Ric Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, told Newsmax on Tuesday that the 50 former intelligence officials who cast doubt on the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop story interfered in the 2020 election.
''I want to make one thing clear,'' Grenell told ''The Record With Greta Van Susteren.'' ''Not a single one of those people had a shred of intelligence. They had no briefing, they had zero information to show that this was Russian disinformation.''
''Look, Greta, this was election interference,'' he continued. ''This was plain election interference. For intelligence officials to pretend that they have some sort of information, to say, 'Don't look at the Hunter Biden laptop' in October of 2020, this is an outrage that they've been able to get away with.''
The Daily Caller reports that national security lawyer and MSNBC contributor Jeremy Bash was appointed to President Joe Biden's Intelligence Advisory Board on Friday.
Bash was one of the former intelligence officials who signed onto a letter asserting that the New York Post's publication of emails from Hunter Biden's laptop ''has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.''
Bash repeated his claims in an Oct. 19, 2020, appearance on MSNBC.
''This looks like Russian intelligence, this walks like Russian intelligence, this talks like Russian intelligence,'' Bash told host Nicolle Wallace then. ''This effort by Rudy Giuliani and the New York Post and Steve Bannon to cook up supposed dirt on Joe Biden looks like a classic Russian playbook disinformation campaign.''
Grenell said that Bash's employers have turned a blind eye to his attempt to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story.
''MSNBC, NBC, all of those people who employed Jeremy Bash have never confronted the fact that he took intelligence [and] manipulated it for partisan gain,'' he said. ''So this is an outrage that really needs to be looked at.''
According to Grenell, the Intelligence Advisory Board meets twice a year to offer the director of national intelligence outside advice.
''Sounds good, in theory,'' he said. ''They're not paid, but they are required to file background information on how much money and where their money is coming from, so somebody should look at the filing that Jeremy is going to have to do or maybe has already filed to show where his Beacon [Global Strategies] money is coming from.''
Bash is a managing director of Beacon Global Strategies, an advisory firm he co-founded in 2013, according to the White House.
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