A national security lawyer tapped by President Joe Biden to lead his Intelligence Advisory Board was one of 50 former intelligence officials to claim in an open letter that the October 2020 publication of Hunter Biden’s emails appeared to be part of a “Russian information operation.”
Jeremy Bash served in several roles during the Obama administration, including CIA Chief of Staff, Defense Department Chief of Staff, and House Intelligence Committee Chief Counsel. He currently serves as Managing Director of Beacon Global Strategies and as an advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Bash also contributed to CNN and MSNBC during the Trump administration.
After the New York Post published emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop, Bash signed onto a letter claiming that the release “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,” the officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director Michael Hayden wrote in the letter. (RELATED: REPORT: GOP Plans Subpoena Wave If Ex-Spooks Don’t Come Clean On Hunter Biden’s Laptop)
The letter writers acknowledged that they “d[id] not have evidence of Russian involvement,” and the Daily Caller News Foundation later verified the authenticity of the hard drive. Nevertheless, Twitter suspended the New York Post after it shared the story, citing its rules surrounding hacked material. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan on Aug. 25 that the social media giant marked the story as “potential misinformation” after the FBI warned the company that Russia would seek to influence the election.
Bash doubled down on the claims in the letter during an Oct. 19, 2020, appearance on MSNBC.
“This looks like Russian intelligence, this walks like Russian intelligence, this talks like Russian intelligence,” Bash told host Nicolle Wallace. “This effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic Russian playbook disinformation campaign. And let’s recount exactly what happened in July 2019, when President Trump talked to Zelensky, he said, ‘talk to Rudy Giuliani. He’s my guy on trying to dig up false dirt on Joe Biden.'”
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“And then Rudy Giuliani suddenly comes forward with these mysteriously created emails, probably hacked through a Russian intelligence operation. We have to acknowledge the fact that the president of the U.S. is supporting, is condoning, is welcoming, a Russian intelligence operation in 2020,” Bash continued. “This is collusion in plain sight.”
Bash is not the first Biden administration appointee to make false claims about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki promoted the letter claiming that the laptop release was disinformation, and never walked it back. Nina Jankowicz, who briefly led the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, described the laptop as a “Trump campaign product.”
“There’s never been any indication that Hunter Biden was involved in anything untoward,” Jankowicz later claimed of Hunter Biden’s time at Burisma Energy.