Hunter Biden laptop letter signer doubles down on claim that Russia may have been involved

A prominent signer of the baseless October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop letter — explicitly designed to provide Joe Biden with a “talking point” in his presidential debate with Donald Trump — is continuing to suggest, without any credible evidence, that “the Russians played some role” in the incriminating laptop.

Larry Pfeiffer, the former chief of staff to then-CIA director Michael Hayden (who also signed the laptop letter), made the claim during a SpyTalk podcast episode earlier in August amidst a broader discussion where the former intelligence official also sought to downplay the revelations from recent declassifications made by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Pfeiffer, the director of the Hayden Center at George Mason University, repeatedly told the podcast hosts — journalists Jeff Stein and Michael Isikoff — that he and other signers still believed the Russians may have been behind the Hunter Biden laptop, which first emerged publicly in mid-October 2020. The New York Post stories detailing the shady business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in China and Ukraine were subsequently banned from social media and self-censored by legacy media who only admitted the authenticity of the laptop after Biden won election.

Rewriting history

“We never said the laptop was fake, in fact, I think we said the laptop and the emails may very well be real,” Pfeiffer said in the August 1 episode. “In fact, the fact that they are and were real smacks even more of a Russian information operation, because most Russian information operations, most good information operations, have some base in truth.”

Isikoff seemed taken aback and asked if Pfeiffer was still suggesting that the Russians played a role in the Hunter Biden laptop.

“Honestly, to this day, and granted you’d think I’d follow this assiduously and moment by moment, but I don’t, but several of us who signed the letter haven’t seen anything to completely refute the idea that the Russians played some role in that material,” Pfeiffer replied.

Michael Morell, the main author and organizer of the letter, is also a distinguished fellow at the Hayden Center run by Pfeiffer. Just the News recently detailed Morell’s key role in promoting the baseless idea that Trump was an agent of Vladimir Putin’s Russia during Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful bid against Trump in 2016, in addition to helping Biden obtain a last-minute “talking point” in his successful race versus Trump in 2020.

IRS whistle-blowers previously revealed that the FBI had verified the authenticity of the laptop by November 2019 – nearly a year before its existence was made public.

Morell drafted the letter with Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA operations officer, who later admitted that he and Morell helped put the laptop letter together.

Morell told House investigators that prior to his mid-October 2020 phone call with Blinken, he had no intention to write the Hunter Biden laptop letter, and testified “yes” and “absolutely” when asked if a call with future Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was then a top advisor for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, was what “triggered that intent in you.”

Morell said one of the reasons he crafted the letter was to help Joe Biden since he “wanted him to win the election” against Trump.

The recruitment email that Morell had sent to prospective signatories made that clear: “Marc and I drafted the attached because we believed the Russians were involved in some way in the Hunter Biden email issue and because we think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week's debate, and we want to give the Vice President, VP, a talking point to use in response.”

Pfeiffer said in the early August podcast episode that “I signed the letter at the time” and stressed that “there were others” who signed it anonymously.

“The four people I engaged most in those immediate days surrounding signing the letter were Morell, Marc Polymeropoulos, Kristin Wood, and Nick Shapiro.” Kristin Wood was a former CIA officer, and Nick Shapiro was a longtime aide to former CIA director John Brennan.

“It’s public record that in those emails it said, hey, by the way, we think this will help Biden, give him a talking point in the debate that’s coming up,” Pfeiffer contended. “The way the letter was written, it didn’t come out and endorse a candidate, it didn’t say go out and vote for Joe Biden… It was a warning to the American voting people … we felt that the placement of those emails in the American media that close to the election smacked of a Russian information operation… I think it said hallmarks or earmarks or whatever.”

Isikoff told Pfeiffer that there was still no evidence of Russian involvement with the Hunter Biden laptop a half decade later and asked if it is fair to suggest something for which there is no evidence. Pfeiffer responded by telling Isikoff to read an article written by and podcasts done by retired CIA officer John Sipher.

Sipher, a co-founder of Spycraft Entertainment and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, previously said he was proud to have played his part in influencing the 2020 election in favor of Biden — before backtracking and claiming he was being sarcastic.

From "yes" to "maybe" 

Isikoff asked Pfeiffer if he would still sign the letter today if he got a chance to do it over, despite there being no evidence of it being a Russian operation.

“Go look at what John Sipher has written. Go look at what was on his podcast,” Pfeiffer again insisted. “I think there’s definitely smoke, and where there is smoke there sometimes can be fire.”

