James Clapper never meant to say Hunter Biden’s laptop was a Russian op, it was apparently just the “least untruthful” thing he and 50 other Trump-hating deep state creeps could think of.
Clapper, the director of national intelligence – or chief spy – under President Obama, is trying to walk back that infamous letter he and dozens of other former intel operatives signed more than three years ago. It claimed that the discovery of Hunter Biden’s laptop, with its lurid images of the president’s degenerate son and troubling messages referring to the family’s international influence peddling operation, bore the “earmarks” of a Russian misinformation operation.
That letter, once reported by Politico, was all the cover the liberal press and social media platforms needed to bury the New York Post’s October 2020 bombshell, lest it affect the presidential election. Mission accomplished: The Post was silenced, marginalized, and ridiculed and the laptop story was put on ice.
Meanwhile, here's what James Clapper said about the story when it first came out in 2020:
“To me, this is just classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work." https://t.co/yJ9b3W8h5J pic.twitter.com/91enmdU3nW
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 14, 2023
Except over the ensuing years, once it no longer mattered, Big Media admitted the laptop was legit. And if the laptop is real, then we know Hunter Biden is a venal dirtbag and his father may have facilitated and profited from his schemes. Not even Clapper can pretend the laptop was a trick now. The best he can do is pretend he never said it was.
“All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation,” Clapper told The Washington Post this week. “Politico deliberately distorted what we said.”
Sure, the letter, also signed by former CIA directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Michael Hayden, and written by former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, never said the laptop caper WAS a Russian operation. It just said it sure SEEMED like one. Thomas Finger, a onetime chairman of the National Intelligence Council and co-signer of the letter, helpfully explained this week that they took great pains to try to make sure no one jumped to any conclusions. Wouldn’t want that!
“The statement we signed was carefully written to minimize the likelihood that what was said would be misconstrued, and to provide a clear written record that could be used to identify and disprove distortions.”
Finger and Clapper must’ve been furious after Politico published its article about the letter under the headline, “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” Surely they demanded a correction, especially after realizing that this gross mischaracterization of the letter could influence an election just weeks away. And imagine the horror an intel legend like Clapper must have felt ever since, knowing all his expertise in spycraft had betrayed him into a disastrous reading of events that may have changed the course of history.
Well, if Clapper did feel anger at Politico or shame at himself and his intel peers, he kept it under wraps until now. He never said anything until this week, when it apparently became too embarrassing to stand by the claims in the letter he signed. After all, at this point you can’t defend Hunter Biden and keep the word “intelligence” on your resume. Plus, Rep. Jim Jordan, (R-OH), says he plans to call Clapper and his pen pals to testify before his new panel probing the weaponization of the federal government.
Here’s the truth: Clapper is lying now, was lying in 2020, and even admitted he was lying way back in 2013, when he told a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee that the National Security Agency doesn’t purposely collect data on millions of Americans. The difference is, back then, Clapper admitted he was a liar.
“I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying, ‘No,’” Clapper said afterward.
Least untruthful indeed.
There was a dirty, downright un-American intel operation designed to throw the 2020 presidential election, but it wasn’t pulled off by the Russians. It was conducted by a band of 51 deeply unpatriotic spooks, and spymaster James Clapper was one of them.