Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Rep. Jim Jordan (R. Oh.) will receive testimony from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan. They will appear separately before the subcommittee on May 11 (Brennan), and May 17 (Clapper).
The testimony is about the now infamous “laptop letter” that allegedly peddled disinformation regarding Hunter Biden’s emails on a laptop that leaked to the press before the 2020 presidential campaign for Joe Biden. The “laptop letter” claimed likely Russian interference on the release of Hunter’s laptop materials, a claim that has been found to hold no real merit.
This influential letter was authored and signed by 51 individuals, many of whom were former intel officials, and was signed by Clapper and Brennan.
“If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this,” the letter read. It goes on to outline the reasons why they believed the Russians were attempting to interfere. The letter is merely 2 pages long but the quantity of signatories takes 5 additional pages.
Could the impact of such a large number of officials who signed onto this letter have carried much of the influence that they were so worried about preventing? Joe Biden said during the October 2020 presidential debate with then-President Trump, that the incident was a “Russian plan” and that the whole thing was “a bunch of garbage”.
Former acting CIA Director Michael J. Morell of the Obama administration, who put the letter together and was one of its signatories, testified to Congress investigating the Hunter Biden laptop fiasco on April 20, 2023.
Morell said a phone call he had with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was the impetus for him writing the “laptop letter” and that prior to the call between the men that he hadn’t considered the story a plot by the Russians to sway the U.S. election. Allegedly the conversation changed his mind.
Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (R. WI) and Chuck Grassley (R. Ia.) accused Blinken of “false testimony” to Congress when he claimed to have had no correspondence with Hunter Biden in testimony he gave during 2020 to the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The senators are seeking any materials related to the meetings that Biden and Blinken had.
