House Republicans Open Probe into Intel Agencies Using ‘Disinformation’ Charge to Obstruct Biden Investigation

House Weaponization Select Subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) opened an oversight probe into U.S. intelligence agencies over their alleged obstruction of a 2020 Senate inquiry involving the Biden family.

The House Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee “are investigating allegations that the U.S. Intelligence Community obstructed a congressional inquiry in 2020 by falsely alleging that the work of two U.S. Senators was advancing Russian ‘disinformation,'” Jordan wrote in a letter to National Intelligence director Avril Haines on Wednesday.

Three years ago, Senators Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) opened a congressional inquiry into influence-peddling allegations regarding President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. As part of their investigation, the Republican lawmakers received a “defensive” briefing on August 6, 2020, when two FBI officials painted those claims as Russian disinformation.

At the time, Grassley and Johnson were finishing their September 2020 report on Hunter Biden’s alleged influence-peddling schemes in Ukraine and China.

Jordan is demanding details about that “so-called ‘defensive’ briefing,” as he put it, asking that Haines provide “all drafts of the script” that was used to brief the two senators. “The briefing, the existence of which was later leaked, hampered the Senators’ investigation into Hunter Biden’s financial connections to foreign governments and foreign nationals,” Jordan wrote.

Grassley and Johnson later wrote a letter to then-Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Nikki Floris and then-Section Chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force Bradley Benavides, arguing that the Russian-disinformation briefing the two FBI officials gave “consisted primarily of information that [the Senators] already knew and information unconnected to [their] Biden investigation.”

“[T]he unnecessary FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation,” the GOP senators wrote in August 2022. “Although you stated that the FBI didn’t intend to ‘interfere’ in our investigation, the practical effect of such an unnecessary briefing and the subsequent leaks relating to it created interference, which frustrated and obstructed congressional oversight efforts.”

Soon after the New York Post reported on the evidence of Biden family influence peddling found on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, 51 former intelligence officials signed an open letter casting the laptop as the product of Russian disinformation. Biden cited the letter in a debate against then-president Donald Trump to counter Trump’s claims that he personally benefitted from his post as vice president.

Haines must provide the briefing script and all documents, communications, and other requested materials that were listed in Jordan’s letter by November 15.