\n<\/p>\n

T<\/span>hree ex-intelligence officials who signed on to an influential 2020<\/a> letter baselessly linking Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop<\/a> to Russia later were tapped for top roles in the federal government under President Joe Biden<\/a>, records show. <\/p>\n

The October 2020 letter, which over 50 former intelligence officials joined and alleged Russia had involvement with the laptop, has since come back under the spotlight<\/a> following ex-Obama<\/a> CIA acting Director Mike Morell testifying to Congress<\/a> that then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken<\/a>, now secretary of state, \u201ctriggered\u201d him to organize it. Three signatories of this same controversial letter, Jeremy Bash, Russell Travers, and Nicholas Rasmussen, went on to be handpicked for senior Biden administration posts. <\/p>\n

HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION: BRENNAN CONDEMNED \u2018POLITICIZATION\u2019 OF INTEL DAYS BEFORE LAPTOP LETTER<\/a><\/b> <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is deeply disturbing that signatories of what we now know is a piece of campaign propaganda laundered as an intelligence analysis have recently served in senior roles related to national defense,\u201d Kyle Brosnan, chief counsel for the Heritage Foundation\u2019s Oversight Project, who recently worked on the Senate Permanent Investigations Committee, told the Washington Examiner<\/i>. <\/p>\n

The promotions of the ex-intelligence officials underscore the close-knit nature between Bidenworld and letter signatories, who have come under fire for contributing<\/a> to the debunked narrative that reporting on Hunter Biden\u2019s business dealings in China<\/a> and Ukraine<\/a> were a product of \u201cRussian disinformation.\u201d Morell had no intention to organize the Oct. 17, 2020, letter, which Politico<\/a><\/i> first published, until Blinken called him and suggested he wanted it \u201cout\u201d in the public<\/a> that \u201cthe Russians were somehow involved\u201d with the laptop saga, the Obama CIA official told House investigators in April. <\/p>\n

Moreover, Morell testified to the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee<\/a> that then-Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti, now counselor to the president, called him after an October 2020 presidential debate<\/a> between Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump<\/a> to thank Morell for \u201cputting the statement out.\u201d Joe Biden pointed to the letter in the debate, noting that \u201c50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he\u2019s accusing me of is a Russian plan.” <\/p>\n

Bash, who is now a managing director at the Washington, D.C.-based international strategic consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, had called Morell and got Ricchetti on the other line, Morell testified. Bash was previously ex-chief of staff for both the CIA and Defense Department<\/a> under Obama, where he advised then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta \u2014 another signer of the Hunter Biden laptop letter. <\/p>\n

In August 2022, Joe Biden appointed Bash to the President\u2019s Intelligence Advisory Board, an independent body that \u201coversees the Intelligence Community\u2019s compliance with the Constitution and all applicable laws, Executive Orders, and Presidential Directives,\u201d according to an archived version of the board\u2019s website under Obama. The White House<\/a> did not reply to a Washington Examiner<\/i> request for comment asking whether Bash is still on the board. <\/p>\n

Bash appeared on Morell\u2019s Intelligence Matters<\/i> podcast in November 2021 and also suggested on TV in October 2020 that the laptop story was \u201cRussian disinformation.” He also called the emails \u201cmysteriously created\u201d and claimed they were \u201cprobably hacked through a Russian intelligence operation,” adding it was “collusion in plain sight.” <\/p>\n

\u201cThis looks like Russian intelligence. This walks like Russian intelligence. This talks like Russian intelligence,\u201d Bash claimed<\/a> on MSNBC on Oct. 19, 2020. \u201cThis effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post<\/i> and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic Russian playbook disinformation campaign.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Senate Armed Services Committee<\/a> had earlier appointed Bash in April 2022 as a member of the Afghanistan<\/a> War Commission, a body authorized by Congress in 2021 to review \u201ckey decisions related to U.S. military, intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomatic involvement in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021,\u201d according to government records. Republican lawmakers have repeatedly slammed the Biden administration\u2019s deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan<\/a>, which saw billions of dollars in weapons fall into the hands of the Taliban. <\/p>\n

