Former intelligence officials knew Hunter Biden story was real, declared it ‘Russian disinformation’ anyway, says report

One of the 51 ex-intelligence officials who signed a letter in 2020 declaring the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story “Russian disinformation” admits they knew it was real all along. 

The intelligence chiefs wrote in the October 19, 2020, letter “that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” 

“If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this,” they added, then providing weak explanations justifying their claim, including mainstream media articles.  

But Defense Intelligence Agency Deputy Director Douglas Wise told The Australian this week that they knew the story “had to be real”. 

“All of us figured that a significant portion of that content had to be real to make any Russian disinformation credible,” said Wise. 

However, Wise does not regret signing the letter, saying it was only “cautionary”. 

“The letter said it had the earmarks of Russian deceit and we should consider that as a possibility,” Wise said. “It did not say Hunter Biden was a good guy, it didn’t say what he did was right and it wasn’t exculpatory, it was just a cautionary letter.” 

“I don’t regret signing it because the context is important,” he added. “Remember [former Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy] Giuliani had just been in Ukraine trying to dig up evidence on the Bidens and he met with a known Russian intelligence official” — an apparent reference to Ukrainian politician Andriy Derkach.  

“Russians or even ill-intended conservative elements could have planted stuff in there,” he said. 

Joe Biden, mainstream media outlets, and social media platforms used the letter to discredit the story in the days before the presidential election and accuse President Trump of being aided by the Kremlin. 

According to a lawsuit filed last week, a conglomerate of the world’s largest mainstream news outlets and tech companies, called the Trusted News Initiative, decided to sideline or ban any reporting that treated the Hunter Biden story as credible. 

Almost 50 percent of Biden voters knew nothing of the Hunter Biden scandal at the time of the election and about 16 percent said they would not have voted for Biden had they known, according to a survey from The Media Research Center.