Recent congressional testimony shows that the infamous 2020 letter alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop allegation was a Russian disinformation plot was both signed and ultimately approved by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States.
Multiple former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA’s involvement in the dissemination of the letter, which was ultimately signed by over fifty former top U.S. intelligence officials, according to a report that will be published by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government this coming Wednesday.
“One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (‘PCRB’) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked him if he would sign it,” the House report states.
“The Committees have requested additional material from the CIA, which has ignored the request to date.”
The mission of the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) is to examine comments, letters, and books written by former intelligence employees in order to assess whether any classified information is included that has to be deleted or redacted before publication.
In an email sent to congressional investigators on March 5, 2023, Cariens said that a CIA agent in charge of evaluating and authorizing a memoir he wanted to publish informed him of the Hunter Biden laptop letter and even asked him if he would like to sign it.
“I was told about the draft letter,” Cariens said, “when the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes. The person asked me if I would be willing to sign.”
The CIA agent allegedly also read certain passages from the letter to Cariens to get him to sign it.
Cariens said in his email that he couldn’t recall the name of the CIA agent who asked him to sign the letter pertaining to Hunter Biden’s laptop. Janice Cariens, who left the CIA in 1995, is also included as a signatory to the letter.
Former CIA acting director and Joe Biden campaign supporter Mike Morell delivered the letter to the PCRB for the first time at 6:34 in the am on October 19, 2020.
At 7:11 am on the same day, the CIA review board acknowledged receiving the letter.
Just a few hours later, at 10:27 a.m., former CIA employee Kristen Wood asked former intelligence professionals on a distribution list to sign the letter that Morell and Marc Polymeropoulos, who left the agency in 2019, had written.
Later, in response to Wood’s email, Cariens concurred to sign the document.
Morell acknowledged writing and disseminating the letter during his own testimony before Congress in order to offer Biden an assertion to use in one of the 2020 presidential debates with then-President Trump.
The Hunter Biden laptop letter was written by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, according to emails obtained by the House weaponization subcommittee. Clapper is known for spreading untrue claims that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin conspired to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton.
“I have one editorial suggestion for the letter: I think it would strengthen the verbiage if you say this has all the classic earmarks of a Soviet/Russian information operation rather than the ‘feel’ of a Russian operation,” Clapper emailed Morell late on Sunday, October 18, 2020.
Prior to the Trump-Biden debates, Morell instructed the CIA review board to swiftly examine his letter so that it might be made public.
On the morning of Monday, October 19, Morell sent an email to the CIA with the subject line “This is a rush job, as it need to get out as soon as possible.”
Even while the CIA hasn’t yet given House investigators access to its files pertaining to the letter’s agency assessment, simultaneous contacts from the letter’s writers indicate that authorization came within twelve hours after the letter had been submitted.
“All good?” On October 19, at 5:51 pm, Polymeropoulos texted Morell to inquire. “Didn’t see response from PRB[.]”
Morell replied promptly, “Yes, they cleared.”
“Great!” Polymeropoulos replied.
“Reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop and its implications created a firestorm during the 2020 campaign and resulted in numerous publications and accounts, including the New York Post, being banned from social media for reporting on the laptop, which contained voluminous evidence of possible corruption by the Biden family. The letter from the former intelligence officials was used to justify the censorship of reporting on the laptop’s contents,” The Federalist reported.
However, not only was there zero evidence showing that Hunter Biden’s laptop and the stories surrounding it were Russian disinformation, the federal government knew the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden. In fact, federal legal filings show the U.S. Department of Justice had taken possession of the computer on Dec. 9, 2019, pursuant to a federal grand jury subpoena.
Numerous polls taken since the 2020 election show that the coordinated efforts between U.S. intelligence agencies and social media tech companies, including Twitter and Facebook, may have even tipped the election to Biden by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story and preventing voters from knowing the truth about the emerging Biden corruption scandal before they voted. A 2022 poll by TIPP Insights found that 47 percent of those polled, including 45 percent of independents, said knowing the laptop contents were real and not Russian disinformation likely would have changed their votes in the 2020 election.
