Conspirators Used Politico to Launch the Laptop-Russia Disinfo Hoax

Was USAID Part of the Plot?

“I can confirm that the more than 8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayer’s dime will no longer be happening,” said Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at a February 5 press conference. So saying, Leavitt shone some needed light light on why Politico may have been willing to run interference for the Biden campaign in the 2020 election.

How payments from USAID or other government agencies may have affected Politico’s reporting remains to be seen, but there is little doubt that Politico’s reporting saved Biden’s candidacy.

Chief conspirator Anthony Blinken promoted to secretary of state

As reported in May 2023 by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Intelligence, the plot was hatched on October 17, 2020, when Biden campaign advisor—and future secretary of state—Antony Blinken contacted Michael Morell. Morell had served as acting director of the CIA under Obama. At Blinken’s request, Morell began assembling the draft of a statement that would dismiss the damning revelations found in the Hunter Biden laptop as more of the same old Russian disinformation.

Morell had a motive. He was in the running for the post of CIA director. Needing a Biden win to secure it, Morell went to work lining up co-conspirators. “Thereafter,” reads the subcommittee report, “Morell contacted several former intelligence officials to help write the statement, solicit cosigners, and help with media outreach.”

On October 19, Morell emailed Nick Shapiro, his former deputy chief of staff, asking him to place the statement in major publications. “On background,” Shapiro was to tell reporters that Morell, in talking to Russian intel experts, “was struck by the fact that all of them thought Russia is involved here.” In truth, Morell had talked to no Russian intel experts before organizing the draft.

Politico bit first, running a story on October 19 under the bold headline, “Hunter Biden Story Is Russian Disinfo, Dozens of Former Intel Officials Say.” As Natasha Bertrand reported, “Nick Shapiro, a former top aide under CIA director John Brennan, provided POLITICO with the letter on Monday. He noted that ‘the IC leaders who have signed this letter worked for the past four presidents, including Trump.’” Shapiro promotes himself as as an expert in “global crisis management.”

As Morell testified to the House subcommittee, one major purpose of the statement was “to help Vice President Biden in the debate.” In an October 19, 2020, email, Morell told former CIA director John Brennan he wanted to “give the [Biden] campaign, particularly during the debate on Thursday, a talking point to push back on Trump on this issue.”

During the October 23 debate, when Trump played the laptop card, Biden countered with the Russia card as planned. “Look, there are fifty former National Intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan,” said a well-rehearsed Biden. “They have said that 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, his, and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”

In an estimate more conservative than many, Trump pollster John McLaughlin found that 4.6 percent of Biden voters would not have voted for Biden if they had known about the contents of Hunter’s laptop. Even if those people had simply not voted, their absence at the polls would have handed several swing states to Trump.

Kept purposefully in the dark, too many Americans chose to believe Biden and his co-conspirators. “On November 3, 2020, the American people went to the polls to elect the president of the United States with the false impression that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation,” the House subcommittee concluded three years too late. “The American people cannot get back the 2020 election.”