aforementioned laptop story broke. Hunter Biden’s laptop had been discovered and contained incriminating information that could hurt his father’s campaign.
That’s when the 51 former U.S. intelligence officials signed an open letter stating that Hunter Biden’s laptop story bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation.”
In truth, the laptop was authentic, and there was no evidence of Russian involvement. Even more shocking, the FBI knew this, yet it refused to comment when asked even as social media giants censored the story.
Ironically, evidence suggests the real effort to misinform people and manipulate their votes in 2020 came not from Russia, but from the signatories of the open letter.
According to closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the origins of the infamous “Russian disinfo letter” stem from Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA, who was contacted by Anthony Blinken, who, at the time, was a senior adviser to the Biden campaign.
According to Morell’s testimony, which is publicly available in a letter written by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the former CIA deputy admitted he initiated the letter after receiving calls from Blinken and then the Biden campaign. During questioning, he said one of his express purposes in organizing the letter was to help then-candidate Joe Biden.
“You wanted to help the vice president, why?” Jordan asked.
“Because I wanted him to win the election,” Morrell responded.
As George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley noted, “The letter was clearly arranged by Biden campaign supporters with the intent to influence the election.”
The fact that former U.S. intelligence officers were meddling in a presidential election at the behest of the Biden campaign seems like a newsworthy revelation. One can only wonder why Andrea Mitchell or AP reporters never asked Brennan questions about the letter’s origin.
Reporter Matt Taibbi has a theory.
“An all-time media blackout is in effect,” he wrote.
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It’s unclear if a great many media outlets have become mere plumbers for the government. What is clear is that Trump is right to repeal the security clearance of anyone connected to the “Russian disinformation” letter.
Security clearances are not a right. Any former intelligence officers who use their power to meddle in presidential elections and falsely accuse nuclear adversaries of doing precisely what they themselves are doing deserve to lose their clearances.
Jon Miltimore is a senior editor at the American Institute for Economic Research. Follow him on Substack.