Rep. Troy Nehls<\/a> (R-TX), who sits on the Judiciary Committee, told the Washington Examiner<\/i> that it\u2019s a sign of government \u201cdespair\u201d that the Biden administration would reward signatories of the Hunter Biden laptop letter after they have been \u201cexposed\u201d for \u201cwrongdoing.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have an administration that has weaponized these agencies, it\u2019s a dangerous time right now,\u201d Nehls said. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Travers, former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, served as the deputy homeland security adviser for Joe Biden’s National Security Council from January 2021 to October 2021. He focused on border security, as well as “critical infrastructure resilience, global Embassy security, pandemic planning, information sharing, and [providing] support to vulnerable Afghans,” according to his LinkedIn account. <\/p>\n
In April 2021, Travers also appeared on Morell’s podcast to discuss “the varied and diffuse array of terrorist threats to the United States,” according to an episode description. Reached by the Washington Examiner<\/i>, Travers alleged he \u201chad no contact\u201d with the Biden campaign in connection to the Hunter Biden laptop letter \u201cprior to or after signing it.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI received it, thought it was a prudent warning, appropriately caveated given the sourcing and what we did\/didn\u2019t know at the time, and agreed to sign it,\u201d he wrote in an email on Thursday. \u201cAnd as I\u2019ve told the press and the Congress over the past year, I applaud any effort to get to ground truth.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd to be clear \u2026. When I say no contact with the campaign, I also mean no contact with Mr. Blinken or President Biden,\u201d Travers added. <\/p>\n
Rasmussen, who directed the counterterrorism center from 2014 to 2016, became the counterterrorism coordinator at the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> in November 2022. He also joined Morell’s podcast in September 2017 to discuss al Qaeda, ISIS, “and how the terror threat has evolved,” according to an episode description. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, another laptop signer recently made his way into the halls of government. David Buckley, the CIA’s inspector general from 2010 to 2015, went on to become staff director<\/a> for the House Jan. 6 committee. <\/p>\n
Buckley has been paid at least $220,000 in taxpayer dollars since joining the committee as a staff director in July 2021, according to the latest publicly released House disbursement records reviewed by the Washington Examiner<\/i>. He worked for the committee until its shutdown in January 2023, one month after it released its final report. <\/p>\n
“The signatories of the letter used their prior positions as intelligence officials to project credibility on the issue to the American people while falsely calling the Hunter Biden laptop a piece of Russian disinformation,” Brosnan added. “Intelligence and national defense matters should be above partisan politics and it’s deeply unfortunate that partisans have recently served in these positions.” <\/p>\n
Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert, performed an analysis of Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop<\/a> for the Washington Examiner<\/i> last year. The ex-Secret Service agent found \u201cthere is a 100% certainty that Robert Hunter Biden was the only person responsible for the activity on this hard drive and all of its stored data.\u201d <\/p>\n
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/a><\/b> <\/p>\n
Rasmussen and the Department of Homeland Security did not return requests for comment. <\/p>\n
The Washington Examiner<\/i> reached out to Bash through Beacon Global Strategies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/body><\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three ex-intelligence officials who signed on to an influential 2020 letter baselessly linking Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop to Russia later were tapped for top roles in the federal government under President Joe Biden, records show. The October 2020 letter, which over 50 former intelligence officials joined and alleged Russia had involvement with the laptop, has since<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1920305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[4106,3620,3822,7526,3976,4330,6880,4509,10438,21813],"class_list":["post-1920304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner","tag-administration","tag-biden","tag-hunter","tag-intel","tag-investigation","tag-jobs","tag-laptop","tag-letter","tag-scored","tag-signers"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1920304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1920305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1920304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1920304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1920304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}