Intel Officials’ Fresh Laptop Baloney

Jim Clapper, along with others, called the Hunter Biden laptop Russian propaganda in 2020. They then set about to rebuild their damaged reputations. Hunter Biden / Getty Images

Two and a half years after more than 50 intelligence community pooh-bahs emerged to slime the New York Post’s pre-election report on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the fact-checkers have arrived on the scene. 

With Biden safely ensconced in the White House—and with the facts about the laptop plainly obvious—the Washington Post has swooped in to tsk-tsk Politico For over-dramatizing the October 2020 headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” 

Now that you all know the laptop works, it’s time to get started. Post We need to be able to tell the difference between “disinformation” “information” campaigns—foreign efforts to interfere with our elections through the dissemination of accurate information. Scary!

But anyway, the former intelligence officials’ letter, the Post’s Glenn Kesler Writes, “does not even say what the Politico headline claimed—though that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day.” But the headline accurately described what intelligence officials said. It didn’t include the cover-your-ass caveats officials well knew would not be noticed by a partisan or irresponsible media. They intended that. 

It was the lack or journalistic skepticism regarding those claims and any motivations the parties might have for making them that led to the error. The Post confirms that Let me know This was the idea of Michael J. Morell (ex-CIA deputy director) who is a ubiquitous TV presence. “a top candidate for CIA director in a Biden administration.” We forgive you for thinking that Morell could have predicted how the letter might be received in the media. It is the type of thing that would help him get his application for CIA director. 

That brings us to the rest of the letter’s signatories, who have decided now’s the time to point out subtleties in their letter that two and half years of hysterical press coverage overlooked. James Clapper was the ex-director of national intelligence. Post That Politico Was convicted of “message distortion.”

“All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation,” He added. “Politico deliberately distorted what we said.” He now tells us! 

These are the most distorted figures in this horrible ordeal