Lawsuit seeks CIA records on ‘rush job’ review of Hunter Biden laptop ‘disinfo’ letter

A watchdog group said Thursday it is suing to get CIA records that could shed light on the process used by the intelligence agency to “clear” a letter falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.

Judicial Watch, which filed the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is seeking all records and communications of the spy agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board regarding an Oct. 19, 2020, email request made by former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell. 

Morell wrote to the agency asking for the review board to “clear” a letter drafted by him and signed by 51 former intelligence community officials characterizing The Post’s bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story as having “all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

“In October 2020, in the run-up to the presidential election, the New York Post reported that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware computer shop, contained embarrassing and possibly incriminating information about the Biden family.

“In a May 10, 2023, report the House Judiciary Committee revealed that on October 19, 2020, three days before the second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat candidate Joe Biden, then-Acting CIA Director Michael Morell sent the PCRB the finalized letter for review, calling it a ‘rush job,’ and quickly secured its approval,” Judicial Watch noted in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

The group added that it filed the lawsuit after the CIA failed to respond to a May 11 FOIA request for the same records, which it said included, “emails, email chains, email attachments, text messages, cables, voice recordings, correspondence, statements, letters, memoranda, reports, presentations, notes, or other form of record,” regarding Morell’s email request to the agency. 

In sworn testimony, Morell told the House Judiciary Committee that Antony Blinken – a former Biden campaign official and the current secretary of state – inspired the drafting of the letter after he reached out to him “on or before” Oct. 17, 2020, three days after The Post published an email from the laptop suggesting Hunter had introduced his Ukrainian business partner to his father, then-Vice President Biden. 

Morell, identified as a potential CIA director under Biden, said he organized the letter to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.”

The former acting spy chief later told fellow signatory John Brennan, former CIA director, that he wanted the letter released before Biden’s Oct. 22, 2020, presidential debate against Donald Trump: “Trying to give the campaign, particularly during the debate … a talking point to push back on Trump.”

“The Deep State CIA, it seems, engaged in election interference and a political operation against the American people to help Joe Biden and hurt Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. 

“And now the CIA is ignoring FOIA law to cover up its role in the scandal, censoring and suppressing the Hunter Biden/Joe Biden laptop story just before the presidential election,” he added. 

On the same day Morell’s email exchange with Brennan took place, Politico published a report on the letter, and during Joe Biden’s Oct. 22, 2020, debate against Trump, he used it to deflect accusations about his involvement in overseas influence-peddling schemes by claiming The Post had reported on “a Russian plant.”

Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, recollected in a closed-door deposition to the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI told Twitter that Hunter Biden’s laptop was legitimate on the same day The Post published the first article in a bombshell reporting series. 

Several news outlets have since confirmed the authenticity of the data The Post discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop.