Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the 2020 letter from former intelligence officers that falsely dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop as misinformation was not his idea, seemingly contradicting testimony from a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, who told Congress he organized the letter after taking a phone call from Blinken.
"With regard to that letter, I didn’t—wasn’t my idea, didn’t ask for it, didn’t solicit it. And I think the testimony that the former deputy director of the CIA, Mike Morell, put forward confirms that," Blinken told Fox News on Monday. The dismissal comes after Morell told the House Judiciary Committee in April that he organized the October 2020 letter after talking with Blinken, who then served on the Biden campaign.
Asked whether he "accept[s] that the laptop is not Russian disinformation," Blinken deflected and said he is focused on other matters.
Morell said the Biden campaign worked with the former intelligence officials to plan the letter's release. It was eventually published by Politico on Oct. 17, 2020, in an article titled, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say."
Morell told the House committee that Blinken contacted him on Oct. 17, 2020, to discuss the New York Post's reporting on the contents of Biden’s laptop. He added that Blinken sent him an article that said the FBI was investigating whether the laptop was part of a "disinformation campaign." Morell said Blinken’s outreach "triggered" him to create a letter that dismissed the release of the emails as a probable Russian disinformation campaign.
Several outlets, including the New York Times, have now confirmed the laptop belonged to Biden and that the contents are real.
House Republicans last month sent a letter to Blinken in which they argued the Biden campaign "had the effect of helping to suppress the Hunter Biden story and preventing American citizens from making a fully informed decision during the 2020 presidential election."
Blinken is also under fire over accusations that he committed perjury when he denied emailing Hunter Biden. Republican senator Ron Johnson (Wis.) said that while Blinken claimed in a 2020 deposition that he never emailed the president's son, emails on Biden's laptop show he did.