(Article republished from GreatGameIndia.com)
The CIA interfered in the 2020 race by working with the Biden campaign to undermine the Hunter Biden laptop allegation, according to a committee report released on Tuesday.
“It’s inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer or contractor to be involved in the political process,” former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell told Congress during its investigation into the event.
In 2020, 51 former spies signed a notorious letter calling the reporting on Hunter’s laptop “Russian disinformation” ahead of the election. Antony Blinken, the current Secretary of State, is accused of coordinating the tale for political goals.
Natasha Bertrand, a CNN reporter, published the infamous, and now discredited, Politico story that employed “dozens of former intelligence officials” to peddle a false and misleading narrative about the origins of Hunter’s laptop.
During a presidential debate with Donald Trump, President Joe Biden used the narrative to dismiss the laptop’s contents.
The House Judiciary report on Monday asserted three significant facts about the CIA’s role in the 2020 election:
• High-ranking CIA officials, up to and including then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, were made aware of the Hunter Biden statement before its approval and publication. Because several former senior intelligence officials signed the statement, the PCRB sent the draft statement to the CIA’s then-Chief Operating Officer (COO) Andrew Makridis, who said he subsequently informed then-Director Haspel or then-Deputy Director Vaughn Frederick Bishop that the statement would be published soon. Senior CIA leadership had an opportunity at that time to slow down the CIA’s process for reviewing publication submissions and ensure that such an extraordinary statement was properly vetted.
• Some of the statement’s signatories, including Michael Morell, were on active contract with the CIA at the time of the Hunter Biden statement’s publication. Throughout the Committees’ investigation, the signatories claimed to not have had access to any classified information when asserting that the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the hallmarks” of Russian disinformation. However, at the time of the statement’s publication, at least two signatories—Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley—were on the CIA’s payroll as contractors. Due to purported operational concerns, the CIA declined to declassify the entire universe of signatories who were on active contracts. In addition, some signatories to the Hunter Biden statement also had special “Green Card” access to the CIA at the time of the statement’s publication, allowing them to gain entry to secure CIA facilities.
• After the publication of the Hunter Biden statement, CIA employees internally expressed concern about the statement’s politicized content, acknowledging it was not “helpful to the Agency in the long run.” At least one employee found it “[i]nteresting to see what was submitted and approved” when discussing media talking points that the statement’s co-author, former Senior Intelligence Service Officer Marc Polymeropoulos, submitted related to the statement. When discussing Polymeropoulos’s talking points, another CIA official stated, “It appears [Polymeropoulos] is actively involved in a pro-Biden campaign and may be disclosing classified information in his efforts.” The CIA’s internal review board, known as the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB), determined that Polymeropoulos’s talking points contained classified information that had to be removed before publication.
According to TIPP Insights polls conducted in 2022, 71% of Americans believe truthful reporting of Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell” may have influenced the 2020 presidential election.
Recently, GreatGameIndia reported that, according to the AP, Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three charges in his federal firearms trial, marking the first instance in US history that a sitting president’s child has faced trial.
Read more at: GreatGameIndia.com
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