← Pod Force One
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Foreigna and I'm introducing a new weekly feature to the feed. It's something a little more topical and more to do with my day to day job as a columnist for the New York Post. When I zoom in on a topic that I think will interest you, it's a bit of a mini episode to start off your week. This one is a subject close to my heart and I hope to yours. The election interference in October 2020 by a nefarious group of 51 former intelligence officials, including former CIA director John Brennan. These people falsely claimed that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. They knew it wasn't true, which is why they parsed their words so sneakily to give them plenty of plausible deniability many years later. The FBI had had the laptop for almost a year by that stage and had confirmed it belonged to Joe Biden's wayward son Hunter, who was then 50 years old and a crackhead. The FBI forensics lab had also concluded that the laptop had not been hacked and had not had anything added to it. They said that it was good to go in a court of law. And sure enough, in June 2024, the laptop was admitted into evidence in the Hunters gun trial in Delaware. He was later convicted by a jury and I was there that day when that laptop was carried aloft by the prosecutors and shown to the jury as it was the original laptop wrapped in plastic. Now, the dirty 51 letter was crucial to keeping voters in the dark in those two weeks before the 2020 election to make sure that they did not know about the laptop and the evidence that it contained of Joe Biden and his family's corrupt influence peddling schemes in which they raked in tens of millions of dollars from Ukraine and China and Kazakhstan and Russia and elsewhere around the world during the time that Joe was vice president. Now, John Brennan, who was, as I said, the former CIA director, had been at the centre of some of the most nefarious schemes to sabotage Donald Trump, including Russ well as the Dodi 51 letter. He is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice for allegedly lying to Congress about some of this. But he has never responded to questions about why he signed that letter that said that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. Until last week. And this is the story. It was satisfying to see John Brennan lose his cool when he was cornered in his comfortable LA among cronies in Virginia last week about his various plots against Donald Trump. Brennan was basking in the adulation of friends and assorted gullible future spooks as he sat on stage as part of an intelligence panel at the Hayden center at George Mason University just outside Washington D.C. thursday night. But his smug demeanor cracked when he was confronted by whistleblower Thomas Spesiali during audience question time. Speciali asked the first question and he asked Brennan, why did you override the objections from the CIA Moscow specialists to force the discredited and perverted Steele Dossier into the 2017 intelligence assessment which basically launched the Russiagate scheme to frame Donald Trump as a Russian asset? Yes, but doesn't it ring true? Brennan had told the experts he was railroading. Speciali is a 30 year career army intelligence official and he was an intelligence strategist at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the time that all the Russiagate intelligence bogus assessment was being cooked up. So he knew what he was talking about when he laid out the damning facts on Thursday night to Brennan. And everything he put to Brennan is backed by emails and documents declassified in July by John Ratclif, who is the current CIA director. And what he showed was that the intelligence assessment from 2017 that was ordered by Barack Obama was deliberately corrupted by Brennan, also by FBI director at the time James Comey and the then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, in order to do a political hit job basically on Donald Trump. But before we savor Speciali's gut punch to Brennan on Thursday night, it is worth setting the scene. You can imagine Brennan, who is, as I said, under criminal referral to the DOJ at the moment. You can imagine him sitting on stage with two fellow signatories of the bogus Dirty51 letter that falsely claimed Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. The other two were Michael Hayden, the former NSA chief and CIA director under George W. Bush, and Larry Pfeiffer, a former CIA analyst and Hayden's former chief of staff who now runs the Hayden Centre. Hayden, who is 80, is also a virulent anti Trumper and tried his best to sabotage Trump's first term. A few months into that term, Hayden co signed an open letter declaring Trump unqualified to be president and a quote, clear and present danger to national security. He went on to joke about Trump being executed for treason and about putting Edward Snowden on a kill list. No wonder Hayden was eager to sign the dirty 51 letter which had been instigated by the Biden campaign to give Joe Biden a defense against evidence of influence peddling from his son Hunter's abandoned laptop. The Columbia Journalism Review, no less, says Hayden has a long history of making misleading and outright false statements and by the estimation of many lawyers, likely committed countless felonies during the Bush administration. Hayden headed the illegal, secret NSA warrantless wiretapping program that spied on millions of Americans during the Bush administration. But for some reason, instead of being exiled in disgrace, Hayden is treated like royalty at George Mason as the founder of the center that bears his name. So on Thursday, Hayden, who hails from the Biden School of coherence, or maybe I should say incoherence, managed to get in a few poison darts about Tulsi Gabbard, the current director of National Intelligence. The DNI is gone, he said. I'm doing it about as well as he did. Brennan jumped in to finish the thought. I don't think it's any secret that Tulsi Gabbar didn't have any intelligence experience or background when she was nominated. Cue laughter from the audience. Then, in a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, Brennan said, a lot of people are very concerned about the ongoing politicization of the intelligence community as a result of the leadership, the odni, CIA, whatever, end quote. Or he would know. None of the ex spooks on stage with a doting audience laughing at their every snide comment, expected Speciali to prick their bible. What was your justification for supporting the dossier that was known to be false, being used as source material in the intelligence assessment from 2017? Speciali asked Brennan after a detailed preamble. Brennan shifted in his chair and grew agitated as Speciale spoke. I don't know who put you up to this, he finally exploded. Or what role you played or who you are, but it's a bunch of bullshit you just passed on. It's bullshit, speciale calmly replied. Nobody put me up to this, sir. I'm here on my own. It's bullshit, Brennan kept saying. The emails are clear, sir, speciali replied coolly as an official off camera tried to shut him up by shrieking I'm not kidding 10 times. Shrieking next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next, next. 10 times. To his credit, Speciali continued politely badgering Brennan over a Stella Artois at a drinks event afterwards, asking why he signed the Dirty 51 letter that said Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. You misrepresented that angrily, snapped Brennan, moving in close to Speciali and poking at his chest. We never said it was disinformation. We said it was Russian influence operations, which is what they do Brennan was so angry that he eventually just stalked off. At 70, he still thinks that the sly wording of the letter is a defence. The letter said that the New York Post story, our story about the Hunter Biden laptop has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation, just a little change of words. The letter also falsely claimed that a laptop op fits the bill for Russians who wanted to undermine Biden so that Trump would win the 2020 election. But the real op was the Dirty 51 letter, of course, instigated by then Biden senior adviser Antony Blinken, and organised by another Hayden Centre grandee, former acting CIA director Mike Morell, who wrote in an email to Brennan that the letter was a talking point for Biden to use in his final debate against Trump. And in his response email, Brennan said he was more than happy to comply and sign it. Morell leaked the letter to Politico, which published it under the headline Hunter Biden's Story is Russian Disinfo. Dozens of former intel officials say Brennan had no problem with Politico's characterisation as he and other signatories fanned out across the airwaves, reinforcing the lie. For the two weeks until Election Day, everyone knew the purpose of the dirty 51 letters, and it worked like a charm. After the Post had been censored by Twitter and Facebook, the letter killed our laptop. Exclusive. Stone cold dead until after Biden was safely ensconced in the White House, Brenner knew exactly what he was doing when he abused the lofty position he held at the top of America's national security establishment. Having held so much power, he thought he was untouchable. But his unhinged reaction last week to Speciali's questions show that he must be worried that accountability is finally knocking on his door. Don't forget to come back on Wednesday for my full episode. This week I'll be at Mar a Lago in Palm beach talking to Eric Trump, who also is a first son. But I don't think he leaves laptops lying around. We'll ask him about it. I hope you can tune in and have a wonderful week. Sam.