by Connor Freeman
\nANTIWAR.com<\/p>\n
Mike Morrell, the former acting CIA director,\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0to the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan, that he played a key role in rallying former intelligence officials to sign a letter which sought to discredit reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n In a transcribed interview with Jordan\u2019s team, Morell explained that his role in the suppression of the key story was done on behalf of the Joe Biden campaign and at the behest of now Secretary of State Antony Blinken who was then a senior campaign official.<\/p>\n According to the committee\u2019s\u00a0press release<\/a>, “Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020, Blinken\u2026 reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. According to Morell, although [Blinken\u2019s] outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell\u2019s reaction to the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.” The committee is now investigating Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop as well as the Biden family\u2019s international business dealings.<\/p>\n The story about Hunter Biden\u2019s laptop was originally\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in October 2020 by the\u00a0New York Post<\/i>. The laptop was abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019, the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/i>published subpoenas which showed the FBI had seized the laptop. However, the shop\u2019s owner had made a copy of the laptop\u2019s hard drive and provided it to Donald Trump ally and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In September 2020, the\u00a0Post\u00a0<\/i>was tipped off about the laptop\u2019s existence by Steve Bannon.<\/p>\n Twitter, Facebook, and other major platforms\u00a0outright censored<\/a>\u00a0or took actions to suppress the reach of the story immediately. The letter organized by Morrell, which was signed by more than 50 former intelligence officials, seeking to discredit the report was\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0by Politico on October 19th, five days after the story was originally reported by the\u00a0Post<\/i>.<\/p>\n Echoing statements made by the Biden campaign, the letter claimed the\u00a0Post\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0reporting “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” It has since been confirmed by several media outlets that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden and its contents are authentic. The House committee\u2019s press release continues “Morell also explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of the statement. Morell further explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”<\/p>\n During the Barack Obama administration and in the wake of the 2014\u00a0US-backed coup<\/a>\u00a0in Kiev, then Vice President Biden\u2019s son Hunter\u00a0landed<\/a>\u00a0a highly lucrative job on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company.<\/p>\n The laptop story revealed, among other things, that \u2013 in 2015 \u2013 Hunter Biden had introduced his father to a top executive at Burisma who had previously sought Hunter\u2019s “influence” to help the company. Joe Biden\u00a0has previously said<\/a>\u00a0he held up a major US loan to Kiev in order to pressure Ukrainian officials to fire a prosecutor who was at the time\u00a0investigating Burisma\u2019s corruption<\/a>.<\/p>\n Morrell says he conducted “a little bit of [his] own research” before soliciting Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired CIA senior operations officer, for his aid in compiling the letter which was also signed by the likes of former CIA chiefs John Brennan and Leon Panetta.<\/p>\n Joe Biden exploited the letter during the October 22 presidential debate with Trump, accusing Moscow of targeting his son in an elaborate propaganda operation. For his part in the scheme to cover up the critical story \u2013 which may have mortally threatened Biden\u2019s chances of winning the election \u2013 Morrell was thanked personally by Steve Ricchetti, the chair of the Biden campaign, in a phone call after the debate.<\/p>\n Morrell was reportedly being considered as a candidate to lead the CIA under the Biden administration, a position now held by William Burns, though he claims he was never formally in talks about taking the job.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Jordan, and Rep. Michael Turner, chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence,\u00a0sent a letter<\/a>\u00a0to Blinken requesting his communications related to the current investigation, including with Morrell. The House committee\u2019s press release concludes Morrell and his fellow former intelligence chiefs participated in a “concerted effort to minimize and suppress” vital information to protect the Joe Biden campaign. They argue that this deception prevented “American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election.”<\/p>\n Morrell was the acting director of the CIA for two months during 2011, and again for four months between 2012-2013. He was a big booster of the Hillary Clinton campaign for president in 2016 and\u00a0remains<\/a>\u00a0an avid defender of the post-9\/11 torture regime. In 2016, on the Charlie Rose Show, he also publicly called for the US to support armed groups with directions to kill Russian and Iranian forces in Syria.<\/p>\n Morrell clarified that Tehran and Moscow should “pay a price” for supporting Damascus and that this should be done “covertly, so you don\u2019t tell the world about it, you don\u2019t stand up at the Pentagon and say \u2018we did this.\u2019 But you make sure they know it in Moscow and Tehran.”<\/p>\n