The ex-intelligence officials who spearheaded the discredited letter casting doubt on the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop blamed the media and then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for inaccurately framing their words, according to testimony transcripts released last week.
The letter, signed by 51 former intelligence officials, was published by Politico in October 2020 to discredit the New York Post‘s reporting on emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive that appeared to show his father’s involvement in his lucrative foreign-business dealings. Both the headline of Politico‘s article and Joe Biden’s statement about it at a presidential debate were not fully accurate, the former intelligence officials who testified last year admitted when pressed under oath.
“Headline is wrong,” said former CIA official Nick Shapiro, who shopped the letter to multiple media outlets before Politico published it with the headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
“The story is very consistent. The story is a hundred percent accurate. That headline, though, is not. We didn’t say disinformation,” Shapiro later added. He made no effort to correct the Politico headline at the time, despite his misgivings.
Days after the letter became public, Joe Biden referred to it at a presidential debate against then-president Trump, and called the laptop story a “Russian plan” nobody believed.
Former senior CIA officials Michael Morell and Marc Polymeropoulos crafted the Hunter Biden letter, with assistance from Shapiro and former CIA official Kristin Wood, who circulated it to other members of the intelligence community.
Wood was not initially aware of the Politico article because of family issues she was experiencing, but when lawmakers showed it to her, she said it was not accurate. If she knew about the headline, she said she would have contacted Morell to discuss it. Shortly thereafter, Wood testified that Biden’s debate remarks were inaccurate.
Under oath, Morell revealed that the purposes of the letter were to warn the public about a potential Russian influence operation and give Joe Biden a talking point for the upcoming presidential debate. The statement, he said, was “triggered” by a conversation with then-senior Biden adviser Antony Blinken, who is now secretary of state.
Although Morell insisted the letter had “caveats,” he testified that he was not surprised Biden cited it the way he did given the often hyperbolic nature of political discourse.
“I guessed that politicians would not use the caveats. I was hoping that fact-checkers and I was hoping the media — disappointed in that regard — would pay more attention to them,” Morell said, as he faced a series of follow up questions from Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.).
“I was hoping that the Vice President, you know, would not say that this was disinformation. All right. I was hoping he was going to say possible Russian role in these emails coming to light, right? That’s what I was hoping.”
Morell was listed as a CIA contractor at the time he devised the Hunter Biden letter, according to documents contained in a House Republican report released last month detailing the CIA’s knowledge of the letter. In an email to the New York Post, Morell denied being a contractor at the time he put together the statement.
Similarly, Polymeropoulos felt that Joe Biden mischaracterized the letter and acknowledged the authenticity of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Polymeropoulos assisted Morell by giving him background information that formed the letter’s first draft.
“I think the effect of the letter had to do with statements that Vice President Biden made mischaracterizing it,” he asserted.
“I think it was clear that he called it — well, I mean, I think not only during the debate, but I think other times too when they said that the — called it disinformation, which is not what the letter said,” he continued.
“And in a sense at one point, I can’t remember where I saw this, even if it was as I was reviewing this, Biden said that the whole laptop issue is false. That’s not what we were saying. So it was clearly mischaracterized.”
Former CIA director John Brennan, a high-profile signatory of the letter and Shapiro’s old boss, also testified that Biden’s debate remarks “did not fully, accurately represent what we said in the statement.”
Before the letter was published, former director of national intelligence James Clapper suggested Morell slightly edit the letter to tweak its phrasing. Clapper advised Morell to have the letter say that the laptop story featured “earmarks” of a Russian information operation.
“Well, I think the Politico article misrepresented — I think there was some misrepresentation in there too. Again, the definitive statement is quite different from the import — the intent that I had, at least, which was they could be involved,” Clapper said of the Politico article.
All of the former intelligence officials defended the letter’s suggestion the Hunter Biden laptop story resembled a Russian information operation. Each of them cited intelligence concerns surrounding Russian interference leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s role in getting a copy of the laptop’s hard drive to the New York Post.
Last month, federal prosecutors used data from the laptop against Hunter Biden at his gun trial where he was convicted on three gun felonies. Early in the trial, FBI agent Erika Jensen testified about how government investigators verified the computer data in late 2019 by cross referencing its serial number to Biden’s iCloud backup servers.
Her testimony mirrored congressional testimony from IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley last year on the process by which the laptop contents were verified. Prior to the trial, multiple media outlets independently verified the laptop’s contents.