New York Post columnist Miranda Devine called for security clearances to be stripped from all 51 former intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 claiming the stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation. On “America’s Newsroom” Monday, Devine accused the intel officials of abusing their authority and said Biden used the letter as a “get out of jail free card” in his final presidential debate against Donald Trump.
REPUBLICANS RESPOND AFTER IRS WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION IS BEING MISHANDLED
MIRANDA DEVINE: It’s just bombshell on top of bombshell. And you’re right. The revelation that the Biden campaign – specifically now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken, when he was a campaign senior adviser – reached out to a high-ranking former acting director of the CIA and got him to organize this letter, claiming falsely that the stories we published from the laptop were Russian disinformation. Those 51 former intelligence officials are really at fault. … And they should have their security clearances stripped. They abused their former higher authority. They did not do any due diligence. They peppered the end of the letter with weasel words so that they could have plausible deniability now, but it doesn’t wash. They saw how that letter was handled by the media as they intended, by calling it Russian disinformation, reducing our reporting, and they never spoke up. John Brennan and the rest of them fanned out across the left- wing media and kept on saying drumbeat after drumbeat, ‘This is straight from the Kremlin.’ And of course, a couple of days later, Joe Biden used that letter to get out of jail free effectively at the last debate against Donald Trump. Very effectively. It worked.
A former CIA official testified that then-Biden campaign senior adviser, now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken “played a role in the inception” of the public statement signed by current and past intelligence officials that claimed the Hunter Biden laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morrell testified before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, and revealed that Blinken was “the impetus” of the public statement signed in October 2020 that implied the laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was disinformation.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Blinken Thursday, notifying him that the panels are “conducting oversight of federal law-enforcement and intelligence matters within our respective jurisdictions.”
In October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, dozens of ex-national security officials signed onto a letter claiming that Hunter’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The former officials included former Obama CIA Director John Brennan, former Obama DNI James Clapper, and former CIA director, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, among others.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
