Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio has claimed that then-candidate Joe Biden made a letter from 51 intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation “seem organic” despite allegedly knowing that the then-presumptive State Department chief helped to “strategize” it.
The letter, signed by Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan, Bush-era CIA Director Michael Hayden, former DNI James Clapper, former CIA chief of staff Jeremy Bash, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, and former National Intelligence Council Chair Thomas Finger, claimed that the laptop had “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Morell, who testified before Jordan’s committee and that of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner of Ohio, stated that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken was “the impetus” behind the October 2020 letter’s inception. According to Jordan, the letter, signed on October 19, 2020, became the basis for suppressing the story and keeping it from the American people just days before the most important election.
Jordan claimed that Morell concocted the letter in time for the NBC presidential debate on October 22 because he thought then-President Donald Trump would bring up the laptop issue, which he did. Morell and Blinken wanted a statement Joe Biden could use to rebut Trump’s likely allegations, “because, as Mr. Morell said, they wanted [Biden] to win.” During the debate, the laptop issue was raised, to which Biden cited the letter, and Trump wondered aloud if the public was to believe the laptop was therefore another “Russia, Russia, Russia [hoax].”
Jordan later claimed that Biden Presidential Campaign Chairman Steven Ricchetti called Morell after the fact and thanked him for his work. In Jordan’s view, “it was a total political operation, and the most important fact is [the letter] was false. [The laptop] wasn’t Russian disinformation. The laptop story looks to be true.”
Jordan and Fox News host Laura Ingraham suggested that Trump’s stated concern that the letter was politicized turned out to be correct. Jordan further noted that the 51 officials’ names on the joint letter were accompanied by their current or former titles, giving the document the “imprimatur” of accuracy. “That’s the scariest thing of all,” he said. “And that letter became the basis for keeping this information from the American people.”
