Michael Morell lied about the "Russian disinformation" letter

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

The hits just keep on coming now that James Comer has had time to investigate the contents of Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell, speak to whistleblowers and issue subpoenas. Some of the most interesting material continues to revolve around the infamous letter signed by 51 intelligence agency figures claiming that the laptop was “Russian disinformation” in the final weeks before the 2020 election. We’ve now learned that former CIA chief Michael Morell was responsible for the creation of the letter and the collection of all the signatures when he was working as an advisor to the Biden campaign.  But in a new report out this week from the New York Post, we find that the story gets even worse. Morell even lied to the other intelligence people that he convinced to sign off on it.

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The ex-CIA chief who wrote the letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop published by The Post before the 2020 election were Russian disinformation, misled his fellow signatories when he assured them that he would “clear the statement with the Publication Review Board at CIA” the following day.

In an October 18, 2020, email obtained by The Post, Michael Morell asks his fellow spooks, including former CIA Directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta and Mike Hayden, to sign the letter, explaining that he and former CIA agent Marc Polymeropoulos had “drafted the attached because we believe the Russians were involved in some way in the Hunter Biden email issue and because we think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate and we want to give the VP a talking point to use in response.”

This is one of Morell’s own emails that Comer has gotten hold of and it’s dated October 18, 2020. In it, he’s promising all of the signatories that he would clear the information about the laptop story being Russian disinformation with the CIA’s Publication Review Board. But that type of review generally takes months, particularly when you’re dealing with a complex situation involving foreign intelligence agencies. And yet Comer released the letter to Politico the next day, just in time to have it blow up in the news before Biden would have to debate Trump. There’s no way it was actually reviewed and we now know that if a review had been attempted, it would have failed the smell test.

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The other possibility, as pointed out by attorney Tim Parlatore, is that Morell really did take the letter to the CIA. But if he did and they had no time to review it, they would have been compelled to add a standard disclaimer to the letter. It would have read, “All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency.” That disclaimer didn’t appear, so either Morell lied about it completely or he got someone corrupt at the CIA to play ball with him. Either way, it stinks on ice.

This email potentially makes the rest of the people who signed the letter look a bit better. I had previously assumed that all 51 of them were in on the dirty tricks, but that may not turn out to be the case. It does seem plausible that all of the other signatories didn’t actually lie when they signed off on it. Since Morell was a former head of the CIA, they may have simply assumed that he had done all of the legwork and helped him out.

I’m not saying that puts them 100% in the clear. Particularly when dealing with material that is potentially so explosive, they should have insisted on doing some checking for themselves. But if they were going to skip that step as a favor to anyone, it would be one of their fellow, high-ranking intelligence officials. But it’s still stunning that none of them thought to push back on the proposal after Morell told them in no uncertain terms that he needed them to do that simply to give Joe Biden a “talking point” for a political debate.

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There’s plenty more to come in various matters involving Hunter Biden, as well as another whistleblower who claims to have specific details of Biden Incorporated trading political influence for cash. Stay tuned, because the crew in the White House can probably feel the walls closing in about now. The next big question to be answered is, will Joe Biden issue Hunter a pardon? Would he really dare to do it?

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