New Evidence Reveals Just How Connected Hunter Biden Laptop Letter Signatories Were To The Biden Campaign

At least 12 out of 51 signatories of the October 2020 letter that branded the Hunter Biden laptop contents as being Russian disinformation donated to Biden's election campaign in 2020 or to other Democratic causes, according to Federal Election Commission filings that were reviewed by Just the News. Such individuals included Obama's former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Obama's former CIA Director (and Secretary of Defense) Leon Panetta, former acting CIA Director under George W. Bush John McLaughlin, and so on. The largest donor of the bunch was Obama's former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash who donated a total of $18,900 to Biden's 2020 campaign and Biden's victory fund. No individual responded for comment to Just the News.

The letter itself was a product of collusion between a former intelligence official, Michael Morell, and the Biden campaign. Morell testified that he was inspired to write the letter after contact with Antony Blinken, then Biden's campaign adviser and now Secretary of State. Morell admitted that the purpose of the letter was to give Biden a talking point and help him win the election. Morell also wrote op-eds in the Washington Post that attacked Trump and were for Biden. He also had a history of helping Democratic candidates. Morell was on Biden's list to be the CIA's Director but this was foiled partly because of backlash by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) who called Mr. Morell a "torture apologist" and said this was "a nonstarter" for someone who wanted the post. 

The collusion between at least one active member of the CIA and the letter was also worrying given the agency's founding mandate that it would not interfere domestically in the United States. This mandate though is no stranger to being violated. Kash Patel, Trump's former Deputy Director of National Intelligence, told Just the News that while "the campaign donations are somewhat concerning", in his view what is of greater concern is the CIA "not only participated in the intel letter" but "encouraged people to sign it inside the building." Patel demanded that "[t]hose people need to come in and testify, and have their email and phone records subpoenaed by Congress." He went on to explain that it was illegal for the CIA to be engaged in such activity.

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Former FBI agent Kevin Brock similarly commented that "Now, if this is true, where it looks like there was involvement from some official in the agency in encouraging the promulgation of this letter, that raises a lot more questions. The CIA is a Cabinet-level department. It has a right to affect the policies of the sitting president, but it doesn't have the right to influence the electorate. And this is a situation where they made up information and passed it off as vetted intelligence in order to purposely deceive the American people"

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) called this out by saying that Democrats are "against election interference that might impact them, they're all for it when it helps them win elections...Obviously, that letter interfered in our election to a far greater extent than anything Russia ever could have done."

James Clapper, an aforementioned signatory of the letter, turned against the newspaper, Politico, which published the letter back in February 2023. He maintained that while the letter itself was professional, it was miscontextualized as it merely raised the prospect of a Russian disinformation campaign rather than definitively declaring that Hunter Biden's laptop contents were part of such an operation. Politico stood by its representation of the letter by writing that "[t]he article fairly and accurately reported on — and summarized — the intelligence officials' letter." Clapper's account also has problems given Morell's testimony that the letter was meant to be used by Biden to discredit the story.