Fifty-one intelligence officials signed a letter calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation – and it was a lie.
Now one of their own has formally accused them of running a deception operation against the American people.
The Intelligence Community Inspector General just handed that case to the Department of Justice.
51 Intelligence Officials Accused of Running a Deception Operation Against American Voters
Thomas Kuhns spent his career inside the Intelligence Community enforcing analytic integrity. He knows exactly how a deception operation is built – because building them was his job.
When Kuhns did a line-by-line analysis of the October 2020 letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials – the one that called the Hunter Biden laptop story a Russian information operation – he wasn't reading it as a political document.
He was reading it as a professional.
His conclusion, submitted in February to the Intelligence Community Inspector General: the letter's "planning, drafting, and dissemination" exhibited characteristics "consistent with coordinated intelligence deception operations and tradecraft."
Kuhns flagged the specific mechanics. The signatories were trained intelligence actors who invoked their personal authority to lend credibility.
They coordinated extensively before publication. They relied on selective information and cut inconvenient facts. And not one of them – including primary author and former CIA Analysis Director Michael Morell – ever asked the FBI to confirm whether the laptop was genuine, despite the bureau sitting on it since 2019.
"Several authors held active security clearances at the time and chose not to seek confirmation," Kuhns wrote. "All the authors have a large social and professional network that includes former and current FBI professionals; no one asked."
Michael Morell Admitted Under Oath He Had No Evidence and Wrote the Letter to Elect Biden
The most damning part of this story isn't Kuhns' analysis. Morell already told Congress exactly what he did and why.
Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in 2024, Morell admitted he had no direct evidence of Russian involvement with the laptop. None.
"So you had no direct evidence that Russia was involved in this matter at all, did you," Rep. Matt Gaetz asked.
"I did not," Morell replied.
He also admitted that then-Biden campaign official Antony Blinken had been "the impetus" behind the letter – and that his own purpose was twofold: warn about Russian election interference, and help Joe Biden win.
"You wanted to help the Vice President. Why?" Chairman Jim Jordan pressed.
"Because I wanted him to win the election," Morell answered.
His deputy, Marc Polymeropoulos, was even blunter with investigators. He testified that Morell told him "the Biden world had asked for this."
A House Intelligence Committee report found the CIA itself "may have assisted in obtaining signatories." The letter went through the highest levels of the intelligence community before publication. Not one person raised a concern.
They all let it run.
DOJ Inspector General Receives Formal Referral as Accountability Push Begins
The Intelligence Community Inspector General received Kuhns' complaint and referred it to the Department of Justice's Inspector General. That is how a formal accountability chain begins.
For six years, the letter worked exactly as designed. The moment the New York Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, Morell and his network deployed their credentials to call it Russian disinformation.
Biden used the letter in a debate against Trump. Social media platforms used it to censor the story. The press used it to bury the story.
Every piece of that narrative was false.
The laptop was authentic – confirmed by federal prosecutors and FBI verification dating to 2019. The influence peddling was real. The foreign business access sold while Joe Biden served as vice president was real. Trained intelligence professionals buried all of it, and they did it on purpose.
Kuhns said iin his memo: the conduct "warrants a standards-based review to assess whether the conduct constituted a deception operation involving trained US intelligence professionals targeting the American People."
Fifty-one signatures. One target. Two hundred and forty million American voters.
They are not going to be able to call this one Russian disinformation.
Sources:
- Steven Richards and John Solomon, "Ex-intel official reported Hunter Biden laptop letter was 'deception operation,' DOJ asked to probe," Just the News, May 31, 2026.
- Brooke Singman, "CIA 'may have assisted in obtaining signatories' for letter discrediting Hunter Biden laptop: House GOP report," Fox News, May 9, 2023.
- House Judiciary Committee, "Biden campaign, Blinken orchestrated intel letter to discredit Hunter Biden laptop story, ex-CIA official says," judiciary.house.gov, April 21, 2023.
- Jim Jordan, "Jim Jordan puts a dozen intel veterans on notice over Hunter Biden laptop letter," judiciary.house.gov, February 6, 2023.
