House Republicans are demanding more information on how Central Intelligence Agency employees interacted with a group of former intelligence officials as they organized a 2020 public statement that questioned whether a laptop with Hunter Biden emails and documents was part of a Russian disinformation operation.
House Judiciary Republicans say in a new report that one of the letter’s signers told committee investigators that a staff member at the CIA asked him about signing onto the effort.
The assertion is part of a 65-page interim report that Republicans on the committee released Wednesday. The report comes as House Republicans continue to dig into the October 2020 public letter that stated that the appearance of the Hunter Biden laptop story on the political scene had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Though the former officials acknowledged in their public letter that they did “not have evidence of Russian involvement,” Republicans have argued that the letter helped discredit the laptop story just before the election in support of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
Former CIA official David Cariens told the committee via email that he was in the process of getting a book of his approved by the CIA’s publications review board in 2020 when the individual in charge of approving his work asked if he wanted to sign onto the letter framing the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation, according to the report. At the time, the letter about the Hunter Biden laptop story was also under review by the review board.
“When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter,” Cariens said, the report said.
Cariens added that after being read certain portions of the letter, “I agreed to sign.”
To follow up on Cariens’…
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