OPINION:
We now know the letter of 51 U.S. intelligence officers saying Hunter Biden’s laptop was classic Russian disinformation was the biggest instance of government interference in a presidential election since — we don’t have to go back too far — the Steele dossier four years earlier.
Funny how both of those deceptions — the Hillary Clinton campaign’s Russia-sourced dossier fed to an obedient FBI, and the laptop letter signed by 51 former intelligence overseers falsely blaming Russia for Hunter’s inbox — were executed by one party: the Democratic Party. The Democrats even got the CIA bureaucracy to dive into domestic politics like some creepy Kremlin gang.
The goal, of course, was to destroy Republican Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.
We know that the FBI and liberal news media relied on British former spy Christopher Steele’s dossier and its list of false felony allegations to sabotage Mr. Trump before and after he reached the White House.
We have learned more about the bogus intelligence bigwigs’ laptop letter designed to suffocate news about Hunter’s scandalous hard drive unearthed by the New York Post. A postelection poll showed that if not for the well-publicized letter, Mr. Trump might have beaten Joe Biden in 2020.
In June, Republicans and a conservative activist group released documents showing how the CIA intervened.
Michael Morell, former President Barack Obama’s deputy and acting CIA director, helped orchestrate the letter of 51. The signatories included Mr. Obama’s two other CIA directors and his director of national intelligence.
We knew that Mr. Biden’s longtime crony and now-secretary of state, Antony Blinken, kick-started the letter from his post as campaign adviser.
The letter said, in somewhat weasel words, that Hunter Biden’s texts and emails were hacked by the Russians (“all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”). The 51 provided no proof. But they provided then-candidate Biden and his liberal media all the reason they needed to ignore the laptop’s tales of million-dollar deals with shady foreign operatives — with then-Vice President Biden chauffeuring son Hunter on Air Force Two.
Later, Mr. Morell candidly said he helped create the letter for one simple reason: to elect Mr. Biden.
Thanks to Judicial Watch, an aggressive acquirer of government documents via the Freedom of Information Act, we learn that Mr. Morell’s role went deeper. His task was not just to create the letter but to hurry up the CIA to ensure it would be released before an upcoming debate and certainly before Election Day. To do this, he had to exercise his considerable influence at Langley.
He submitted it to the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board five days after the New York Post’s Oct. 14 bombshell, as the voting public was absorbing tales of Mr. Biden’s family’s foreign cash collection.
“This is a rush job, as it needs to get out as soon as possible,” Mr. Morell emailed the board on Oct. 19 at 6:36 a.m.
Mr. Morell was making a raw political request to a board that was supposed to be nonpartisan.
Less than two hours later, an unnamed official told another that the letter contained no classified information. I repeat: two hours.
After another four hours, Mr. Morell received an email giving him the final OK. The letter surfaced in the news that day, just in time for Mr. Biden, whose campaign orchestrated it, to cite the fakery when he debated Mr. Trump.
“The Board determined that it contains no classified information and can be published,” the all-clear said, putting the CIA squarely in Mr. Biden’s camp.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton could hardly believe what he uncovered.
“These documents are astounding. That the CIA would turn around a campaign document like this for Joe Biden’s team in six hours is insane news,” Mr. Fitton said. “This seems to be demonstrable campaign interference by the CIA, and that should be alarming to all Americans.”
On June 25, a joint report by the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees disclosed that “several” letter signers were still on the CIA payroll as contractors. And, it said, Mr. Morell was one of them. And, it said, then-CIA Director Gina Haspel knew the letter was in the works.
The committees headlined their report “The Intelligence Community 51: How CIA Contractors Colluded with The Biden Campaign to Mislead American Voters.”
How misleading was the letter of 51? We know for sure that the laptop hard drive was pure Hunter Biden. The Justice Department team who successfully prosecuted Hunter on gun charges said the FBI determined no Russian hacking.
The letter of 51 is one float in the Democrats’ glittering hoax parade, taking second place only to the Russian-sourced dossier filled with unverified anti-Trump rumors and fabrications.
The dossier said there was a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. There was not. It said attorney Michael Cohen secretly went to Prague to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aides. He did not. It said Mr. Trump frolicked with prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz. Made up, likely by a Democratic operative, a special counsel report said. The CIA completely rejected the dossier as “internet rumor,” a Department of Justice inspector general report said.
Other Democratic hoaxes: Mr. Trump communicated with the Kremlin through Alfa Bank, but it never happened. A New York Democratic judge and attorney general found Mr. Trump committed fraud on bank loans. In fact, he paid all the loans back, and no bank filed a complaint.
To fend off reports that President Biden is senile, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said supposed videos of him freezing in place and wandering off were “cheap fakes.” This was the White House Hoax of the Year. The videos were not fake, as Mr. Biden’s serial display of senility showed at last month’s 90-minute debate.
We did have one hoax retraction of sorts. For seven years, Mr. Biden and Democrats have alleged that Mr. Trump called Nazis “very fine people.” Conservatives constantly countered that he was referring to the people in Charlottesville, Virginia, who wanted to keep Confederate statues up and those who wanted them removed. Both are very fine people, he said.
Last month, liberal fact-checker Snopes agreed with Mr. Trump, labeling the Democrats’ smear “false.”
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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