House Democrats on Friday picked a cable TV analyst who claimed Russia was behind the release of Hunter Biden's emails to serve on a congressional commission to review the Afghanistan War.
Rep. Adam Smith (D., Wash.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, selected MSNBC pundit Jeremy Bash to serve on the Afghanistan War Commission. The commission will review the U.S. military's involvement in Afghanistan from June 2001 to August 2021, when President Joe Biden ordered all American troops to leave the country. Biden has come under fire for his inaccurate prediction that the Taliban was "highly unlikely" to regain control of Afghanistan in the absence of American forces.
Bash's selection could call into question whether the Afghanistan War Commission can conduct an unbiased investigation. Bash cheered Biden's announcement in April 2021 that he would remove troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11. Months earlier, Bash signed an open letter with 50 former intelligence community officials that claimed Russia had likely released Hunter Biden's emails weeks before the 2020 election. The intel community veterans were responding to the New York Post's release of emails from a laptop that Biden allegedly abandoned at a computer repair shop more than a year earlier.
The officials said they did not have evidence that Russia was involved in the laptop release but that the disclosure had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation."
Since the explosive claim, there has been no credible evidence linking Russia to the laptop. The owner of a computer shop in Delaware has said Biden dropped off his laptop for repairs in April 2019 and never retrieved it. Biden has said he was abusing drugs during the period when he allegedly abandoned his laptop.
The Justice Department is investigating Biden's foreign business dealings, many of which are discussed in emails found on the computer.
Bash also served as a chief of staff to the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of Defense during the Obama administration.