Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former CIA Operations Officer Paul Kolbe signed a letter in 2020 stating Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely Russia trying to interfere with the presidential election.
We all knew the truth then. We know the truth now.
Thanks to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the men are back.
Clapper, Brennan, and Kolbe are in the new Homeland Intelligence Experts Group.
“The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas. “I express my deep gratitude to these distinguished individuals for dedicating their exceptional expertise, experience, and vision to our critical mission.”
I would laugh if our borders weren’t a mess or if these guys were serious people.
DHS said the group “will meet four times annually and leverage the expertise of each member to provide input on I&A’s most complex problems and challenges, including terrorism, fentanyl, transborder issues, and emerging technology.”
“The Homeland Intelligence Experts Group is being formed at a time of unprecedented challenge, with the U.S. intelligence enterprise facing threats from a range of malign actors, to include foreign nation-state adversaries, domestic violent extremists, cyber criminals, drug-trafficking cartels and other transnational criminal organizations,” said Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis Ken Wainstein. “The Experts Group will be an invaluable asset as we navigate through this evolving threat and operating environment and continue to strengthen our efforts to protect the Homeland.”
I do not know how anyone can trust these men. Where shall I begin?
JAMES CLAPPER
James Clapper admitted he never saw evidence linking President Donald Trump to Russia in 2016:
“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in 2017. “That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. … But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence.”
Clapper doubled down on the letter he signed about Hunter Biden’s laptop despite numerous media outlets and officials authenticating the laptop:
“Well, to answer your question, no, I don’t regret it. I thought, at the time, it was appropriate to sound a warning about, watch out for the dark hand of the Russians. In my case, this was on the heels of what I saw the Russians do in 2016 to interfere and influence the outcome of our election. So, I thought it was appropriate. I thought the letter was appropriately caveated by acknowledging we didn’t have any direct evidence. To this day, I still have not seen any official results of forensic analysis of that laptop, as to whether or not, in some way, the Russians messed with it.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley accused Clapper of lying to Congress. He told Congress he never discussed the Trump dossier with journalists. However, Clapper then admitted he spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper about the dossier.
JOHN BRENNAN
Then there’s good old John Brennan. He’s a fine fella, isn’t he?
Declassified documents showed that Brennan told President Barack Obama about the idea to stir up a scandal between Trump and Russia to distract from her emails.
How about Brennan’s involvement in the spying on Trump’s campaign? Crazy: “Sources familiar with the records told Fox News that a late-2016 email chain indicated then-FBI Director James Comey told bureau subordinates that then-CIA Director John Brennan insisted the dossier be included in the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference, known as the ICA.”
Brennan called Trump treasonous, but it wasn’t “treason treason.” Okay, dude:
And that’s why I said it was nothing short of treasonous. I didn’t mean that he committed treason. But it was a term that I used, nothing short of treasonous.MADDOW: But you didn’t mean that he committed treason, though?BRENNAN: I said it was nothing short of treasonous. That was the term I used, yes.MADDOW: That’s the – if we – if we diagram the sentence, nothing short of treasonous means it’s treason.
PAUL KOLBE
I cannot find too much about Paul Kolbe. No articles at LI mention him.
Kolbe currently serves as director of the Intelligence Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
I found an email to Kolbe from the House Judiciary Committee about the letter he signed regarding Hunter’s laptop.
The committee asked Kolbe to hand over all information about the statement. This letter came out in February 2023. The first letter to Kolbe went out in April 2022. Yikes.
Kolber’s 2021 New York Times essay about Russia’s SolarWinds hack made excuses for the hack because America does it, too.
Kolbe started the essay by scolding those who went off on Russia: “There is indignant howling over what is surely Russia’s role in infiltrating, again, the networks of the U.S. government and corporations — this time through a tainted software update by the company SolarWinds. Politicians of both parties have called it a virtual act of war. ‘America must retaliate, and not just with sanctions,’ Senator Marco Rubio said.”
You don’t have a great case, Kolbe, when you have to explain:
The United States is, of course, engaged in the same type of operations at an even grander scale. We are active participants in an ambient cyberconflict that rages, largely unseen and unacknowledged, across the digital globe. This is a struggle that we can’t avoid, and there is no need to play the victim. Just as we use cybertools to defend our national interests, others will use cyberweapons against us.The National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency exist to break into foreign information systems and steal secrets, and they are damn good at it. They, along with the Defense Department, regularly use cybertools to purloin intelligence from servers across the world and to place foreign information systems and industrial infrastructure at risk. Ones and zeros can be more effective weapons than bombs and missiles. The exposure of Stuxnet, the Snowden leaks and the theft of C.I.A. cybertools revealed the sophistication and extent of capabilities attributed to the United States.
This is the same guy who tried to convince everyone that Russia had a hand in Hunter’s laptop.
I also thought Russia was bad because it interfered with the 2016 election?!?!
What a hypocrite.
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