Weaponization Subcommittee Update
May 12, 2023
Weaponization's Probe into How Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters
- The Central Intelligence Agency "may have assisted in obtaining signatories" for the letter signed by 51 former national security officials to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees found. The House Judiciary Committee, its subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and the House Intelligence Committee are expected to release a report this week titled "The Hunter Biden Statement: How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters."
- In the final weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, 51 former top intelligence officials signed a letter saying that the alleged contents of Hunter Biden's laptop had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." The statement was allegedly designed to aid Joe Biden's presidential candidacy, and its dissemination was coordinated through the Biden campaign, according to an interim report by the GOP-led House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. The 64-page report, reviewed by CBS News, states that House investigators wrote to all 51 of the former officials requesting "relevant documents and testimony." The report contains portions of witness interviews, as well as partial emails.
- House Republicans are demanding more information on how CIA employees interacted with a group of former intelligence officials as they organized a 2020 public statement that questioned whether a laptop with Hunter Biden emails and documents was part of a Russian disinformation operation. House Judiciary Republicans say in a new report released on Wednesday that one of the letter’s signers told committee investigators that a staff member at the CIA asked him about signing onto the effort.
New York Post: CIA fast-tracked letter that falsely suggested Hunter Biden laptop was Russia op
- The CIA conspired with former acting director Mike Morell and the Biden campaign to produce a letter falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation — and solicited signatures from at least one former intelligence official, a staff report from the House Judiciary Committee is expected to reveal Wednesday. Morell told the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) that he needed the letter approved as an unusual “rush job” that day, October 19, 2020, in an effort to provide then-candidate Joe Biden ammunition in the final presidential debate to discredit The Post’s report on the Biden emails which had been published five days earlier.
National Review: Biden Campaign Collaborated with Intel Officials to Falsely Portray Hunter Emails as Disinformation: House Report
- The ballyhooed letter signed by 51 former U.S. intelligence officials, portraying the New York Post’s October 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as the product of a Russian influence operation, was itself a classic disinformation campaign executed by former U.S. intelligence officials, and abetted by the CIA itself, at the behest of the Biden campaign and in coordination with Democrat-friendly media. That is the conclusion of a joint interim report released today by investigators from two House committees — specifically, the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, run by Ohio Republicans Jim Jordan and Mike Turner, respectively — as well as Jordan’s newly formed Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Fox News: Biden's White House spox implicated in effort to discredit Hunter Biden laptop: email
- President Biden’s White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates has been implicated in the effort to discredit Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation during the 2020 presidential election, according to emails published by House Oversight Committee Republicans. According to House Oversight Committee Republicans’ report Wednesday, former CIA senior adviser Nick Shapiro drafted a media pitch for the now-discredited letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials that tried to paint the laptop at the center of the New York Post's bombshell story as a Russian operation in October 2020.
Washington Examiner: Eleven Hunter Biden intel laptop letter signers have visited Joe Biden's White House, records reveal
- At least 11 ex-intelligence officials who signed the infamous letter baselessly linking Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop to Russia have scored numerous visits to President Joe Biden’s White House, according to records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. Between October 2021 and January 2023, 11 letter signers frequented the White House a total of 24 times, White House visitor logs show. The letter has come back under the spotlight following a handful of revelations, including that its organizer, ex-Obama CIA head Mike Morell, was "triggered" by then-Biden campaign adviser and now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to write the letter and that a CIA official solicited signatures for it, according to testimony and an email obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.
The Federalist: CIA Solicited Signatures For Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, Congressional Testimony Shows
- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) both solicited signatures for and eventually approved the infamous 2020 letter claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a Russian disinformation plot, recent congressional testimony suggests. According to a report to be released Wednesday by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, multiple former U.S. intelligence officials testified under oath about the CIA’s involvement in the distribution of the letter, which was eventually signed by more than 50 former senior U.S. intelligence officials.
Breitbart: CIA May Have Solicited Signature for Letter Undermining Hunter Biden Story, Report Finds
- Top House investigative committees have evidence that at least one CIA employee allegedly had a role in obtaining signatures for the now-debunked statement that 51 former intelligence officials signed casting doubt on the Hunter Biden story in 2020, according to a joint committee report.
Read the Committee's full report on how senior intelligence officials and the Biden campaign worked to mislead the American voters here.
Chairman Jordan Subpoenas Global Alliance for Responsible Media to Investigate Apparent Anti-Trust Violations
Daily Wire: Jordan’s House Panel Takes Aim At WEF-Backed Scheme To Censor ‘Harmful’ Online Content
- The GOP-led House Judiciary Committee on Thursday issued subpoenas aimed at an advertising initiative partnered with the World Economic Forum that claims to fight against “harmful” content online. In cover letters obtained by The Daily Wire, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and the group that created it — World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) — may be facilitating coordination by its members in a manner that violates U.S. antitrust law.
Analysis from the Daily Wire's Michael Knowles here.
Just the News: House Judiciary panel investigating WEF-backed scheme to censor 'Harmful' online content
- The House Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Jim Jordan, issued subpoenas on Thursday to look into an advertising project that includes the World Economic Forum (WEF), which claims to be fighting against "harmful" online content. The committee's concern is that the project, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), along with the group that created it, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), "may be facilitating coordination by its members in a manner that violates U.S. antitrust law," according to The Daily Wire.
Read Chairman Jordan's Subpoena Cover Letter to the Global Alliance for Responsible Media here.
Worth the Read
Wall Street Journal: Biden’s CIA Assist in the 2020 Presidential Election
- Even new habits are hard to break, and that’s the case with a federal intelligence apparatus that can’t keep its fingers out of elections. It seems President-elect Biden on Nov. 4, 2020, owed thanks not only to a cabal of former intelligence officials, but to the Central Intelligence Agency. That’s the big takeaway of this week’s interim report from House committees detailing the origins of the October 2020 disinformation letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop. An earlier release revealed that Joe Biden’s campaign helped engineer a statement from 51 former U.S. spies that claimed the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” That letter provided Democrats, journalists and social-media companies the excuse to dismiss and censor evidence of Hunter’s influence peddling, removing an obstacle from his father’s path to victory.
Fox News: John Brennan's closed-door hearing 'confirmed' Hunter laptop letter was 'all political': Jim Jordan
- House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told Fox News the testimony his panel heard in private from Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan "confirmed" the letter signed by 51 current and former intel officials was not on-the-level. "[Brennan] sat for a four-hour interview and he further confirmed that this thing was all political," Jordan said on "Jesse Watters Primetime." Jordan recounted his allegation that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken was the "impetus" behind the letter, which he said was organized in-part by former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who testified before the Judiciary Committee earlier in May.
The Daily Signal: Republicans to Hold Hearing on DOJ Targeting Pro-Lifers
- Republican lawmakers will hold a hearing next week focusing on the Department of Justice’s targeting of pro-life activists like Mark Houck through the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, The Daily Signal has learned. On Tuesday morning, the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution and limited government will revisit the “Implications of the FACE Act,” examining the shockingly high numbers of attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers around the nation as well as President Joe Biden’s administration’s use of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
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