Watchdog Group Sues FEC for Failing to Charge Biden Campaign over Letter Casting Doubt on Hunter Biden Laptop
America First Legal is suing the Federal Election Commission for declining to charge Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee over their coordination with the former intelligence officials who drafted an open letter casting doubt on the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop archive.
AFL filed a complaint against the FEC Sunday in the U.S. District Court for D.C. for refusing to charge the Biden campaign and DNC for failing to report direct and indirect campaign contributions, and coordinated communications related to the letter written by 51 former intelligence officials in October 2020 likening the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story to Russian disinformation.
“Federal enforcement is necessary when federal campaign finance and support turn from a private civic act to election interference and public corruption,” AFL said in its complaint.
“By failing to act on America First Legal’s administrative complaint, the Commission has harmed America First Legal by allowing a campaign for President of the United States to benefit from undisclosed contributions and coordinated in- kind expenditures in furtherance of using a campaign platform misrepresented as an unbiased and non-political report,” the complaint adds.
The letter was signed by heavyweight national-security figures such as former CIA directors John Brennan and Leon Panetta. The signatories acknowledged in the letter that they had no actual evidence that Hunter’s laptop was a Russian plant but nevertheless claimed the Post story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
In October, AFL filed an administrative complaint to have the FEC enforce its campaign-finance laws and sanction the parties involved. Over 120 days have passed and the agency has not taken any action, AFL said in its newest complaint.
Federal investigators verified the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop archive in late 2019 by cross referencing the laptop server to Biden’s Apple iCloud account, special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors said in a January motion.
“In response to that warrant, in September 2019, Apple produced backups of data from various of the defendant’s electronic devices that he had backed up to his iCloud account. Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple,” federal prosecutors said.
The Justice Department’s description of the verification process lines up with closed-door testimony delivered last spring by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, an IRS criminal agent who spent years on the Hunter Biden tax investigation. Prior to Shapley’s testimony, numerous media outlets had verified the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop archive.
Former CIA official Michael Morell, one of the signatories of the Hunter Biden laptop letter, testified before the House Judiciary Committee in April and described how the Biden campaign was involved with the crafting of the document, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan revealed in a letter.
“There were two intents. One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue; and, two, it was [to] help Vice President Biden,” Morell testified. His testimony is cited repeatedly in AFL’s complaint against the FEC.
He said a phone call from then-Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken facilitated his decision to sign the letter. Morell also discussed communications with Biden campaign Chairman Steve Richetti following the October 2020 debate between Biden and then-President Trump.
Politico published a story about the letter days before the final presidential debate. At the debate, Joe Biden cited the intelligence officials to cast doubt on the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop archive.
Some of the intelligence officials who signed the letter have claimed vindication in the wake of discredited former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov’s criminal indictment for falsely accusing Joe and Hunter Biden of taking $10 million in bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. Special counsel Weiss and his team said in a detention memo Smirnov is connected to multiple Russian intelligence officials and allegedly received information about Hunter Biden from them.
The disputed bribery allegations are not connected to the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
