Oh, by the way, Gary Shapley’s testimony establishes that the FBI confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as far back as November 2019. The Washington Free Beacon covered that aspect of Shapley’s testimony last week in this story by Andrew Kerr and Joe Simonson. The Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross follows up with this sidebar to Shapley’s testimony today:
The former spies and Biden campaign aides who smeared Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian “disinformation” have remained silent following revelations that the FBI authenticated the computer nearly a year before it was released.
Ross adds this:
Notably, none of the organizers of the letter have defended their claim or commented on Shapley’s testimony. The group includes former CIA deputy director Michael Morell, former CIA chief of staff Nick Shapiro, and White House spokesman Andrew Bates. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who spoke with Morell prior to the letter, has also not weighed in.
The letter — posted here — had been dreamed up by Antony Blinken and given to Natasha Bertrand, who duly trumpeted it in the linked Politico story.
Morell recruited the letter’s signatories. The leading signatories were such former Obama administration officials as James Clapper and John Brennan. Ross of course sought comment on Shapley’s testimony from key players:
Morell and [former CIA chief of staff Nick] Shapiro have yet to weigh in on Shapley’s claims. They did not respond to requests for comment. [White House spokesman Andrew] Bates, who served as the Biden campaign’s rapid response director [and also helped organize the letter], did not respond to requests for comment. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment about Blinken’s views of Shapley’s testimony.
The patently ludicrous letter of course played a key role in the suppression of the New York Post’s stories on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. What do Natasha Bertrand (now with CNN) and Politico have to say about their role in disseminating the letter? Even the Washington Post and the Associated Press appear to have passed on it before Politico published it along with Bertrand’s story.
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