The Russiagate Playbook: ex-CIA chief admits interference in two straight elections

Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell admits that the Biden campaign triggered the false claim that the Hunter laptop story was “Russian disinformation.”

(President Obama, then-Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, and then-CIA Director nominee John Brennan in January 2013. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

In the days before the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden dismissed leaked emails about his son Hunter’s business dealings as a Russian plot. To make that case, Biden cited a just-released statement from purported voices of authority.

“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that” the Hunter laptop story “is a Russian plan” and “a bunch of garbage,” Biden declared. The laptop controversy, he insisted, was “disinformation from the Russians” and “a smear campaign,” a conclusion backed up by “overwhelming evidence from the intelligence community.” Although none of this “overwhelming evidence” was ever produced — in fact, Biden’s “intelligence folks” explicitly acknowledged that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement” — establishment media outlets nonetheless accepted their claim on faith.

As was obvious at the time, the assertion that the laptop was “Russian disinformation” was in fact Russiagate disinformation: in this case, invoking the familiar Russian boogeyman to deflect attention from the leaks’ contents and even enable their censorship. More than two years later, the source of this smear campaign has now been confirmed: the Biden campaign itself.