A very big "if"

Joe Biden was referring to the Politico report by Natasha Bertrand titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say” which had first shared the letter.

Although the October 2020 letter hedged a bit at various times, it did repeatedly contend there was Russian involvement with the laptop stories, arguing that “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.” The letter claimed that the laptop saga “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

Far from providing a convincing basis to continue to suggest potential Russian involvement with the Hunter Biden laptop, Sipher admitted in his story for The Bulwark that “there is still no firm evidence that I am aware of that the laptop itself was part of a Russian deception scheme.”

Sipher also sought to distance the letter he signed from the Politico article about it and from comments made about the Hunter Biden laptop by Joe Biden and by then-Rep. and now-Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

“The first major story about the letter ran under the headline: ‘Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.’ We never said the story was false — only that its appearance may have been the work of the Russian government and that it gave Russia an opportunity to manipulate American voters,” Sipher wrote. 

Schiff repeats the falsity as if it were fact

Adam Schiff, then a member of the House, now a Senator, said before the letter was published that ‘we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. … Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the president [Trump] is only too happy to have Kremlin help and try to amplify it.’ Those conclusions were hasty and overstated; we did not express such certainty in the letter.”

Ratcliffe had said in mid-October 2020 that “there is no intelligence that supports that, and we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”

Unmentioned by Sipher was that the letter was directly pitched to signers as giving Biden a “talking point” against Trump.

“What was intended as a serious warning — that Russia could exploit the incident for malign purposes, similar to their hacking and release of Democratic National Committee emails before the 2016 election — was quickly swallowed by a narrative that the signatories had crafted the letter to aid the Biden campaign by distracting from the lewd material found on the laptop,” Sipher also wrote.

The report released by Biden’s ODNI in March 2021 concluded that “Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies, including those directed by Russian intelligence” had pushed negative content about Joe and Hunter Biden, but it did not reference the Hunter Biden laptop story and reached no public conclusions related to it.

Hook, line and sinker

A number of media figures, including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and NPR, initially claimed in early 2021 that the ODNI report had dismissed the Biden laptop story, before they largely backtracked on their false assertions.

Sipher’s Mission Implausible podcast also appears to have done three episodes focused on the Hunter Biden laptop saga, although not particularly recently as Pfeiffer seemed to suggest, but rather in 2024 at the height of special counsel David Weiss’s investigation into Joe Biden’s son.

During the SpyTalk podcast interview earlier this month, Pfeiffer also sought to downplay the revelation that British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s debunked anti-Trump dossier was cited in the body of the most secretive version of the ICA.

“The compromise that was reached was, we’ll make it an annex, we will also clearly note that the analysis and findings of the ICA did not have any — nothing from the Steele Dossier contributed to the analytic findings of the report,” Pfeiffer insisted.

The CIA’s recent “lessons learned” review — written by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and released in July — concluded that “the decision by agency heads to include the Steele Dossier in the ICA ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”

Brennan dissembles on inclusion of Steele Dossier

A recently-declassified House Intelligence Committee analysis stated that “contradicting public claims by the DCIA [Brennan] that the dossier ‘was not in any way’ incorporated into the ICA, the dossier was referenced in the ICA main body text, and further detailed in a two-page CIA annex.”

The January 2017 ICA stated that “we assess the [Russian] influence campaign aspired to help Trump's chances of victory” in the 2016 election, and the most highly-classified version of the ICA “was followed by four bullets of supporting evidence” — and the declassified House analysis stated that “the fourth bullet referred the reader to a detailed summary and analysis of the [Steele] dossier.”

The highly-classified version of the ICA stated: “For additional reporting on Russian plans and intentions, please see Annex A: Additional Reporting from an FBI Source on Russian Influence Efforts.”

“Ultimately, the decision of how to handle the dossier was jointly made by the Directors of CIA and FBI, who overruled the objections from CIA officers, and agreed to reference it with other ICA text bullets describing Putin's intentions, while placing the details of the dossier in the ICA Appendix A, according to senior CIA officials,” the declassified House report said.

