NY POST
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has been slammed for claiming that Politico “deliberately distorted” a letter he signed that characterized The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as part of a “Russian information operation.”
Clapper and 50 other notable members of the intelligence community approved the letter questioning the veracity of The Post’s exclusives published in October 2020 about the first son’s shady overseas business relationships.
The letter was leaked to Politico, widely picked up by other national media outlets and eventually used as campaign fodder by then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Clapper told the Washington Post Monday that “there was message distortion” in the initial reporting on the letter.
“All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five,” Clapper said.
Journalists who have long criticized the letter weren’t buying Clapper’s explanation.
“If James Clapper knew Politico and [reporter] Natasha Bertrand were lying about what their letter said, why didn’t he say so then?” Pulitzer winner Glenn Greenwald posted on Twitter Monday.
Bertrand, whose byline appeared on the story with the headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say”, has since moved on to CNN, where she covers the White House with a focus on national security.
“Reality,” Greenwald continued, “the CIA/[intelligence community] people lying wanted the media to spread this. Only now that someone has to take the hit is Clapper saying Politico lied.”
Clapper’s claim that he was unaware that Biden brought up the letter in his final debate with former President Donald Trump and called The Post’s story “a bunch of garbage” also elicited skepticism.
“Clapper of course didn’t complain about the Politico headline … at the time, even tho Biden cited the ‘distorted’ article during a debate w/ Trump (which Clapper laughably claimed he didn’t know about),” Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy wrote on Twitter.
Biden also cited the letter in a “60 Minutes” interview that October, calling the report part of a “smear campaign.”
Other media outlets also ran with the Politico story, repeating the claims of “Russian disinformation.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), then the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, seized on the Politico report in an interview with CNN.
“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,” he said at the time.
Greenwald blasted the media for “transforming” the claims by Clapper and others into fact.
“The CIA and other intelligence operative scumbags have a point here, one I’ve stressed from the start. In their letter to manipulate the election, they said they didn’t *know* it was Russian disinformation, just thought it was. It was the media that transformed it into fact,” he said.
“I don’t care who is bored by it: 2 weeks before Americans went to vote for President, the CIA and others in the intelligence community concocted an outright lie that most major media corporations spread. Everyone now knows it’s a lie, but not one media outlet has retracted it,” he continued.
Kash Patel, who worked in the Trump administration, told Fox News Digital that the American public deserves an explanation from news outlets.
“One, this Congress should subpoena at least the leadership structure of those 51 people, those that served as directors and deputy directors of our intelligence agencies and law enforcement community and just say, ‘Why did you make this statement? Why did you sign this letter? What was the bait? You are the former director of the CIA. Certainly someone sent you intelligence for you to sign on to this and what was the intelligence,’” he said.
Earlier this month, the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees demanded interviews with Clapper and 11 other letter signers, a fact noted by Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.).
“In Oct 2020, Politico used a letter signed by 50+ former intel officials to label the Hunter Biden Laptop story as ‘Russian Disinformation,’” Marshall wrote on Twitter. “Now, [Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan] is requesting interviews & letter-signer James Clapper is changing his tune two years too late.”
