The fire crackling under the House of Representatives’ Hunter Biden laptop investigation saw more logs thrown on the embers this week.
Michael Morell, a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, exposed the involvement of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the Biden campaign in suppressing a news story about the now-president’s wayward son Hunter Biden.
Morell testified in House Judiciary Committee that that Blinken, who was a senior advisor to the Biden campaign during the 2020 election, was responsible for organizing a letter signed by 51 U.S. intelligence officials that discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The letter falsely implied that the reporting by the New York Post about Hunter Biden was Russian disinformation. It was used to silence the story until after the election. Recent revelations show that federal law enforcement pressured social media companies to censor the story based on this false claim by officials and former officials.
Twitter, under the old management system of Jack Dorsey, cancelled the Twitter account of the New York Post after it broke the story about what was on the laptop and how it linked to Joe Biden.
Mainstream media continues to run cover for the government fingerprints all over Twitter in the 2020 election. NPR calls the decision to block the Post a “short-lived decision.”
Recently, NPR divorced itself from the Twitter platform after a label was put on its account advising the public that NPR is essentially state-sponsored news.
This is not the only committee investigating the Biden-Hunter Biden connection. Earlier this year, a House Oversight Committee hearing went on for more than six hours, with newly-in-power Republicans accusing the social media company of colluding with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Biden campaign to censor the Hunter Biden story.
During that hearing, Yoel Roth, the former executive of trust and safety at Twitter, denied any government involvement in the decision to censor the New York Post. The White House called that hearing “a bizarre political stunt,” and said that Republicans were trying to re-litigate the 2020 election.
This week’s revelations show a different picture.
In response to this new testimony, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, both of Ohio, are demanding documents and communications from Secretary of State Blinken.
The revelation raises serious concerns about the integrity of the Biden campaign and the actions of high-ranking officials deep within the U.S. government intelligence circles to suppress information during a critical election period.
On Oct. 14, 2020, the New York Post published a report detailing how Hunter Biden used the position and influence of his father, now-President Joe Biden, for personal gain with the apparent awareness of President Biden.
The article reported on several emails found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden that he had abandoned in a Delaware computer shop. The contents of the emails cast doubt on President Biden’s previous denials of speaking to his son about his international business dealings.
Within five days of the article being published, on Oct. 19, 2020, 51 former intelligence officials released a public statement attempting to discredit the contents of the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden, stating that the story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Legacy news organizations immediately ran with the statement, with Politico publishing a story with the conclusive headline, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.”
During the final presidential debate on October 22, then-Vice President Biden cited the public statement to rebut President Trump’s criticism of the Biden family business dealings.
The two committees recently conducted a transcribed interview with Morell, a former Deputy Director of the CIA and one of the 51 signatories of the public statement.
In the interview, Morell testified that on or around Oct. 17, 2020, Blinken reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. According to Morell, it set in motion events that led to the issuance of the public statement.
That same day, Oct. 17, Blinken emailed Morell an article published in USA Today alleging that the FBI was examining whether the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a “disinformation campaign.” The very bottom of the email he sent to Morell included the signature block of Andrew Bates, then-director of rapid response for the Biden campaign.
Morell testified that his communication with Blinken was one of a few communications he had with the Biden campaign, explaining that he also received a call from Steve Ricchetti, Chairman of the Biden campaign, following the October 22 debate to thank him for writing the statement.
Morell also explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of the statement. Morell further explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election, Jordan’s office said.
“Based on Morell’s testimony, it is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election,” the committee report said. “Although the statement’s signatories have an unquestioned right to free speech and free association—which we do not dispute—their reference to their national security credentials lent weight to the story and suggested access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans. This concerted effort to minimize and suppress public dissemination of the serious allegations about the Biden family was a grave disservice to all American citizens’ informed participation in our democracy.”
Read the full letter to Secretary Blinken, including transcripts of the interview with Morrell, here.
