This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

At least one active CIA official may have been involved in getting signatures from ex-intelligence officials for the letter by 51 ex-intelligence officials that was used to fool the public into dismissing a New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop as likely "Russian disinformation," according to a report by two House's committees digging into the forces behind the letter's creation and its distribution.

The 64-page report shows how Tony Blinken, Biden's secretary of state but at the time acting as candidate Biden's top campaign aide, recruited ex-Acting CIA Director Mike Morell to generate the letter with the goal of creating a "talking point" to help Biden during the last presidential campaign in October 2020.

According to the report, "One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it."

The interim report, "The Hunter Biden Statement: How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters," concluded what millions of conservatives had already suspected: "The public statement by 51 former intelligence officials was a political operation to help elect Vice President Biden in the 2020 presidential election."

It was released Wednesday by the GOP-led House Committee on the Judiciary's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Among the other key findings in the document are:

• "The Biden campaign took active measures to discredit the allegations about Hunter Biden by exploiting the national security credentials of former intelligence officials";
• "Blinken’s outreach to Morell was the impetus for the public statement," with the goal of creating a debate "talking point" to counter a New York Post story about the laptop. Biden ended up distorting the letter by saying the Russians had a "plan" to use the laptop as "disinformation" to manipulate America's election – effectively fibbing further to expand the political deception;
• Morell "rejected wholesale" the statement by then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the "top intelligence official in the United States," that "Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign";
• "The Biden campaign coordinated dissemination of the statement to members of the media," with Morell tasking Nick Shapiro, his former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor at the CIA, to pitch the skewed assessment of the laptop's origins to the media. Ultimately, Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand took the bait, and her October 19, 2020 story ran under the erroneous headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." That headline, like Biden's debate line, actually distorted the letter's contents by making the "Russia disinfo" claim definitive.
• The CIA has ignored requests by the House subcommittee for more information about the possible involvement of an active employee in the letter. The committees wrote to the CIA requesting documents on March 21 with a deadline of April 4, but never received a response. "Secretary Blinken provided none of the documents that Committee requested. ... Notably, the Biden Administration has declined to cooperate with the oversight to date," it states.
• Although many of the ex-intelligence officials who participated in the creation and circulation of the letter testified to House investigators that they did not actually claim that the Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was "Russian disinformation" – only that there was a good chance it could be – they showed no interest at the time in correcting distorted claims about it, like Politico's blatantly false story asserting the laptop *was* Russian disinformation.

Laptop from hell

The so-called "laptop from hell" shows Hunter Biden smoking crack and consorting with prostitutes, creepily recorded on film by the then-wayward son of Obama's VP, Joe Biden. But the most explosive information in the laptop were emails from Hunter revealing that "Hunter Biden was to receive $10 million annually for three years from CEFC Energy for 'introductions alone,' presumably meaning to his father and other influential U.S. officials," as WND reported in September 2021.

It was left to Tucker Carlson to go big with the story as the only major broadcast media player to expose the contents of the laptop. Tucker conducted an interview on Fox News with one-time Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who exposed Biden's lucrative deal with the CCP-connected energy conglomerate and confirmed the deal's "very special condition: that '10 percent' of the profits would be 'held by H [Hunter] for the big guy,'" as WND reported last month, quoting RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. Bobulinski made clear to Carlson that the "big guy" was Joe Biden.

Later it would be revealed the FBI worked directly with Twitter and other social media companies to keep the laptop story squelched.

A Media Research Center poll "found that nearly one-third of voters who chose Joe Biden were not aware of the evidence linking the former vice president to corrupt financial dealings with China and other nations through his son. Had they known, according to the survey, President Trump would have won at least 289 Electoral College votes," WND reported.

A book by a Politico reporter ultimately confirmed the authenticity of the laptop but only well after the propaganda damage had already been done in undermining Trump's bid for re-election.

Just the News reported regarding the House document: "In at least some instances Morell's own solicitations expressly referenced the Biden campaign's intent to use the letter. An Oct. 19, 2020, email that Morell sent to former CIA Director John Brennan explicitly noted the partisan nature of the effort.

"Morell told Brennan he was 'trying to give the campaign, particularly during the debate on Thursday, a talking point to push back on Trump on this issue,'" JTN reported.