The Daily Caller News Foundation – Harold Hutchison on April 28, 2023
A former CIA chief of station said Friday he did not join dozens of other former intelligence officials in signing a letter regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop because “no evidence” that it was Russian disinformation was presented.
“I remember I got the letter Oct. 18, 2020, and at first glance, it seemed natural to lay the blame at the Kremlin’s doorstep,” Dan Hoffman, who served in the CIA for 30 years, told Fox News host John Roberts. “Remember, Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin and he’s well known for cloak-and-dagger espionage operations. But at the same time, there was no evidence and the letter noted there was no evidence. And I just felt like we needed to do the forensics.”
Dozens of former intelligence officials signed an October 2020 letter published by Politico that claimed a bombshell New York Post report about emails from a laptop supposedly abandoned by Hunter Biden “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
WATCH:
The House Judiciary Committee and House Intelligence Committee wrote Secretary of State Antony Blinken April 20, demanding documents relating to the letter, citing testimony by former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell that Blinken “triggered” the response to the Post’s story.
Twitter locked multiple accounts, including the New York Post’s and the personal account of then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the Oct, 14, 2020 report, citing a “hacked materials” policy. Documents releasedto journalist Michael Shellenberger by Elon Musk show that the FBI contacted Twitter about the potential for leaks involving Hunter Biden prior to the New York Post’s report.
“There were many others who — who didn’t sign it. Look, when I was at CIA, we would sit in Michael Morell’s office when we had a particularly difficult, challenging intelligence issue, and we would hash out all the evidence that we have, the intelligence we had and then Michael would draw analytical conclusions with some level of confidence — low, medium, or high — and bring it to the White House,” Hoffman said. “We didn’t have that debate about this laptop issue. We weren’t invited to debate it.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation confirmed the authenticity of one of the emails in October 2020. The Washington Postand New York Times confirmed the authenticity of the data in March 2022 in articles about investigations into Biden by the Department of Justice.
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