The House Judiciary Committee, its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a joint interim staff report titled, “The Intelligence Community 51: How CIA Contractors Colluded with The Biden Campaign to Mislead American Voters.”
We provided Part 1 of the text of the report yesterday, and conclude the report today.
In the final weeks before the 2020 presidential election, 51 former intelligence officials coordinated with the Biden campaign to discredit serious allegations about Biden family influence peddling.1 In issuing a public statement using their official titles, these former intelligence officials sought to cast an explosive New York Post story and Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop as “Russian disinformation.”2 President Biden even cited to the statement in a televised debate with President Trump shortly before the election to accuse President Trump of leveling false accusations. 3 As a result, the explosive allegations about Biden family misconduct were buried and millions of Americans cast their votes for president without a full set of facts. The 51 former intelligence officials’ Hunter Biden statement was a blatant political operation from the start. It originated with a call from top Biden campaign official—and now Secretary of State—Antony Blinken to former Deputy Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Michael Morell. The Committees’ investigation revealed that without this outreach from Blinken, Morell would not have written the statement.4 Indeed, Morell told the Committees that the Blinken phone call “triggered” his intent to write the statement.5 The statement’s drafters were open about the goal of the project: “[W]e think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate”6 and “we want to give the [Vice President] a talking point to use in response.”7 The details as revealed by the Committees to date are concerning enough, but as the Committees have continued to investigate the origins of the Hunter Biden statement, new information has come to light. Through newly obtained internal CIA emails and testimonial evidence, the Committees have uncovered more information on the extent to which the intelligence community was involved in the statement. Specifically, the evidence shows:
High ranking CIA officials, up to and including then-CIA Director Gina Haspel, were made aware of the Hunter Biden statement prior to its approval and publication.8 Because several former senior intelligence officials signed the statement, the PCRB sent the draft statement to the CIA’s then-Chief Operating Officer (COO) Andrew Makridis, who said he subsequently informed then-Director Haspel or thenDeputy Director Vaughn Frederick Bishop that the statement would be published soon.9 Senior CIA leadership had an opportunity at that time to slow down the CIA’s process for reviewing publication submissions and ensure that such an extraordinary statement was properly vetted.10
Some of the statement’s signatories, including Michael Morell, were on active contract with the CIA at the time of the Hunter Biden statement’s publication. 11 Throughout the course of the Committees’ investigation, the signatories claimed to not have had access to any classified information when asserting that the allegations surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the hallmarks” of Russian disinformation.12 However, at the time of the statement’s publication, at least two signatories—Morell and former CIA Inspector General David Buckley—were on the CIA’s payroll as contractors. Due to purported operational concerns, the CIA declined to declassify the entire universe of signatories who were on active contract. In addition, some signatories to the Hunter Biden statement also had special “Green Card” access to the CIA at the time of the statement’s publication, allowing them to gain entry to secure CIA facilities.
After publication of the Hunter Biden statement, CIA employees internally expressed concern about the statement’s politicized content, acknowledging it was not “helpful to the Agency in the long run.”13 At least one employee found it “[i]nteresting to see what was submitted and approved” when discussing media talking points that the statement’s co-author, former Senior Intelligence Service Officer Marc Polymeropoulos, submitted related to the statement.14 When discussing Polymeropoulos’s talking points, another CIA official stated, “It appears [Polymeropoulos] is actively involved in a pro-Biden campaign and may be disclosing classified information in his efforts.”15 The CIA’s internal review board, known as the Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB), determined that Polymeropoulos’s talking points contained classified information that had to be removed prior to publication.16
The new information included in this report, based on new testimony and declassified documents, shows the potential dangers of a politicized intelligence community. In the waning days before the 2020 presidential election, 51 intelligence community officials rushed to draft and release a statement using their official titles, presumably to convey access to specialized information unavailable to other Americans. The statement was conceived following a conversation with a senior Biden campaign official and designed explicitly to provide talking points to the Biden campaign to discredit politically damaging allegations. Some of the signatories of the statement were on the CIA payroll at the time as contractors and others had special access to CIA facilities. Even Michael Morell—before the Committees learned of his contract with the CIA—acknowledged, “It’s inappropriate for a currently serving staff officer or contractor to be involved in the political process.”
The infamous Hunter Biden statement had all the hallmarks of an intelligence community influence operation. But rather than carrying it out against our adversaries on foreign soil, this operation was directed at the American people and our democratic processes. It is impossible to know for certain how events would have played out differently if these 51 intelligence community officials never sought to influence the 2020 election. All the Committees may do now is present the facts as known to inform legislative reforms to protect our democratic ideals and prevent future abuse of the intelligence community for partisan political benefit.