Frustrated House GOP Leaders Threaten to Subpoena Blinken for Stonewalling on Evidence Again
Two House Republicans are demanding answers from Secretary of State Antony Blinken over his role in presenting information from Hunter Biden’s laptop as little short of disinformation.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and Mike Turner, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee sent Blinken a letter on Monday chiding him for what they call his “unresponsive” reply to a letter they sent Blinken in April.
The April letter demanded to know Blinken’s role in the Oct. 19, 2020, letter that warned Hunter Biden’s leaked emails, which appeared to show corruption in the Biden family, were part of a Russian operation.
Blinken was an adviser to the campaign at the time. Since then, the contents of the laptop have been verified as authentic.
Rep. @Jim_Jordan and @RepMikeTurner ramped up pressure on Blinken to provide information about any involvement he had in 51 former intelligence officials publicly casting doubt on the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. https://t.co/iLlFVZuIl7
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) June 12, 2023
In the Monday letter, which was posted by Breitbart, the congressmen noted that “We received a reply letter from your attorney on May 4, 2023, which set forth several reasons why you believe you do not need to cooperate, and therefore was unresponsive to our request.”
“Accordingly, we respectfully write to reiterate our request for your voluntary cooperation,” the letter said, although it noted in its closing that it set a deadline of June 26 for a reply and, “The Committees may consider the use of compulsory process if these requests remain outstanding beyond that date.”
In the original April letter to Blinken asking him to explain his role in the letter, Jordan and Turner quoted testimony from Michael Morell, a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, that a phone call from Blinken was the impetus for him to draft the letter.
In the letter dated Monday, Jordan and Turner wrote that “the response letter sent on your behalf did not dispute the central facts at issue — that you, while serving as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign, contacted Michael Morell, a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), about the Hunter Biden laptop story, which set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.”
After citing Morell’s comments that Blinken instigated his effort to have the letter published, the letter said, “The most logical inference from these facts is that the public statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop would not have happened if not for your outreach to Mr. Morell.”
“Although Mr. Morell denied that the Biden campaign asked him to prepare a statement, the actual record on this point is not as clear as your response letter claims, relying, as it does, on selective leaks from the Committees’ minority members,” the letter said.
The letter cites a comment from Marc Polymeropoulos, who helped draft the statement that Morell “‘did mention to me that someone in the kind of Biden world had asked about doing this.’”
The letter quoted Polymeropoulos as also saying, “‘Morell said to me, that someone from kind of the Biden world has asked for this. And he did not tell me who it was or any other kinds of details of it.’”
The letter also cited testimony from James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, that former CIA Director John Brennan told him “‘that Tony Blinken had reached out to Michael [Morell] about putting together a public statement.’”
The letter concluded that “Whether you explicitly solicited the letter or not, the Committees’ record is clear that you played a key role in the inception of this statement.”
The Hunter Biden issue is not the only one facing Blinken in which Congress is demanding information. Last month, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas threatened Blinken with contempt of Congress if Blinken does not provide a classified cable related to the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, according to U.S. News and World Report.
A Wall Street Journal article has said the cable warned that Kabul would collapse if U.S. troops were withdrawn.
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