David Harsanyi: James Clapper Can’t Stop Lying

Interview with The Washington Post “fact-checker,” James Clapper, ex-Director of National Intelligence, asserts that Politico misled public about a warning letter he and 50 former intel officials signed during 2020’s presidential campaign. It warned that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden Laptop story could be Russian deception. “There was message distortion,” Clapper tells The Washington Post. “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.”

It was unclear. It was not clear. Naturally Intel officials could not confirm that Hunter’s emails implicating Joe Biden were fabricated by Vladimir Putin’s spies. They didn’t have access to Hunter’s laptop. It was done to discredit the story and enlist ex-intel chiefs. An innocuous CYA paragraph does not change anything.

As is so often the case with California Congressman Adam Schiff, who used the intelligence committee to clear out partisan disinformation, the laptop lie started. Schiff claimed that Schiff was the one who broke the story. “we know” — a phrase he used numerous times — that the emails had been planted by the Kremlin. Everyone knew that the congressman was a liar and irredeemable by then. John Ratcliffe (director of national intelligence) issued a statement in which he stressed that Schiff’s claims were not supported by evidence.

Politico then reported that over 50 ex-senior intelligence officers had signed a letter claiming that the laptop was stolen. “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Clapper, a man that ran a domestic surveillance system and then lied to Congress about it, and John Brennan, a former director of CIA, who oversaw illegal spying operations on Senate staffers and then lied to the American people about it.

The letter arrived exactly as expected. “Look,” Biden stated the following when asked about the laptop during the 2020 presidential debate. “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.” On “60 Minutes,” Biden calls it 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 caution was just a warning, why didn’t Biden’s signees counter the claim during their many television appearances? None of them watched the presidential debates. Clapper didn’t send a follow up statement clarifying his position following the Politico headline. “distorted” Is the letter still in his possession? Did he not see the piece until now — just as Republicans are about to investigate?

All the Post’s pedantry “fact check” The Washington Post does this to provide cover for the signees as well as itself. The Washington Post justifies the media’s ongoing suppression of Hunter Biden by arguing that it is the responsibility of the “leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta,” Which “may have contributed to Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016,” This made journalists more cautious about relaying uncorroborated data. This contention is severely undermined by the Post’s hundreds of columns and pieces that were based on Democratic oppo research, which contained almost certainly Russian disinformation. Any skeptical journalist would also have identified the Politico piece as a nakedly partisan attempt at destroying the legitimacy and credibility of the story.

In fact, Hunter’s New York Post story was more convincing than any of Trump-era Russia-collusion stories. The Post described how it obtained its evidence. The Post interviewed Hunter’s owner at the Delaware computer shop. It also signed Hunter’s name on a receipt. The Post had sources who knew Hunter’s business details. They had on-the-record interviews with people who claimed to have interactions with the presidential candidate — incidents we now know Biden had lied about for years. The emails were later authenticated by other forensic specialists.

The Washington Post and the rest of the censorious journalistic community, including tech giants or former spooks, acted as a shield to the story from media attention by either banning it as disinformation, making it appear it wasn’t up to standard, or suggesting that it was planted by Russians. The media was not going to allow another Hillary Clinton-like scandal ruin the prospects for a Democrat. Clapper was a major part of that deception.

David Harsanyi serves as a senior editor for The Federalist. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, “Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent.” His work has been published in National Review and the Wall Street Journal as well as Reason, Washington Post, New York Post, Reason, and many other publications. Follow him @davidharsanyi on Twitter.

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