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DHS Announces 'Homeland Intelligence Experts Group,' Conservatives Immediately Notice Huge Problem

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Let me pose a not-so-hypothetical hypothetical question to you.

You, we will pretend, are a member in good standing of the U.S. intelligence community. A few weeks before a presidential election, a laptop alleged to have belonged to a presidential candidate’s son with a great deal of compromising information about both his personal life and corporate dealings — information which also connects the candidate to his son’s business operations in a way that the candidate has previously denied he was — surfaces.

You, being the expert that you are, sign onto an open letter saying that the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that, while you don’t know if it’s genuine or not, “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

Well, it turns out that not only were the contents of the laptop proved genuine — long after news stories about it were censored on social media platforms and the candidate in question won the presidential election, of course — but there was no evidence whatsoever that the Russian government had a thing to do about it.

What would you do? Would you don the proverbial sackcloth, hide your head in disgrace and settle into well-remunerated retirement? Or would you accept a position with said candidate’s administration in the Department of Homeland Security as a member of — and you’ve got to love the sheer irony of this title, if nothing else — the “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group?”

Well, guess what three of the signatories of the infamous Hunter Biden intelligence community email letter are doing?

On Tuesday, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the establishment of the group, which “is comprised of private sector experts who will provide their unique perspectives on the federal government’s intelligence enterprise to DHS’s [Intelligence and Analysis] and the Office of the Counterterrorism Coordinator.”

“The security of the American people depends on our capacity to collect, generate, and disseminate actionable intelligence to our federal, state, local, territorial, tribal, campus, and private sector partners,” Mayorkas said in the statement.

“I express my deep gratitude to these distinguished individuals for dedicating their exceptional expertise, experience, and vision to our critical mission.”

Should Joe Biden be impeached?

Among these “distinguished individuals” are former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA operations officer Paul Kolbe.

What do all three have in common? Bingo! Signatories to the letter!

When reality has lapped satire several times over, it’s time to invoke the mercy rule and just stop the race.

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Now, keep in mind that this would have been exceptionally disgusting stuff even in the immediate aftermath of the election, before every news organization worth its salt essentially admitted that, yes, the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were the real deal and, no, the Russian government had nothing to do with it. (Instead, it was Hunter Biden himself who dropped the laptop in question off at a Delaware repair shop and then forgot about it for reasons we can probably guess at.)

Instead, thanks to an FBI whistleblower, we now know that not only had the bureau reportedly validated the contents of the laptop months beforehand, it had informed Twitter that the contents had been corroborated on the very same day the social media platform censored the New York Post’s reporting of it in October of 2020.

And three of the 51 individuals foolhardy and/or partisan enough to sign a letter discounting the laptop as a “Russian information operation” just before the most contentious election in recent U.S. history are being appointed by Biden’s DHS secretary to be part of the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group?

Oh, but the media release gets even better: “The homeland threat environment is more diverse, dynamic, and challenging than at any point in our post 9/11 history, with threats tied to an array of different terrorist and violent extremist ideologies and narratives,” said counterterrorism coordinator Nicholas Rasmussen.

“The experience, expertise, and perspective offered by Experts Group members will undoubtedly put the Department in a strong position to confront this threat landscape, and we are grateful for the willingness of the Experts Group members to serve in this important capacity.”

So, at a time when Russia poses one of the two greatest geopolitical threats we face, we’re relying on “[t]he experience, expertise, and perspective” of three individuals who — and I’m being charitable here — couldn’t suss out that Hunter’s laptop wasn’t a Kremlin creation when even the people running Twitter knew it?

Give me a break, says this conservative. Other conservatives concur:

Brennan, Clapper and Kolbe are naïfs, partisans and/or liars. I’m not going to pretend to know which descriptors apply, if not all of them. They are not, however, intelligence experts.

Thus, their appointment to the “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” should tell you all you need to know about how seriously to take this body — and the administration’s approach to homeland security and intelligence in general.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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