The following press release is from the office of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina).
US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent an open letter to the 51 former intelligence officials who, in October 2020, signed a public statement characterizing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation.
The New York Post report claimed the laptop contained emails showing how Hunter Biden leveraged his father, now-President Joe Biden’s, position for personal gain, with the apparent awareness of President Biden.
The signatories of the original statement included former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director Michael Hayden, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. They cited their collective “experience” and alleged knowledge of “Russian behavior,” describing the laptop revelations as having “all the classic earmarks of a Russian influence operation.”
Now, more than four years later, it has been confirmed that the laptop and its contents did belong to Hunter Biden and were not part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
“In your letter, you claimed that the laptop story was ‘Russia trying to influence how Americans vote.’ I ask you to respond publicly to one simple question: if you knew then what you know now about the laptop, would you still have signed the October 19, 2020 letter?”
– Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina)
Read full letter here or below.
November 19, 2024
To Director Clapper, Director Hayden, Secretary Panetta, and others:
On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published a report detailing the contents of a laptop that belonged to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The Post report detailed that the laptop included e-mails showing how Hunter Biden used the position and influence of his father, now-President Joe Biden, for personal gain with the apparent awareness of President Biden. This news raised doubts about then-candidate Joe Biden’s prior denials that he was involved with Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine.
Five days later, on October 19, 2020, you, the “51 former intelligence officials,” signed on to a public statement that detailed that the Hunter Biden laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” in an attempt to discredit the New York Post’s reporting. You deduced this using your “experience” and the notion that you know “Russian behavior intimately.” Your stance on the legitimacy of the laptop caused a considerable impact less than a month out from the 2020 Presidential Election. Your letter was relied upon by X, formally known as Twitter, as a pretext to censor the story and was referenced by Vice President Joe Biden during the second presidential debate held on October 22, 2020 in an effort to dismiss the story.
At the time, it was reported that John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repair shop owner in Wilmington, Delaware, received a damaged laptop from Hunter Biden in April 2019 and was asked to recover the data located on the hard drive. Due to the nature of the material on the laptop, Mr. Isaac contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) and met with F.B.I. agents in late 2019. F.B.I. agents returned two weeks after their conversation with Mr. Isaac with a grand jury subpoena allowing them to seize the laptop and the accompanying external hard drive. No official statement of an open investigation into the laptop was ever made to the public by the F.B.I. prior to the 2020 Presidential Election.
More than four years later, we know that both the laptop and the information it contained belonged to Hunter Biden. In fact, in June 2024, the Department of Justice Special Counsel David Weiss relied upon the laptop as evidence as part of a criminal case against Hunter Biden. Federal prosecutors introduced the laptop into evidence with testimony from an F.B.I. agent involved in authenticating and investigating the laptop.
In your letter, you claimed that the laptop story was “Russia trying to influence how Americans vote.” I ask you to respond publicly to one simple question: if you knew then what you know now about the laptop, would you still have signed the October 19, 2020 letter?
Sincerely,
Lindsey O. Graham
Ranking Member
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
I’m disgusted by Graham. “If” you knew then? Of course they knew. And the sentence structure literally says that. He presumably meant “If you had known then”. But there isn’t a standard that Sen. Graham isn’t willing to lower. Giving these liars an escape hatch is abhorrent; yet sadly, expected. I’m hoping that the SC legislature manages to close primaries, so that Graham will be primaried out. He’s a poor reflection on my home state, and the GOP.
ALL those dis-Intelligents officials should loose any and all security clearance! They should be put to pasture with methane producing cows. Cut off from any connection to Government.
Where has Grahamnesty been for the last 4 years? What a useless individual, let alone Senator he has been for the GOP! Time for SC voters to step up and dump the warmonger named Lindsey Graham.