by Greg Wilson, Managing Editor | Washington Examiner | March 19, 2022 12:07 PM
Don't count ex-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe among the former U.S. intelligence honchos who have gone silent after the New York Times made them look foolish by admitting the Hunter Biden laptop was not the Russian disinformation campaign they claimed it was.
Ratcliffe fired off a pair of tweets in the wake of the New York Times's acknowledgment of the long-obvious authenticity of the laptop, which contains damning images of President Joe Biden's son smoking crack, lurid text and email exchanges with various women, and dozens of apparent references to his shady international business dealings.
"Wait, @nytimes admitting that @JohnRatcliffe was telling the truth and @AdamSchiff was politicizing false intelligence?" Ratcliffe tweeted Friday. "Are we sure this is not an @TheBabylonBee headline?"
The laptop story was broken by the New York Post prior to the 2020 election, but it was stifled by social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. Some 50 former U.S. intelligence officials signed on to a letter declaring the laptop, which the first son abandoned at a Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop, had the "hallmarks" of a Russian disinformation campaign. The signatories included Obama CIA Director John Brennan, Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former George W. Bush CIA Director Michael Hayden, former Obama CIA Director Leon Panetta, and former Obama acting CIA Director Mike Morell.
Biden cited that letter to dismiss former President Donald Trump's invocation of the "laptop from Hell" at an October 2020 presidential debate, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki has also dismissed the laptop as "Russian disinformation."
But Ratcliffe has said all along, beginning in October 2020, that “there is no intelligence that supports that … Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.” Ratcliffe's tweets seem to indicate he feels vindicated after most media outlets rejected his guidance in favor of the supposition from former intelligence community officials who were widely seen as aligned against Trump at the time.
In a follow-up tweet Saturday, he took aim at Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Schiff, who sparred frequently with Trump and pushed since-discredited claims that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, was especially vocal about dismissing the laptop as Russian disinformation.
"This is the clearest example of improper influence in the 2020 election. @CBSNews, @NBCNews, @nytimes, @washingtonpost, @twitter peddled deliberate falsehoods by @AdamSchiff over official statements by USIC, DOJ/FBI," Ratcliffe tweeted.
The New York Times buried its admission deep in a story reporting that federal prosecutors in Delaware are investigating the president's son for foreign lobbying violations related to his overseas business dealings in places such as China, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan while his father was vice president.
Last year, the Daily Mail reported emails showing Hunter Biden organizing an April 2015 dinner at Georgetown's Cafe Milano with a guest list including Ukrainian energy giant Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi.
“Dad will be there but keep that btw us for now,” the younger Biden wrote in a March 2015 email.
Pozharskyi sent an email on April 17, 2015, saying: “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.” The president’s team has denied such a meeting ever took place.
SOURCE: THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
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