State Dept. silent on Blinken role in ‘spies who lie’ letter

WASHINGTON — The State Department stonewalled Friday when confronted with the revelation that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s outreach inspired the October 2020 letter by 51 former intelligence officials that cast doubt on The Post’s reporting on first son Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“That is not a State Department issue,” spokesman Vedant Patel said when asked about ex-CIA acting director Michael Morell’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee — first reported late Thursday by The Post — that Blinken had “triggered” the now-notorious missive. “So I don’t have a comment for you on that.”

When a reporter told Patel that “it’s not clear who else outside of the department we could ask” about Morell’s statement, the spokesman again said: “It is not a State Department issue, and I don’t really have a comment on this from the State Department.”

Later in the briefing, a second journalist noted that Blinken “is the person that is currently serving as the secretary of state” before asking: “What do these claims from this former CIA official, as well as the letter from the House Judiciary Committee, mean in terms of the public trust in his position as secretary of state?”

“Again, this is not an issue that is an issue of the State Department,” Patel repeated. “It has naught to do with US foreign policy or the work of this department so I don’t have a comment for you on this.

The exchange occurred shortly before CNN and Fox News reported that Hunter Biden;s lawyers are preparing to meet last week with US attorney for Delaware David Weiss. On Wednesday, the IRS agent supervising a long-running investigation of the first son for tax evasion and related crimes alleged a coverup in the case.

Biden cited the spooks’ letter at the second and final presidential debate against then-President Donald Trump, alleging falsely that the information disclosed by The Post — and later broadly corroborated — was the result of a “Russian plant.”

“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant,” Biden said at the time. “Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except [Trump’s] good friend Rudy Giuliani.”  

The House Judiciary Committee Republicans’ official account tweeted out a clip of Biden’s comments from the debate Friday, with the message: “It was always a lie.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill were enraged by Morell’s disclosure, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who called the letter “a political operation” that “became the basis for suppressing the story and keeping it from the American people just days before the most important election that we have, the election for president of the United States.”

“The reason Mike Morell said he did the letter was he thought President Trump would bring the issue up during that debate on the 22nd of October,” Jordan told Fox News host Laura Ingraham Thursday night. “And of course he did, and they wanted some statement that Joe Biden could use because, as Mr. Morell has said, they wanted him to win … and then after that debate, here’s the kicker: Steve Ricchetti, the chair of the Biden campaign, calls up Mike Morell and thanks him for doing it all.

“It was a total political operation,” Jordan added, “and the most important fact is, it was false. It wasn’t Russian disinformation. The laptop story looks to be true.”

“In 2020, the Biden campaign dishonestly used former members of the Intelligence Community to categorize the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said in a statement. “The Biden campaign knowingly misled the public to protect Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings. That’s why I’ve partnered with … Jordan to examine these serious issues.”

“The fact that the Biden Crime Family leveraged their corrupt political relationships to pen a false letter covering up Hunter Biden’s crimes is an abhorrent abuse of Joe Biden’s position,” said Upstate Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican. “Joe Biden’s continued weaponization of the federal government against his political opponents is un-American, illegal, and must be stopped. Americans should take solace in knowing House Republicans are holding Biden and his corrupt family accountable for their crimes.”

“So Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, orchestrated the letter falsely calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinfo,” tweeted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “This guy should not still have a job.”

“Just one more example of those who accused others of ‘spreading Russian disinformation’ were in fact the ones spreading disinformation and lies,” tweeted Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). “Will Americans realize we’ve been repeatedly lied to and start seeking the truth?”

White House spokesman Ian Sams on Friday afternoon sought to blunt the political fallout of Morell’s disclosure by pointing to a different section of his deposition before the House Judiciary Committee, in which the ex-CIA acting director said “my memory is that [Blinken] did not” direct or suggest that he write the letter.”

The initial excerpt showed Morell saying that Blinken’s outreach “absolutely” inspired the letter.