The most notable signees were Clapper, a man who ran a domestic surveillance program and then lied about it to Congress, and former CIA director John Brennan, a man who once oversaw an operation of illegal spying on a Senate staffer, and then also lied about it to the American people.
The letter worked exactly as intended. “Look,” Biden said during the last 2020 presidential debate when asked about the laptop, “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.” On “60 Minutes,” Biden called the story “disinformation from the Russians.” Clapper tells the Washington Post that he had absolutely no idea how the former vice president had framed the contents of the letter — which is, to be generous, implausible nonsense.
If Clapper’s letter was merely a good-faith warning, then why didn’t any of the other signees push back against Biden’s contention during their numerous television appearances? Did none of them watch the presidential debates? Why didn’t Clapper send a follow-up statement clarifying his position after the Politico headline purportedly “distorted” the letter?
[Clapper and his colleagues willingly demagogued on this point. They want to cling to the fig leaf of some weasel wording in the declaration now, but they steadfastly supported the conclusions reached by Biden and others about the meaning of that letter and never bothered to update it when the story was repeatedly corroborated. — Ed]
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