Hunter Biden: Intelligence officials admit they discredited laptop information despite knowing otherwise

Douglas Wise, one of the senior intelligence officials who signed the letter claiming that there had been Russian "disinformation" in the New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop has now acknowledged that he knew that "a significant portion" of what was found in the files "had to be true" at the time he signed the letter. The then-deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), stated that it was not an "exculpatory" letter about the president's son, but "it was just a warning letter."

Speaking to The Australian, as reported by The Washington Examiner, Wise notes that the 51 signatories to the letter debunking the NY Post publications "figured that a significant portion of that content had to be real to make any Russian disinformation credible." Among those who signed the missive were former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan.

https://www.scribd.com/document/489689752/D-A-19102020-USIC-Statement-of-Lies

No regrets

Despite this, Wise makes no apologies for underwriting the note. "I don't regret signing it because context is important," he claimed, before recalling that "[former mayor and Trump attorney Rudy] Giuliani had just been in Ukraine trying to dig up evidence on the Bidens and he met with a known Russian intelligence official" in what appears to refer to the pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Andriy Derkach.

Wise also justified why he signed the letter: "The letter said it had the earmarks of Russian deceit and we should consider that as a possibility. 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." In addition, the former DIA deputy director indicated that the breach of the laptop's "chain of custody" may have allowed the files contained therein to be altered. "Russians or even ill-intended conservative elements could have planted stuff in there," he said.

"I wasn't saying Hunter Biden was a nice guy"

Just five days after the newspaper's exclusives about Hunter's shady dealings, intelligence officials leaked a memo to Politico analyzing "factors that make us suspect Russian involvement." Furthermore, they tried to discredit the information from the source by pointing out that "it has all the classic characteristics of a Russian information operation... we do not know if the emails … are genuine or not and … we do not have evidence of Russian involvement."

This letter was one of the main arguments that enabled members of Joe Biden's presidential campaign, the FBI and the Intelligence Community toto remove all information and news links from media outlets that echoed it. It also served as an excuse to the media that refused to publish anything about the matter.