President Trump’s spy chief repeatedly shot down claims by Democrats such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff that the purported emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop published by the New York Post were part of a Russian disinformation effort.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe argued that leading Democrats and many commentators and media figures have no evidence to back them up during a Monday morning interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. He also confirmed that the FBI is investigating the laptop of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son but said that the intelligence community was not involved because it was not related to Russian disinformation.
“Let me be clear: The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that, and we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It is simply not true,” Ratcliffe said Monday. “And this is exactly what I said I would stop when I became director of national intelligence, and that is people using the intelligence community to leverage some political narrative, and in this case, apparently Chairman Schiff wants anything against his preferred political candidate deemed as not real and is using or attempting to use the intelligence community to say there’s nothing to see here. Don’t drag the intelligence community into this. Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”
Ratcliffe’s comments come a few days after Schiff repeatedly declared to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the Hunter Biden laptop issue was a Russian disinformation plot.
“Well, we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. … Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the president is only happy to have Kremlin help in trying to amplify it,” the California Democrat said, adding, “I think we know who the driving force behind this smear has been all along, and it’s been the president and the Kremlin. The Kremlin has an obvious interest in denigrating Joe Biden. They want Donald Trump to win. … He’s been the gift that doesn’t stop giving for the Kremlin, so clearly, they want to help him, so they want to denigrate the vice president. The intelligence community has made that abundantly clear, and this particular smear, though, has also been acknowledged to come from the Kremlin, and there it is in the Oval Office, another wonderful propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin, seeing the president of the United States holding up a newspaper promoting Kremlin propaganda.”
Ratcliffe, a former GOP congressman who was a member of the intelligence panel, said this was untrue.
“This is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign. The intelligence community has not been involved with Hunter Biden’s laptop. Hunter Biden is a U.S. person, and he would be subject to any investigation regarding fraud, or corruption would be rightfully the jurisdiction of the FBI. So, the FBI has had possession of this, and what I can say without commenting on any investigation that they may have in corruption or fraud — is to say that their investigation does not center around Russian disinformation, and the intelligence community is playing no role with respect to that,” Ratcliffe said. “Adam Schiff saying that this is part of some Russian disinformation campaign and that the IC has assessed that or believes that is simply not true, so I appreciate the opportunity to be able to tell the American people that that is the case.”
A senior intelligence official also told the Washington Examiner that “what Ratcliffe said is 100% correct — there has been no intelligence community assessment or information that the IC has gotten to suggest in any way that the Hunter Biden laptop story is a Russian disinformation operation.”
The emails obtained by the New York Post from Hunter Biden, if authentic, shed further light on his time on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma and on his pursuit of lucrative deals connected to Chinese businessmen. Joe Biden’s campaign has not disputed their veracity, and Hunter Biden’s lawyer did not respond to requests for comment and has not said the emails are inauthentic.
Biden’s campaign only denied that the former vice president met with Ukrainian businessman Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, as described in the New York Post report. The denial was based on “Biden’s official schedules from the time.” Politico reported on Wednesday that former Biden senior advisers “said that while there was never an official meeting, it’s technically conceivable that Pozharskyi would have approached Biden on the sidelines of some broader U.S.-Ukraine event.”
John Paul Mac Isaac, the computer repair shop owner who allegedly came into possession of the younger Biden’s computer, told the New York Post that he made a copy of the hard drive and provided it to a lawyer for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as well as to federal investigators. The outlet said that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon alerted the outlet about the hard drive’s existence in September, and Giuliani, now a personal lawyer to Trump, handed over a copy of it earlier this month.
Giuliani was a staunch defender of Trump throughout the impeachment process and worked with sources inside the U.S. and abroad, including Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach, to push allegations that Biden had abused his power in Ukraine.
Bill Evanina, who leads the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, released an intelligence assessment in early August warning that Russia is “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate” Biden, including that “pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine” Biden’s candidacy. The Treasury Department announced sanctions against Derkach over the summer, but there is no evidence that the leaked emails from Hunter Biden were connected to Derkach or Russia.
Some outlets, including CNN, have reported that U.S. authorities are investigating whether the publishing of Biden’s emails is connected to a Russian disinformation operation, but they did not say the bureau had reached a conclusion. Fox News reported that one of the recipients on an email chain related to Biden and China had corroborated the veracity of the messages.
Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Saturday, noting that a “whistleblower,” Mac Isaac, had reached out to his committee on Sept. 24, the day after the release of Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s joint report titled “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption,” and had “informed my staff that he had possession of a laptop left in his business by Hunter Biden.” Mac Isaac “also informed us that he provided its contents to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in response to a December 9, 2019 grand jury subpoena,” the Wisconsin Republican said, adding that the FBI had an obligation to provide basic answers to the Senate about the emails related to the younger Biden’s foreign business dealings.
“Those are fair questions for the FBI, and I heard Sen. Johnson’s concerns about that, and the FBI should be providing that information to him and other members of Congress and to the American people to the extent that it’s not related to an investigation,” Ratcliffe said Monday. “But again, to underscore the first point that I made, this has nothing to do with the intelligence community or Russian disinformation. If it was, I would know that, so, to be clear, it’s not.”
