“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful” – George Orwell
George Orwell in his acclaimed dystopian novel 1984 conceived a fictional government of “Big Brother,” a “Ministry of Truth,” and “doublethink” dedicated to reality control and conscious deception. He warned of a government “telling carefully constructed lies” as political truth. Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign proved Orwell to be incredibly prescient.
Fifty-one (“the 51”) former national security and intelligence officials conspired to ignite a disinformation campaign dedicated to electing Biden. Their objective was to mislead the voters by falsely discrediting the New York Post’s shocking and completely accurate revelations of then Vice President Biden’s direct connection to his son Hunter’s questionable, if not corrupt, international business dealings through their infamous “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails.” Now, we have learned from a House Judiciary Committee investigation that this conspiracy of disinformation was likely instigated by Biden campaign operatives.
Brandishing their national security and intelligence credentials, the 51 claimed — with no evidence whatsoever — that the New York Post’s story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” They then fed that narrative to the press leading to Politico’s definitive declaration, Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say. As Biden himself echoed the same message in the final presidential debate, the liberal press and social media dutifully played along relentlessly repeating the false Russian narrative, and suppressing the New York Post’s story.
Republicans, in control of the House Judiciary Committee since the 2022 election, rightfully launched an investigation. In a recent press release, the Committee disclosed that new testimony by Michael Morell, a former Deputy Director of the CIA and one of the 51 signatories of the “Public Statement,” revealed that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, then senior advisor to the Biden campaign, was the impetus of the “Public Statement.” Morrell testified that he had no intent of writing the statement before being contacted by Blinken, that Blinken’s contact “triggered” the statement, and that the intent of the “Public Statement” was to “help Vice President Biden …. win the election.” Multiple polls indicate that this disinformation campaign achieved the intended result.
This conspiracy of the Biden campaign acting in collusion with our country’s national security and intelligence officials is Orwell’s “doublethink” in action to subvert a presidential election.
In 2020, these national security and intelligence officials — including a former secretary of defense, and a number of former directors of National Intelligence, the CIA and NSA — weighed in on a presidential election. While certainly these former officials as private citizens have the right of free speech, they were not in this instance speaking purely as private citizens.
The vast majority of them, if not all, continue to maintain their security clearances after leaving their government positions in order to continue to advise Congress, DOD, and the intelligence agencies informally and formally through intelligence advisory committees.
In seeding doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter emails, they leveraged their unique positions, titles, and access to classified information to claim knowledge of “Russian overt and covert activities,” to know “Russian behavior intimately,” and to cloak their statement on the Hunter emails with credibility. There was, however, no evidence of Russian involvement; and it is well known that such a claim is unequivocally false. Yet, the lie became the prevailing narrative.
It was a breach of trust for these former senior national security and intelligence officials to leverage their government security clearance credentials in collusion with the Biden campaign to conceal evidence of Biden’s corruption. Given their unique positions, they owe loyalty to our Constitution, our nation, and to free and fair elections that transcends their personal feelings about any particular candidate.
Given the egregious misconduct of these 51 officials, Congress must act to redress their wrongdoing and to protect future elections. Regarding the 51, their security clearances and participation on government advisory committees should be revoked. Further, there should be an investigation on whether there is a basis to revoke their government pensions.
Going forward, Congress should consider legislation to curtail such activity in the future. Our elections must be free from a conspiracy of “carefully constructed lies”; and free from being hijacked by our nation’s national security and intelligence complex colluding with a presidential campaign.
Michael Clancy is a lawyer, member of The Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, and former congressional candidate. Follow him on Twitter: @MikeClancyVA.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.