‘Spies who lie’ letter ‘wasn’t my idea, didn’t ask for it’ — still refuses to call Hunter laptop real

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted Monday that a letter from 51 former spy-agency leaders that sought to discredit The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop “wasn’t my idea” — while refusing to admit the trove is real and not Russian misinformation.

Former CIA acting director Michael Morell recently credited Blinken with inspiring the notorious October 2020 letter, which President Biden used in a debate to falsely smear The Post’s reporting.

“With regard to that letter. I didn’t — wasn’t my idea. Didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it. And I think the testimony that the former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, put forward confirms that,” Blinken told Fox News journalist Benjamin Hall in an interview.

“Do you accept that the laptop is not Russian disinformation?” Hall followed up.

Blinken deflected the question, saying he was “fully occupied” with other matters.

“From my perspective, I’m not not engaging in politics,” he said. “I’ve got a lot on my agenda, things that we’ve just talked about — trying to help the Ukrainians in the Russian aggression against them, engaging with allies and partners around the world in dealing with some of the challenges posed by China. We have a situation now in Sudan. This has fully occupied my time. So that’s where my focus is.”

Blinken’s denial and deflection come as he enters the crosshairs of congressional Republicans investigating President Biden’s role in Hunter and first brother James Biden’s international business dealings. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Sunday accused Blinken of perjury for claiming in a 2020 deposition he never emailed with Hunter — when evidence from the laptop shows that he did.

Morell told the House Judiciary Committee in a recent deposition that Blinken, then a Biden campaign adviser, “triggered” the now-notorious statement by former intelligence community leaders, though Democratic and Republican members of the panel disagree on the significance of his testimony.

Morell was asked, “prior to [Blinken’s] call, you – you did not have any intent to write this statement?”

“I did not,” Morell said.

“Okay, so his call triggered —” the questioner followed up.

“It did, yes,” Morell said.

“—that intent in you?” the committee rep finished.

“Yes, absolutely,” Morell again affirmed.

Democrats on the committee and Biden aides emphasize a different portion of the deposition.

White House spokesman Ian Sams last month pointed to Morell also saying “my memory is that [Blinken] did not” direct or suggest that he write the letter.

Then-candidate Joe Biden used the letter to falsely claim at his second and final 2020 presidential debate with Donald Trump that The Post’s reporting on his role in his family’s international business dealings was a “Russian plant” and “garbage.”

“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant,” Biden said. “Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”  

The Post’s first laptop bombshell — published five days before the statement — revealed that Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, emailed Hunter in 2015 to thank him for the “opportunity to meet your father” — directly contradicting Biden’s 2019 claim that he’d “never spoken” with his son about “his overseas business dealings.”

The Biden campaign vaguely denied that the meeting occurred. But further reporting corroborated key details, including the fact that Joe Biden attended a 2015 DC dinner one day before the Burisma exec’s email. A group of his son’s associates, including Pozharskyi and a trio from Kazakhstan that posed for a photo with the Bidens, attended.

Hunter even invited Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, to the same dinner. A 2020 report from Republican-led Senate committees alleges that Baturina in 2014 paid $3.5 million to a firm associated with Hunter Biden. Baturina is one of a dwindling number of Russian oligarchs yet to face Biden administration sanctions over Russia’s more than year-old invasion of Ukraine.

Hunter earned up to $1 million per year to serve on the Burisma board from 2014 to 2019, beginning when his father was put in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. Visitor logs show Joe Biden met with his son’s business partner Devon Archer in 2014 around the time both Hunter Biden and Archer joined the Burisma board.

A second October 2020 bombshell from The Post — published four days before the ex-spies’ statement — described communications about Hunter Biden and his uncle Jim Biden’s business venture with the company CEFC China Energy, which was reputed to be a key cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign influence campaign.

A May 13, 2017, email recovered from the laptop said the “big guy” would get 10% of the deal. Former Hunter Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski alleges that he discussed the CEFC deal with Joe Biden in May 2017 and both Bobulinski and another former Hunter Biden partner, James Gilliar, identified Joe Biden as the “big guy.”

Hunter and James Biden earned $4.8 million from CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington Post’s later review of Hunter Biden laptop documents. An October 2017 email identifies Joe Biden as a participant in a call about CEFC’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.

Republicans accuse Biden of being too soft on China on issues such as determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans, and stopping fentanyl exports, which killed about 196,000 Americans in 2018-2021, the most recent years for which data are available.