CNN’s moderators for Thursday’s presidential debate have deep ties to former intelligence officials who signed the now-debunked letter claiming Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” Real Clear Investigations (RCI) reported Wednesday.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied about leaking false information to one of CNN’s moderators, Jake Tapper, about the Trump campaign exchanging information with Russia throughout the election cycle, according to the RCI report.
Tapper, failing to inform the public that the information came from a Clinton campaign-funded dossier, the now discredited Steele dossier, disseminated the information in a January 10, 2017, CNN report co-authored with Carl Bernstein.
Clapper denied leaking the information to Tapper during a July 2017 congressional deposition.
Clapper “flatly denied ‘discuss[ing] the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists,” the House Intelligence Committee said, according to RCI.
But, after further pressure from Congress, “Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,” the House Intelligence Committee wrote in a report of his deposition, according to RCI.
Clapper apparently lied again to the public the day after the CNN story aired, issuing a statement expressing “profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press” and denied that the leak came from within the intelligence community. Clapper repeated the same lie to incoming President Donald Trump, according to RCI.
CNN later hired Clapper as a national security analyst, making him Tapper’s co-worker.
Tapper, for his part, won an award for his coverage of the story when he received the Merriam Smith Award for broadcast journalism in 2018 for his reporting on the dossier.
Just an incredible sequence of events here.
-Clapper lied in a deposition about leaking very dubious intel to CNN
-Clapper then admitted he did it
-Tapper won a journalism award for running a credulous story on the leak
-Clapper also misled the public about the leak, claiming… pic.twitter.com/peOcrEtRMj— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) June 26, 2024
Clapper was also a leading signatory of the infamous “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails,” a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials which casted the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, including evidence of the Bidens’ dealings with Ukrainian and Chinese energy companies, as Russian disinformation.
Another signatory of the letter was Jeremy Bash, the CIA’s chief of staff under Barack Obama from 2009-2011. Bash was married to CNN’s Dana Bash from 1998 to 2007 — the latter will co-moderate Thursday night’s debate with Tapper.
Jeremy Bash was involved in coordinating the effort to craft the Hunter Biden laptop letter, according to RCI.
Former deputy CIA Director Mike Morell testified the purpose of the letter “was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election,” according to an April 2023 House Judiciary Committee press release.
Morrell sent an e-mail out to intelligence officials in October 2020 that said “We want to give the VP a talking point to use in response,” a May 2023 House Judiciary Committee report reveals.
I was just made aware that CNN’s Dana Bash, who is moderating the first debate, was married to a CIA official who was one of the 51 intelligence agents that signed the fake letter calling Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation” days before the last election…
Small world. pic.twitter.com/AWRDiyGHvA
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) June 25, 2024
The officials released the statement on October 19, 2020, weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
Twitter suspended the account of the New York Post, which broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, and blocked Tweets about the laptop on their platform at the time, based largely on the premise that the story may be “Russian disinformation.”
Despite the assertion from the former intelligence officials that the laptop was disinformation, media outlets like the Daily Caller News Foundation, New York Times, Washington Post and CBS News have verified its contents.
In 2021, NPR issued a correction of a story in which they claimed the laptop had been discredited. “A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story. U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect,” the correction reads. (RELATED: Department Of Justice Acknowledges Hunter Biden Laptop Content Is Legitimate For First Time)
Federal prosecutors used the laptop contents as evidence while trying Hunter Biden on gun charges in June. FBI agent Erika Jensen testified she had seen no evidence the laptop was tampered with. Special counsel David Weiss also said in May the Biden legal team’s defense of questioning the legitimacy of the laptop was a “conspiracy theory with no supporting evidence.”
Aside from Bash’s ties to one of the most prominent figures to sign the debunked letter, CNN’s newsroom also has journalists who parroted the intelligence claims or outright ignored the story.
Tapper made no mention of the laptop story on either of his two CNN shows in October 2020 following the New York Post’s report, according to a Fox News analysis of his show’s transcripts.
He did, however, have on multiple guests who called the laptop story “Russian disinformation” and a “right-wing conspiracy,” according to Fox News.
CNN also hired and promoted Natasha Bertrand, a former Politico reporter who parroted the intelligence letter’s “disinformation” claim, to the role of national security correspondent in February.
There appears to be no consequences for being the Biden campaign’s disinformation scribe. https://t.co/89q67WAoUk pic.twitter.com/zKwnWU7Ukr
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 13, 2024
Bertrand’s story, titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” is still live on Politico’s site with no correction.