PRESS RELEASE Contact: press@congressionalintegrity.org
For Immediate Release
Date: June 27, 2024
Washington, D.C. – Today, Jim Jordan and his MAGA House Judiciary Committee released transcripts and selectively edited video in an attempt to rehash the 2020 debate over Hunter Biden’s laptop and to twist a letter from former intelligence officials acting in their capacity as private citizens into an absurd deep state conspiracy theory. These transcripts and video are all part of their blatant attempt to smear President Biden ahead of tonight’s debate and help convicted felon Donald Trump.
In response, Congressional Integrity Project executive director, Kyle Herrig, issued the following statement:
“This is just the latest desperate and transparent attempt by MAGA House Republicans to attack President Biden ahead of tonight’s presidential debate and distract from Donald Trump’s felony convictions. They have spent the past year and a half serving as an arm of Trump’s campaign, focusing on political stunts instead of the real issues Americans care about like cost of living, border security, and access to health care.”
###
Key points:
The writers and signatories were writing as private citizens, not intelligence officials at the time of the letter.
The letter was written and signed by a group of 51 former intelligence officials who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations undercutting the Republican deep state conspiracy theory.
The writers and signatories explained why they felt a duty as former intelligence officials and American citizens to speak up in their personal capacities.
- Former CIA Director Michael Morrell explained the actual reason he drafted the letter, testifying that he and others were concerned about Russian interference in the 2020 election, saying “[w]e were making an argument about what we saw and what we believed and what I still believe may be true today, that the Russians played some role here.”
- Former CIA and NSC senior advisor Nicholas Shapiro testified that the letter was intended to inform the American people that this group of former intelligence officials “believe the Russians were, again, interfering with the election.”
- Former National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen testified that he saw the letter “as an opportunity to alert and to urge further scrutiny so that people take it – not take at face value that which they may read, but may lead them to look more deeply into” the alleged claims about the laptop.
Despite Republican lies to the contrary, the Biden campaign did not collude with the letter writers.
Former CIA Director Michael Morell testified that the Biden campaign did not direct him to write the letter. When questioned by the Republican committee majority, Morell testified that his friend and former colleague now-Secretary Blinken – then a private citizen – did not hint that the Biden campaign “could use some help on this” or suggest that he should “cook up something” that the campaign should use.