An attorney for former President Donald Trump wants the 51 former intelligence chiefs held responsible for backing Hunter Biden in the unfolding story of the laptop abandoned in a Delaware repair shop.
Lawyer Tim Parlatore's goal is to uncover alleged communications between the 51 former senior intel leaders and the Biden 2020 campaign.
Politico had reported that an Oct. 19, 2020, letter, signed by the former intelligence officials, outlined their assessment that a New York Post disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden "has all the classic earmarks of a Russia information operation."
Those signing the letter included former CIA Directors Leon Panetta, Mike Hayden and John Brennan, along with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
The letter offered no evidence, but raised suspicions by the former intel officials.
The Post had previously reported that during the final months of the heated 2020 presidential race between Joe Biden and Trump, there were emails showing evidence of a possible meeting in the past between Hunter Biden, his father, and a Ukrainian energy firm linked to corruption. Joe Biden denied the meeting described took place.
In March of this year, The New York Times backed up portions of the Post's reporting on the Hunter Biden emails.
"Those emails were obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop. The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation," the Times reported.
Now, Parlatore has filed letters of complaint with the agencies that had employed the 51 former intel officials.
The letters cite "an egregious breach" by former agency employees "that appears to have been overlooked by your agency, as it has gone uninvestigated and certainly unpunished. Specifically, the unauthorized publication and dissemination of an intelligence assessment, purportedly based on classified information that was used wrongfully to influence the outcome of an election."
According to a Post opinion piece by journalist Miranda Devine, letters were sent to John Hollister Hedley, chairman of the Publication Classification Review Board at the CIA; Gen. Paul Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency and commander of United States Cyber Command; Christine Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; Caroline Krass, general counsel, Department of Defense; and Avril Haines, director of the Information Management Division in the Office of the DNI.
Parlatore wants each agency to "proceed immediately with legal action to [ensure] that such breaches of vital security provisions do not continue to go unchecked, the Post said.
His letter notes that each of the 51 former officials was "bound by the lifelong obligation" to submit the letter to their former agencies for pre-publication security review.
Parlatore is also expected to file a letter with the Federal Election Commission asking that the letter signed by the 51 former officials be considered a campaign "in-kind contribution."
The Post noted that another step is for Parlatore to file a lawsuit as he seeks to establish a link between Democrat operatives and the controversial letter.
Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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