In the ever-evolving cover-up of the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop, it was instructive to hear a recent interchange between Rep. Dan Goldman, the odious New York Democrat, and Texas Republican Rep. August Pfluger, a decorated former fighter pilot, in the House Homeland Security Committee last week.
Pfluger had introduced legislation to block funding for any bogus “intelligence experts” group that border-wrecker Alejandro Mayorkas’ Department of Homeland Security will use to censor Americans and interfere with our elections under the guise of protecting us from “disinformation.”
Judging from past outrages, such as the “Dirty 51” letter from the 51 “spies who lied” about Hunter’s laptop, Pfluger’s bill is well overdue.
But Goldman, a bumbling former prosecutor who has been attempting to run interference in the House whenever whistleblowers or witnesses come forward with damning information about Biden family corruption, had other ideas.
He leaped to the defense of the Dirty 51 former intelligence officials who had been prompted by then-Biden campaign official Antony Blinken, now secretary of state, to write a letter three weeks before the 2020 election rebutting New York Post reporting, and falsely claimed that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation — or, in their weaselly words, “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Four years later, none of the 51 have retracted the statement or apologized.
Some have doubled down on their lie, even though they know that the FBI had possession of the laptop in December 2019, had determined that it belonged to Hunter, that it had not been tampered with in any way and was fit for use as evidence in court.
Four months ago, that silver MacBook Pro was brought by prosecutors into a Delaware court, displayed to the jury that convicted Hunter of felony gun charges, and confirmed by an FBI forensic expert to be Hunter’s laptop.
It was also cited as evidence by prosecutors in his felony tax indictment in California, to which he pleaded guilty last month.
Among the Dirty 51 were five former CIA directors or acting directors, including John Brennan, Leon Panetta and Michael Hayden, as well as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Brennan and Clapper, who were also knee-deep in the Russia collusion hoax against Donald Trump, were appointed by Mayorkas to his inaugural Homeland Security intelligence group before it was disbanded after public outcry and litigation.
But Pfluger knows full well that they will just find another way to insert themselves into the political process. Hence his legislation.
“There is no place in any administration for the politicization of intelligence,” he told the committee.
Laptop from hell and back
The courtroom appearance of the laptop left egg all over the faces of the Dirty 51.
But they must now be feeling the sting of public opprobrium because, for the first time, we are seeing an attempt to concoct an excuse.
This was Goldman’s mission last week.
The former prosecutor had been deputized to place on the public record an elaborate excuse for how the 51 came to tell such a rancid falsehood to the American people, potentially swinging the tight election for Joe Biden: They just didn’t know what they were talking about.
“These were 51 former officials who did not have access to the FBI evidence files … and so would not have known whether or not there was a real laptop or whether there it was compared [sic], and that’s why, the fact is, that when they said these are hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation, they were speaking based on their expertise of being long-time public servants, intelligence officials, who have dealt directly with Russian intelligence and their efforts not only to interfere in the 2016 election, but going back decades.”
“So, I know my colleagues like to throw around the idea that they lied, they lied, they lied. They had no information. To the contrary, because only the FBI had the laptop in its custody, and nobody else had the laptop.”
So the Dirty 51 are pleading ignorance.
But as Pfluger pointed out, if they didn’t know, why did they weigh in and potentially alter the outcome of the 2020 election, as polls suggest they did?
Rather than hiding their heads in shame, nine of the Trump-deranged signatories — including Panetta, Brennan, Hayden and Clapper — had the gall recently to sign another open letter of 741 senior national security officials endorsing the vacuous and untested Kamala Harris as the most “serious and capable” candidate to be commander-in-chief.
In other words, anyone but Trump.