Hardly a day goes by when Democrats aren’t lamenting about so-called MAGA Republican attacks on democracy. Surely, some focus group testing told them this was an effective narrative for them, yet as with so many other things, the Democrats accuse Republicans of what they are actually guilty of.
In the past few weeks, we’ve learned that Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken were behind the letter from 51 former intelligence officials dismissing Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation and that Mike Morell, a former CIA deputy director under Obama, pitched the letter to potential signatories as giving Joe Biden a “talking point” during his last debate with Donald Trump.
“We believe the Russians were involved in some way in the Hunter Biden email issue and because we think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate and we want to give the VP a talking point to use in response,” the infamous letter read.
And Biden referenced that letter specifically during his Oct. 22, 2020, debate with Trump. “Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, [Trump’s] accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said this has all the characteristics — four — five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
But Joe Biden knew the truth. He may not have known that his campaign orchestrated the letter — it’s likely that was kept from him because of plausible deniability — but he most certainly knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was genuine.
Make no mistake about it, this was election interference. The public was deliberately misled into thinking that the letter was a grassroots effort by the intelligence community to alert us to the possibility that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. But in reality, that letter served a much more sinister purpose. It was not only employed as a debate talking point for Joe Biden but also exploited by social media to legitimize censoring and suppressing the story. Moreover, the mainstream media took it as a pretext to ignore the story altogether… and all to help Joe Biden win in 2020.
“It’s outrageous that former intelligence officials deliberately chose to spread disinformation to help Joe Biden’s presidential bid,” Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) said. “The signers of the 2020 letter severely tarnished the intelligence community’s reputation, and it was a steep price to pay to help Joe Biden. House Republicans will continue working to expose this dirty campaign trick and ensure accountability for the American people.”
“Based on Morrell’s testimony, it is apparent that the Biden campaign played an active role in the origins of the public statement, which had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) wrote, suggesting that the statement was used to prevent “American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election.”
Colluding to keep a story suppressed or censored is a form of election interference. It is the manipulation of information and the suppression of facts to influence public opinion, sway elections, and undermine democracy. There’s a reason why Democrats are endlessly harping about “attacks on our democracy,” and it sure looks like the reason is to conceal their own efforts to do just that.