FLASHBACK: CNN, MSNBC pushed letter wildly speculating Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation
CNN's John Avlon declared then-DNI Director John Ratcliffe to have no credibility after he said there was no evidence the Hunter Biden laptop was a Russian disinformation effort.
CNN national security analyst James Clapper shot inside the tent this week, accusing a current colleague's past story of having "deliberately distorted" an infamous letter signed by him and other intelligence officials about Hunter Biden's laptop being potential Russian disinformation.
Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, is now a paid pundit on CNN. The Politico story headlined, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say," was written by Natasha Bertrand, who obtained the letter for a story mere weeks before the 2020 election.
Bertrand is now a CNN national security reporter, but that didn’t stop Clapper from attacking his colleague’s framing of the infamous report.
"There was message distortion," Clapper told The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler in an article published Monday. "All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five [of the letter]."
Clapper and Bertrand have both appeared on CNN multiple times since the Post’s article was published, separately discussing unidentified objects being shot down over North America. They did not discuss the elephant in the room, though, and CNN has not covered Clapper’s comments about the letter.
Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper departs from a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing evaluating the Intelligence Community Assessment on "Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 16, 2018. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
The terms "deliberately distorted," "message distortion" and "Politico" had not been uttered on CNN from Monday through Wednesday afternoon, according to a search via Grabien Media.
Clapper was one of more than 50 former intelligence officials that signed the infamous letter, which was written in October 2020, shortly after the New York Post first reported on the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop. Clapper, along with at least a dozen other signees on the letter, endorsed Joe Biden for president that year.
While Politico's headline was more declarative, Clapper and his fellow officials couched their language in the letter itself, admitting they had no evidence for their disinformation hypothesis.
FLASHBACK: BIDN OFFICIALS PUSHED ANGLE THAT HUNTER LAPTOP WAS 'RUSSIAN DISINFO'
"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," they wrote.
Nevertheless, Clapper himself told CNN on Oct. 16, 2020, that the Biden laptop to him was "classic textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work."
CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bertrand and Clapper did not respond to separate emails seeking comment from Fox News Digital.
Politico defended the story in a comment to Kessler, saying, the "article fairly and accurately reported on — and summarized — the intelligence officials’ letter. More specifically, the headline is a fair summary of their allegations."
CNN's Natasha Bertrand.
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Prior to landing at CNN, Bertrand was criticized by the Washington Post's Erik Wemple for her "boosterism" of the discredited Christopher Steele dossier.
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