The Biden administration agreed Friday to shut down a panel of “experts” that included multiple signatories of a letter that dismissed a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden as Russian disinformation.
The Department of Homeland Security agreed to “wind down” the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group in 30 days following litigation from America First Legal, according to court documents. The experts in the group included former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who signed an October 2020 letter that claimed a bombshell New York Post report about emails from the laptop supposedly abandoned by Hunter Biden “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“The Experts Group shall be wound down within thirty (30) days of the entry of the Order, it will not hold any future meetings, and the Department will not reconstitute the Experts Group inconsistent with the FACA or the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Department will also provide the Experts Group meeting agendas and meeting minutes with participant identifying information redacted within fifteen (15) days of the entry of the Order,” the order submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia reads. “Based on these representations, Plaintiffs have agreed to dismiss their lawsuit with prejudice.”
Twitter locked multiple accounts, including the New York Post’s and the personal account of then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the story, citing its “hacked materials” policy.
The Daily Caller News Foundation confirmed the authenticity of some of the contents that month. The Washington Post and New York Times confirmed the authenticity of the data in March 2022 in articles about investigations into Hunter Biden by the Department of Justice.
“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case,” the letter read. “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this elec on, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
Clapper has been accused of lying to Congress about the NSA’s mass surveillance program during March 2013 testimony that was later contradicted by classified documents provided to journalists by Edward Snowden two months later. Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee released a report in 2017 saying Clapper provided “inconsistent testimony” regarding contacts with the media.
