U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and other Republicans have demanded that the Biden administration cut loose top-ranking officials who spread disinformation during the 2020 election and possibly interfered in its outcome.
According to a press release from Scott’s office, the Florida Republican and GOP Sens. Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and Roger Marshall, all members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, want Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to immediately rescind the appointments of James Clapper, John Brennan and Paul Kolbe to the department’s newly formed Homeland Intelligence Experts Group.
In a letter to Mayorkas, the lawmakers complained that “it is disheartening, but not surprising” to see that trio be involved in another attempt to create “an Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board” within DHS.
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“The decision to assign individuals known to spread lies and disinformation to a committee intended to advance the intelligence and national security efforts of our country shows the depths of your agency’s, and this administration’s, disrespect for the American people,” the senators wrote.
The GOP lawmakers noted that Clapper, Brennan and Kolbe were part of 51 former national security officials who, in coordination with Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, signed a letter asserting without evidence that the New York Post report about the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop were Russian disinformation.
“This knowingly false statement was intended to discredit the legitimacy of the discovery of Hunter Biden’s ‘laptop from hell,’ and it provided a willing and eager press corps with a fig leaf to obscure and ignore the criminality, deviancy and corruption of Hunter Biden and, by extension, a politically and ethically compromised Joe Biden,” the senators wrote.
“At best, the written statement issued by Clapper, Brennan, Kolbe and others was misinformation issued under the specious authority of their prior positions of public trust. More likely, it was intentionally disseminated disinformation; a knowingly false and misleading statement intended to prevent the discovery of the truth by the American public.”
“Their conduct in service of the Biden campaign was blatant election interference – plain and simple,” they added.
“Neither Clapper, nor Brennan, nor Kolbe have shown any semblance of contrition for lying to the American public about the laptop and its contents. Brennan and Clapper have even defiantly defended their letter despite the fact the laptop and its incriminating contents have been authenticated and confirmed as belonging to Hunter Biden.”
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Back in July, GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik noted a poll that found 53% of respondents, including 61% of Democrats, would have changed their votes in 2020 had they known the full story of Hunter’s laptop.
The senators further noted that such behavior was “nothing new” for Clapper, who in 2013 lied under oath to the Senate to hide the National Security Agency’s spying operations on millions of Americans.
“As with his perfidious role in obscuring the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, even after it was authenticated, Clapper has remained defiant about his perjury despite proof of the NSA’s mass surveillance coming to light in recent years,” the senators wrote. “Now, rather than face accountability for his criminal act of lying to Congress, Clapper has been anointed by Joe Biden and you to serve on the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group.”
“Clapper, Brennan, Kolbe and others named to serve on the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group have a well-documented history of acting as radical partisans who recklessly spread disinformation,” the lawmakers argued to Mayorkas.
Accordingly, they demanded that DHS immediately rescind the appointments of “these known purveyors of disinformation” to the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group.
The senators also asked Mayorkas to submit to them all documents about the new DHS group, including a list of all its members, documents outlining the selection process of, and information about which ones will receive salaries, benefits and/or any form of compensation.
The further demanded that committee Chairman Gary Peters compel Mayorkas to testify before the committee so he could explain his appointments of Clapper, Brennan and Kolbe “despite their disreputable records of deceit.”
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