House Republicans are demanding a briefing from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) over the CIA’s alleged interference with investigations related to President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.
On Tuesday, the chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees sent a letter to CIA Director William Burns requesting a staff-level briefing by agency personnel to explain previous denials that the CIA interfered to block an interview of Biden associate Patrick Kevin Morris. The letter was a follow-up to one sent in March seeking records related to allegations from federal whistleblowers who claim the CIA blocked the interview of Morris.
“Without confirming or denying the existence of any associations or communications, CIA did not prevent or seek to prevent IRS or DOJ from conducting any such interview,” wrote CIA Director of Congressional Affairs James Catella in an April 4 response. “The allegation is false.”
On Tuesday, however, lawmakers highlighted testimony from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblower Gary Shapley, who said efforts to interview Morris as part of a federal tax investigation were blocked by the Justice Department. Shapley claimed investigators “could no longer pursue him as a witness” after DOJ staff were summoned to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to discuss Morris.
“Notably, Mr. Shapley stated that, ‘[i]t is unclear how the CIA became aware that Mr. Morris was a potential witness in the Hunter Biden investigation,’” wrote Chairmen James Comer, R-Ky., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Subsequent meetings between staff on the Judiciary Committee with the CIA Office of Congressional Affairs in April failed to corroborate Catella’s denials of agency interference, according to Tuesday’s letter.
“To date, the CIA has failed to supplement its response or provide any documents responsive to the Committees’ March 21 letter,” lawmakers wrote. “In sum, SSA Shapley’s affidavit and the supporting documentation present clear and contemporaneous evidence that Mr. Catella’s assertion in his April 4, 2024 letter to the Committees was potentially false and/or misleading.”
Lawmakers gave the CIA until June 25 to schedule to the briefing.
2024-06-11 JDJ JC to CIA Re… by The Federalist
In December, House Republicans also launched a probe into the CIA’s role in peddling the conspiracy that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which surfaced in 2020, was an instrument of Russian disinformation. Lawmakers requested information on whether any of the dozens of former intelligence officials who signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter were on the CIA payroll. The laptop letter was published in Politico to discredit the election-year discovery as a Kremlin plot to thwart Joe Biden’s White House run.
Hunter Biden’s federal tax case will begin trial in September after a soft plea deal from federal prosecutors was dismantled last summer. On Tuesday, a Delaware jury found the president’s son guilty on all three felony gun charges related to the 2018 purchase of a firearm while addicted to an illicit substance.
House Republicans submitted additional criminal referrals for Hunter Biden and James Biden to the Department of Justice (DOJ) last week. Lawmakers recommended charges for lying to Congress about the president’s global influence-peddling schemes, which are being probed by the House as potentially impeachable.
Comments are closed.