After Using ‘Russia’ Lies To Meddle In 2016 And 2020, Agencies Dust Off Playbook For 2024
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) held a secret meeting with election officials in December about “threats posed by Russian threat actors and how those might manifest” in the 2024 election, after the intelligence community spread false claims about “Russian interference” in the past two presidential elections to help Democrats.
In a hush-hush “Election Infrastructure Classified Briefing” that was held Dec. 6, the Biden administration alleged that Russia would deploy “misinformation” and “disinformation” to influence the election, according to a letter first obtained by the Daily Signal.
The terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” have been used to smear anyone who goes against the government and media groupthink.
“Election stakeholders are invited to a SECRET-level classified briefing with CISA, DHS Intelligence & Analysis, FBI, and other Intelligence Community partners on the threats Russia poses to elections,” a letter sent to participants read, according to the Daily Signal.
“The intent of this briefing is to deepen the understanding of the election community on the threats posed by Russian threat actors and how those might manifest in election jurisdictions across the country.”
The agencies deployed similar claims during both the 2016 and 2020 elections, based on bogus or nonexistent evidence.
2020: Intel Officials Smear Hunter Biden Laptop Story As Russian Disinfo
After the New York Post broke a story — weeks before the election in 2020 — about the Biden family’s shady foreign business deals based on emails obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop, dozens of former intelligence officials signed onto a public letter suggesting the laptop was Russian disinformation. Corporate media ran with the claim rather than authenticating the laptop for themselves.
Legacy media didn’t authenticate the laptop until years later.
The letter alleged the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” before admitting none of the signatories could verify whether the emails were “genuine” and stating they had no “evidence of Russian involvement” other than suspicions.
The “suspicions” in the letter conveniently arose after Antony Blinken, then a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, prompted the letter, testimony from a former CIA official suggests. Blinken was later appointed by Biden to be secretary of state.
Former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who signed onto the now-discredited letter, admitted to the Judiciary Committee last April that he signed onto the letter because he wanted to hurt former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning.
“There were two intents. One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was to help Vice President Biden.”
“I wanted [Biden] to win the election,” Morell testified, adding he had no intentions of writing the letter until Blinken instigated him.
[READ NEXT: CIA Solicited Signatures For Hunter Biden Laptop Letter, Congressional Testimony Shows]
To make matters worse, the FBI was aware the laptop was authentic as early as 2019 and yet worked with Big Tech to cast doubt on its legitimacy anyway.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan that federal authorities went to Facebook and advised them to “be on high alert” due to a potential “dump” of “Russian propaganda.” Zuckerberg said Facebook acted accordingly and began approaching the story as “potentially misinformation, important misinformation” and throttling its reach.
Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, told the Federal Election Commission in a letter that the FBI and DHS had hosted regular meetings since 2018 in which they “communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.”
The House Judiciary Committee rebuked the FBI for conditioning “social media companies to believe that the laptop was the product of a hack-and-dump operation.” When the laptop story broke, the FBI — which knew the laptop was authentic — “stopped its information sharing, allowing social media companies to conclude that the New York Post story was Russian disinformation.”
2016: FBI Spied on Trump Campaign Based on Clinton-Funded Russia-Collusion Hoax
Special counsel John Durham released a bombshell report last year vindicating Trump and others who for years insisted the FBI acted improperly when it launched the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign over alleged Russian collusion.
The Crossfire Hurricane investigation fueled the years-long attempt to discredit Trump as compromised by Russia. Special counsel Robert Mueller later found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Russian operatives and the campaign.
Durham found the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence” to spy on the Trump campaign and that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement” of the investigation.
“Our investigation determined that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting,” Durham found. The Steele dossier was commissioned by Fusion GPS, which was hired by the Clinton’s campaign law firm. Steele’s “primary sub-source,” Igor Danchenko, was later “indicted for lying to the FBI,” as The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland noted.
Durham also found then President Barack Obama, then-Vice President Biden, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew in July of 2016 that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was going to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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