House GOP threatens Blinken with subpoena, reveals more testimony he ‘triggered’ ex-spies letter
WASHINGTON — The Republican-led House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees on Monday revealed new testimony that indicates Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the inspiration for a letter by 51 former spy-agency leaders that claimed The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop could be Russian disinformation.
Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Intelligence Chairman Mike Tuner (R-Ohio) wrote to Blinken that he can expect a legally binding subpoena if he refuses to voluntarily comply with their document requests.
Blinken’s October 2020 outreach to former CIA acting director Michael Morell was credited by Morell with inspiring the letter, though Morell says Blinken, then a Biden campaign aide, didn’t specifically ask him to write it.
But Jordan and Turner revealed that other letter-signers described Blinken as asking for the letter in their own depositions by the committees.
“Marc Polymeropoulos, who assisted Mr. Morell in preparing the statement, testified to the Committees that Mr. Morell ‘did mention to me that someone in the kind of Biden world had asked about doing this,'” Jordan and Turner wrote.
“[Polymeropoulos] elaborated: ‘Morell said to me, that someone from kind of the Biden world has asked for this. And he did not tell me who it was or any other kinds of details of it.’
“Similarly, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, testified to the Committees that former CIA Director John Brennan told him ‘that Tony Blinken had reached out to Michael [Morell] about putting together a public statement,'” Jordan and Turner wrote.
“From this testimony, it is clear that your outreach to Mr. Morell resulted in the drafting and issuance of the public statement, which had the goal of giving the Biden campaign a ‘talking point to push back on [President] Trump’ during the final presidential campaign. These actions deprived the American people of the opportunity to make a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election.”
The spy-alum letter warned that reporting on Hunter’s abandoned laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
The letter, issued just before the 2020 election, was cited by Joe Biden at the final presidential debate to falsely smear The Post’s reporting as “garbage” and a “Russian plant.”
Blinken denied asking for the letter in a May 1 interview with Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall.
“With regard to that letter, I didn’t — wasn’t my idea. didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it. And I think the testimony that the former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, put forward confirms that,” Blinken told Hall.
Reps for America’s top diplomat had brushed off a prior request sent to him in April for documents after Morell described Blinken’s pivotal role, the congressmen wrote Monday.
“We received a reply letter from your attorney on May 4, 2023, which set forth several reasons why you believe you do not need to cooperate, and therefore was unresponsive to our request,” Jordan and Turner wrote to Blinken.
“We respectfully request that you produce this material as soon as possible but no later than 5:00 p.m. on June 26, 2023,” the chairmen wrote. “The Committees may consider the use of compulsory process if these requests remain outstanding beyond that date.”
The new communication to Blinken says, “[your] response letter set forth a strawman argument that you ‘did not solicit the letter in question,’ referring to the public statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop. We, however, did not allege in our letter that you solicited the statement. As we explained, the Committees’
oversight revealed how your outreach to Mr. Morell ‘set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.’
“Mr. Morell testified that at the time of your phone call to him he had not been aware of the New York Post story about Hunter Biden and that your outreach ‘triggered’ his intention to prepare a public statement. The most logical inference from these facts is that the public statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop would not have happened if not for your outreach to Mr. Morell.”
Jordan and Turner added: “Whether you explicitly solicited the letter or not, the Committees’ record is clear that you played a key role in the inception of this statement.”
The Post’s first laptop bombshell — published five days before the ex-spies’ statement — revealed that Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father” — directly contradicting Biden’s 2019 claim that he’d “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings.”
The Biden campaign vaguely denied the meeting occurred. But further reporting corroborated key details, including the fact that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner one day before the Burisma exec’s email. A group of his son’s associates, including Pozharskyi, a trio from Kazakhstan and Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, the former first lady of Moscow, also attended.
A 2020 report from Republican-led Senate committees alleges that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a firm associated with Hunter Biden. Baturina is one of a dwindling number of Russian oligarchs yet to face Biden administration sanctions over Russia’s more than year-old invasion of Ukraine.
Hunter earned up to $1 million per year to serve on Burisma’s board from 2014 to 2019, beginning when his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy — and the firm is at the center of a recently surfaced bribery allegation accusing Joe and Hunter Biden of collectively accepting $10 million.
President Biden on Thursday called the bribery allegation “malarkey” but Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed Monday revealed that a paid FBI informant alleged the existence of 17 tape recordings of Joe and Hunter Biden related to the alleged bribery plot while then-Vice President Biden led the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.
A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post — printed four days before the surveillance leaders’ statement — described communications about Hunter and his uncle Jame Biden’s venture with the company CEFC China Energy, a since-defunct reputed cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign.
A May 13, 2017, email from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the CEFC deal.
Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski alleges that he discussed the venture with Joe Biden in May 2017 and both Bobulinski and another former Hunter Biden partner, the email’s author James Gilliar, have identified Joe Biden as the “big guy.”
Hunter and James Biden earned $4.8 million from CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington Post’s later review of Hunter Biden laptop documents. An October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
Blinken was deputy national security adviser when Hunter joined Burisma’s board in 2014. He then worked as deputy secretary of state for the final two years of the Obama-Biden administration and claimed in a Dec. 22, 2020, Senate deposition he had no idea that the then-vice president’s son scored the Burisma post.
Blinken’s wife, White House cabinet secretary Evan Ryan, corresponded with Hunter Biden about a Chinese state dinner and other matters during Biden’s vice presidency.
The State Department declined to comment.