Trump's briefing was actually attempt at evidence gathering

Indeed, DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s August 2019 report on James Comey’s mishandling of his memos explained how the January 2017 Trump Tower meeting with then-President-elect Trump wasn’t just about briefing Trump on the ICA. Horowitz also laid out details showing Comey’s one-on-one meeting with Trump after everyone else left wasn’t just about informing Trump of allegations from Steele’s dossier, but was treated by Comey and the FBI as a chance to gather information in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

Horowitz wrote that the FBI was focused on “Trump’s potential responses to being told about the ‘salacious’ information, including that Trump might make statements about, or provide information of value to, the pending Russian interference investigation.”

Comey didn’t reveal the dossier’s Fusion GPS origins, its Steele authorship, its funding through Hillary Clinton’s campaign, nor its use in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications targeting campaign associate Carter Page. Comey wrote about the meeting immediately after, telling Horowitz it should be treated like counterintelligence information, and Comey had his team on standby to be told what he’d learned.

Comey classified the memo as secret because the information “ought to be treated … [like] FISA derived information or information in a [counterintelligence] investigation.” McCabe forwarded the memo to former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who was having an affair with fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok and shared deeply-held anti-Trump views. Lisa Page said Comey sent it “to upload into the case file” because it was “central to investigative activity.”

Pfeiffer denied "lessons learned" memo says what it said

“The IC note that Ratcliffe put out … says we don’t question any of the integrity of the judgments that were made,” Pfeiffer first argued, before Isikoff pointed out that the CIA’s lessons-learned review questioned the intelligence about Putin ordering an effort to help Trump.

The January 2017 assessment from the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA concluded with “high confidence” that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016” and that Russia worked to “undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency” and “developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”

The CIA’s recent review specifically concluded that the judgment that Putin “aspired” to help Trump win “did not merit the ‘high confidence’ level that CIA and FBI attached to it.”

“I think the question there was, should it have been high confidence or medium confidence,” Pfeiffer said in response to the CIA review, and then laughed. “I am sure if that report had come out and said medium confidence we would be all having the same conversations that we would have been having if it said high confidence.”

Pfeiffer also sought to argue that the distinction between high confidence and moderate confidence did not matter, saying, “Is it a hundred angels on the head of a pin or is it fifty angels dancing on the head of a pin, you know, I think we still have angels dancing on the head of a pin here.”

Even the January 2017 ICA itself, however, made it clear that the distinction mattered. In addition, ODNI’s “Intelligence Community Directive 203” also lays out the importance of confidence levels.

“Analytic products should indicate and explain the basis for the uncertainties associated with major analytic judgments, specifically the likelihood of occurrence of an event or development, and the analyst's confidence in the basis for this judgment,” the directive says. “Analysts' confidence in an assessment or judgment may be based on the logic and evidentiary base that underpin it, including the quantity and quality of source material, and their understanding of the topic. Analytic products should note causes of uncertainty … and explain how uncertainties affect analysis.”

Pfeiffer never saw key info, but defends it anyway

On the podcast, Pfeiffer pointed to an alleged secret source closely held by Brennan in explaining why he believed the high confidence assessment was justified.

“From everything I’ve heard from John Brennan in particular, there was some incredibly sensitive HUMINT [human intelligence]-derived intelligence that drove that finding that was not made available to as large a segment of the analysts as normally would have been given access because of the sensitivity,” Pfeiffer said. “And I think ultimately that drove that final decision towards the confidence. Now, I say that of course not having seen any of it — I don’t really know.”

The declassified House report contended that a confusing “fragment” of intelligence played a key role in the ICA drafters deciding to find that the Russians had sought to attempt to aid Trump in his run.

A senior CIA operations officer reportedly said of the fragment that “we don't know what was meant by that” and “five people read it five ways.”

“The major ‘high confidence’ judgment of the ICA rests on one opinion about a text fragment with uncertain meaning, that may be a garble, and for which it is not clear how it was obtained,” the declassified report contended. “The ICA also fails to consider alternative, more plausible, explanations for the fragment's meaning suggested by the context of events during early July, when the information was acquired. The fragment could instead be read that Putin expected (‘counted on’) a Trump victory at the Republican convention, which was only two weeks away at the time of Putin's WikiLeaks decision.”

The declassified report said that “experienced CIA officers responsible for Russia reporting — evaluating raw intelligence and ensuring that HUMINT reporting meets the threshold for publication — initially omitted the confusing fragment from the first version of the report” which was published on December 20, 2016.

But the report said that Brennan “countermanded their decision, however, and ordered that the questionable fragment be included so that it could be cited in the ICA” and that “a revised report” was published later in December 2016.