Ex-CIA chief John Brennan speaks to House on Hunter Biden laptop letter
Former CIA Director John Brennan, one of 51 intelligence officials who falsely suggested Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation, spoke to a House subcommittee Thursday as the panel investigates the origin of the “spies who lie” missive.
Brennan’s transcribed interview with the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government lasted more than four hours, according to Fox News.
Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), a member of the panel, told the outlet on Thursday that while the subcommittee is still in the “fact-finding phase” of its investigation, what is already known about the letter and its origin points to federal agencies being weaponized to help Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
“These depositions, they can be lengthy and there’s a ton of discovery to sift through,” Cammack told host Martha MacCallum.
“But what we’re really getting at is painting an irrefutable picture that the intelligence community — along with the law enforcement agencies, the DOJ and others, at the highest levels — have been working to weaponize their agencies against the American people and certainly for political gain.”
In October of 2020, Brennan signed the now-discredited letter that claimed to report on the now-first son’s overseas business affairs had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who also leads the weaponization subcommittee, revealed last month that former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell testified that he drafted the letter and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken – then a Biden campaign adviser – was the “impetus” behind the attempt to discredit The Post’s exclusive (and later verified) reporting.
“What we saw was at the behest of the Biden administration, then [Biden campaign adviser] Blinken, now Secretary of State Blinken, was coordinating with Brennan and [former Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and others to get signatories on this letter through the pre-publication classification review board, actually soliciting members of the [intelligence community] to say, ‘Oh, we deem this to be Russia misinformation,’” Cammack said.
“To me, that is absolutely crazy. If that’s not weaponization of our federal government, I don’t know what is,” she added.
An Oct. 19, 2020, email from Morell to Brennan shows that Morell was attempting to give Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign “a talking point” to “push back on Trump” during the second and final presidential debate as he urged Brennan to sign on to the disinformation letter.
Brennan was seemingly eager to add his name, responding: “Ok, Michael, add my name to the list. Good initiative. Thanks for asking me to sign on.”
That same day, Morell told the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) that he needed the letter approved as an unusual “rush job,” and a CIA employee working for the board solicited a signature for Morell’s letter from former CIA analyst David Cariens, according to a written statement by Cariens to the weaponization panel.
The PCRB approved the letter in 5.5 hours, adding a disclaimer stating that its clearance did not amount to CIA verification of its claims.
Morell did not include the disclaimer in the letter, which was published by Politico later that day.
At the time Morell was drafting the letter and seeking approval from the CIA, he was widely considered to be a front-runner to lead the agency if Biden were elected.
Biden, however, picked William Burns to lead the agency.
Clapper, along with former CIA directors Michael Hayden and Leon Panetta, are among the other intelligence community heavyweights who signed on to Morell’s letter.
Clapper will sit before the weaponization panel for a transcribed interview on May 17, a source familiar with the plans told The Post last week.
