Call it the Letter from Hell to compliment Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell.
Call it a wrong to cover up a bigger wrong with a quixotic quest to make things right (in their eyes, preventing Donald Trump from getting a second term).
Or call it whatever you like.
But don’t call it professional intelligence analysis or an honest attempt to correct the record.
The sad fact of the matter is that a group of well-connected, highly-respected, former US intelligence officials—most of whom came from the analytic side of the intelligence community—got together during the 2020 Presidential Election to sign a letter drafted for them by senior Biden Campaign officials.
The letter was a total partisan con job designed to distract the media and voters away from the ongoing dumpster fire that was the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and to give cover to social media and news media outlets seeking to carry toxic water for Joe Biden’s ailing campaign (remember, Biden barely won the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020).
By getting 51 former top US intelligence officials to sign this patent fabrication concocted by the likes of Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, two national security advisers to Joe Biden throughout his career in government as well as senior campaign aides in 2020, these intelligence professionals were putting their reputations as professional intelligence experts to a compromised document.
I would argue they likely knew the document was garbage, too.
Hunter Biden and A Patent Fabrication
This is why their colleague, former CIA Moscow Station Chief and current Washington Times op-ed writer, Dan Hoffman, ultimately refused their efforts to recruit him to sign the document in 2020. He was friends with many of the people who signed the document. They’d been through the thick of it throughout their long careers in the opaque US intelligence community (IC). Yet, Hoffman could tell this was not something to be involved in.
I’d go one further and say that a first-year analyst could’ve seen this document for the absurd lie that it was.
I’ve noted before the list of people who signed this document were many of the same people who perpetuated the Russia collusion myth that 2016 Democratic Party Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton created to excuse her abysmal performance in what was supposed to be a slam-dunk election for her.
Rather than go graciously into the political long night, Clinton and her allies in the Obama Administration created an obscene mythos about Donald Trump being a Russian spy and his campaign taking assistance from shady Russian intelligence sources to vanquish Clinton’s campaign.
These people knew back then that the Russia collusion narrative was garbage. They went along with it because they loathed Donald Trump and everything he represented.
The former lead FBI counterintelligence agent, Peter Strzok, in cheesy text messages to fellow Department of Justice (DOJ) employee, Lisa Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair, once said he could “smell” Trump voters at his local Wal-Mart.
Just as with the great lie that was the Russia collusion investigation, the people who signed the letter excoriating claims about the Hunter Biden laptop as little more than “Russian disinformation” knew what they were doing.
Like Strzok and Lisa Page and all the others who doggedly pursued former President Donald Trump by chasing Russian ghosts in the White House and at Mar-a-Lago, America’s intelligence services had been hijacked by vicious partisans and weaponized against the duly elected forty-fifth president of the United States.
The people who signed the letter in 2020 defending Hunter Biden were the architects of the Russia collusion myth and everyone at the time knew it. Despite this fact, though, hardly anyone publicly dared to question the honor or methodology that these intelligence experts used to craft their conclusion that Hunter Biden’s laptop was nothing more than Russian disinformation.
Let’s go one further, too.
What’s the Iraq Connection?
The same elements of the IC that pushed the Russia collusion narrative, who overreacted to a mostly fine phone call between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart in 2019 and sent the country down a useless impeachment trial over that call, the same people who signed the fake letter improperly exonerating Hunter Biden (and therefore Joe Biden) of any wrongdoing…these are the same folks who pushed the George W. Bush Administration’s claims that there were weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.
Sure, there was pushback from within CIA’s bureaucracy and the wider IC. But the people in senior positions—many of whom involved with the above lies—pushed the Bush Administration’s preferred narrative about WMDs in Iraq.
The reason I bring this up is not to reopen the slowly healing Iraq War wounds. But to highlight the, at best, poor judgment of this cabal of intelligence professionals. Or, more dangerously, the malicious intentions of this cadre.
Their lies and misinterpretations have had lasting, negative consequences on this country. And this group clearly doesn’t care because, even in retirement, they keep lying and misrepresenting things in pursuit of their own agenda which has little to do with the national interest.
Not only should House Republicans lead the charge against Hunter Biden and the rest of his family for their obvious corruption, but they should also relentlessly pursue these intelligence professionals, and demand real accountability for their lies.
Otherwise, this will keep happening.
Stop the Lies
With the 2024 Presidential Election ahead of us, as President Joe Biden faces a serious challenge from his Left in the form of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as the Republicans appear divided between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, expect more shenanigans from the “Deep State” designed to protect the unbelievably weak and sclerotic Biden Campaign from any real political threat.
If the House GOP cannot hold these forces accountable starting now, they will act with impunity then.
FROM 19FortyFive: The End of Donald Trump Has Arrived
FROM 19FortyFive: The Hunter Biden Scandal Just Exploded
FROM 19FortyFive: Something Is Majorly Wrong with Joe Biden
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
