Pressure is ratcheting up on signers of a controversial October 2020 statement alleging that the Hunter Biden laptop bore “all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation” to agree to on-the-record transcribed interviews with investigators for the House Judiciary Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The Committee on the Judiciary and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are conducting oversight of federal law-enforcement and intelligence matters within our respective jurisdictions.
“The judiciary committee made a prior request to you for documents and information about the public statement you signed in October 2020 that falsely implied the New York Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden was the product of Russian disinformation,” Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said in Feb. 13 letters obtained by The Epoch Times.
“This request, to include a request for a transcribed interview before the committees, remains outstanding. These documents and your testimony are necessary to further our oversight.
“As we begin the 118th Congress, we write again to reiterate our outstanding request and ask that you immediately comply in full,” Jordan and Turner told the recipients.
“You have been on notice about our oversight request—and aware the request is outstanding—for months. For your convenience, we have attached the letter from the Judiciary Committee dated April 6, 2022. To date, you have not complied with this request. Accordingly, we reiterate our requests and ask that you comply promptly,” Jordan and Turner wrote.
The 10 recipients of the request from Jordan and Turner include former Secretary of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta, Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA Senior Operations Officer, former CIA Chief of Staff Larry Pfeiffer, former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer Kristin Wood, former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Deputy Director Douglas Wise, former CIA Chief of Staff Rodney Snyder, former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer Patty Brandmaier, former CIA Senior Intelligence Officer James Bruce, former CIA Senior Operations Officer Paul Kolbe, former National Intelligence Officer Roger George.
The Epoch Times is seeking comment from each of the 10 recipients.
The 10 letters made public on Feb. 13 follow similar missives to another dozen of the 51 signers of the Oct. 19, 2020, statement that was widely publicized by the mainstream media and cited as justification by social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook for censoring news reports about the laptop that was left at a Delaware computer repair shop by President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Among the dozen recipients of last week’s letters were Rick Ledgett, former National Security Agency (NSA Deputy Director, John McLaughlin, former Acting CIA Director, Michael Morell, former CIA Deputy Director, Nicholas Rasmussen, former National Counter-Terrorism Center Director, Russell Travers, former DIA Soviet and Russian analyst, Michael Vickers, former Department of Defense (DOD) Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Nick Shapiro, former Deputy CIA Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Director, former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash, former National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Finger, and Michael Hayden, former CIA Director.
The New York Post was the first U.S. media outlet to report that the laptop’s contents include more than 22,000 emails, including many concerning multiple business deals and describing income to be received from overseas private firms with links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Russia, and Ukraine, among others.
Biden has claimed since the 2020 presidential campaign to have known nothing about his son’s international business dealings, but references to “the Big Guy” receiving a 10 percent cut of revenue from one of the deals point to the Chief Executive, according to former Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski.
Most voters in the 2020 presidential contest between Biden and former President Donald Trump were unaware of the Hunter Biden laptop story as a result of the censorship, but a 2022 survey of Biden voters made public in December 2022 found that half of them would have voted differently had they known about the controversy.
All 51 of the October letter signers have been asked by Jordan to do transcribed interviews and a number have already done so.
The Judiciary and Intelligence panels are working together in investigating why the signers attached their names to the letter.
In the months since the 2020 election, mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post have independently concluded the laptop is actually Hunter Biden’s and the contents are legitimate.
Signer Douglas Wise also conceded in January that the emails on the laptop are legitimate.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) promised during the 2022 mid-term campaign that subpoenas will be issued if necessary in order to get all 51 signers of the October 2020 statement on the record.
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Mark Tapscott