"The speakers of significance were the former national security leaders."
These ones?
JOE BIDEN: “Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
The Hunter Biden laptop and claims of ‘Russian disinfo’
In 2020, Joe Biden referenced a letter from former U.S. Intelligence officials warning his son’s laptop could be tied to a Russian information campaign. (Video: The Washington Post)
Analysis by Glenn Kessler
February 13, 2023 at 3:00 a.m. EST
DONALD TRUMP: “It’s the laptop from hell …”
JOE BIDEN: “Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
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TRUMP: “You mean, the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? You gotta be—”
BIDEN: “That’s exactly what … we’re told.”
TRUMP: “Is this where you’re going? This is where he’s going? The laptop is Russia, Russia, Russia?”
— exchange during the final presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2020
“60 MINUTES”: “Do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter’s computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?”
BIDEN: “From what I’ve read and know, the intelligence community warned the president that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians. And we also know that Putin is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden. And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani and the president together, you assess what it is. It’s a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about in his — what is he running on? What is he running on?”
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— exchange on 60 Minutes, Oct. 25, 2020
About a month before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post revealed that it had obtained emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop, which a Delaware repair-shop owner said he had abandoned. That laptop — and its contents — are center stage again as congressional Republicans have argued that social-media suppression of the story — and mainstream media ignoring it — may have swung the election to Biden.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. For many political journalists and social media companies, the New York Post reporting on the emails was deja vu.
The leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta may have contributed to Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016. WikiLeaks slowly doled out the documents for maximum impact — and it was later determined that the hacks were orchestrated by operatives with ties to the Russian government, which had favored Trump.
News organizations vowed to do better in 2020 and be extra cautious with hacked materials. Complicating matters was that the source of the hard drive, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, refused to share it with other news organizations, including The Washington Post and the New York Times. Few were willing to report information in the New York Post stories without their own due diligence, especially if Russia was once again seeking to meddle in the election.
Twitter, operating under its hacked material protocol developed after the 2016 election, blocked users from sharing the New York Post story — a decision officials later said was a mistake.
A major question was the origin of the materials. The story that Hunter Biden turned over for repair a laptop filled with sensitive materials — and then never picked it up — seemed rather fantastic.
On Oct. 16, a week before the final presidential debate, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) told CNN: “Well we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. ... Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the president is only too happy to have Kremlin help and try to amplify it.”
That prompted a response on Oct. 19 from the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe: “Let me be clear: The intelligence community doesn’t believe that, because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”
That night, Politico published a story with an explosive headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”
The article said that more than 50 former senior intelligence officials, including five CIA chiefs, had signed a letter saying the release of the emails “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
That’s what Biden referred to in the presidential debate and on “60 Minutes” — though his wording was much stronger than the letter’s. Biden said the letter said the laptop story was a “Russian plan,” “a bunch of garbage,” “disinformation from the Russians” and “a smear campaign.”
The letter artfully does not say any of those things.
In fact, it does not even say what the Politico headline claimed — though that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day. The article itself does not say the letter made a disinformation claim.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Feb. 6 sent letters to 12 of the signers, requesting interviews about a letter he said “falsely implied the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden was the product of Russian disinformation.”
The Fact Checker reached out to the 12 people who received Jordan’s letter. Most did not respond, but we learned that the letter was organized by Michael J. Morell, former deputy director of the CIA, and written and edited by a number of senior intelligence officials who had served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. Morell had long been considered a top candidate for CIA director in a Biden administration, news reports said, but key Democrats objected, claiming he publicly supported the CIA’s enhanced interrogation methods after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“There was message distortion,” former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. told The Fact Checker in a telephone interview. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.” He said he was unaware of how Biden described the letter during the debate.
“No one who has spent time in Washington should be surprised that journalists and politicians willfully or unintentionally misconstrue oral or written statements,” said Thomas Fingar, a signer who had been the top intelligence official at the State Department, in an email. “The statement we signed was carefully written to minimize the likelihood that what was said would be misconstrued, and to provide a clear written record that could be used to identify and disprove distortions.”
John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware computer repairman, last year sued Politico for defamation, citing Politico’s headline. He also sued Schiff and CNN over the Schiff interview, as well as the Daily Beast for reporting the laptop had been “stolen.” The Daily Beast has apologized and retracted that statement; it has been dropped from the lawsuit.
In a statement to The Fact Checker, Politico said: “The article fairly and accurately reported on — and summarized — the intelligence officials’ letter. More specifically, the headline is a fair summary of their allegations, the subhead offers additional context, and the first paragraph of the article hyperlinks to the letter itself, allowing readers to draw their own conclusion.”
The headline has not been updated since the article was published. The subhead said: “More than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story on the former vice president’s son.” |
