Ex-CIA Director John Brennan Clashes with Trump Over Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Former CIA Director John Brennan criticized President Donald Trump’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story, claiming that Trump “misrepresented the facts” after his security clearance was revoked. The revocation was part of an executive order signed by Trump, which stripped the security clearances of 51 former intel officials who had signed a 2020 letter claiming that the release of emails from the laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Brennan, one of the signers of the letter, denied that they suggested the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. Instead, they said that their experience makes them “deeply suspicious” that the Russian government played a significant role in the case, without knowing whether the emails were genuine or not.
Trump’s executive order claimed that the former intel officials had engaged in “misleading and inappropriate political coordination” with the 2020 Biden presidential campaign, but Brennan rejected this characterization, calling it an “effort to try to get back at those individuals who have criticized him openly and publicly in the past.”
Other officials named in the executive order include former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr., former CIA director Michael Hayden, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
The controversy surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop story has continued to unfold, with new developments emerging in 2023 revealing that the Department of Justice had known since December 2019 that the laptop contained “reliable evidence” and was not manipulated in any way.
