Joe Biden has appointed an ex-intel officer and MSNBC pundit, Jeremy Bash, who denied the Hunter Biden laptop story to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
American Military News reports:
Bash previously served in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S. Department of Defense and works as a commentator for NBC and MSNBC.
Bash joined 50 other former intelligence officers who signed onto a letter in October of 2020 that said reporting days earlier from the New York Post about a laptop appearing to belong to Joe Biden’s son Hunter “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The Washington Examiner first reported on Bash’s connection to the letter by former U.S. intelligence officials.
The New York Post’s reporting added to allegations that the older Biden knew about his son’s foreign business dealings. Included in the New York Post’s reporting was an email that suggested Hunter Biden introduced his father to Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor for the Ukrainian gas company Hunter worked for, Burisma Holdings. Burisma gained some public attention amid allegations then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian authorities in 2016 to fire a prosecutor who had been investigating the gas company.
In a 2018 speech before the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Biden described visiting Ukraine in 2016 and telling Ukrainian officials he would not release a $1 billion loan guarantee for aid to the country “if the prosecutor is not fired.”
Biden said in the 2018 video, “Well son of a bitch, he got fired,” adding, “And they put in place someone who was solid.”
This is another politically boneheaded move by the Biden administration. If the Republicans on the committee considering the nomination are at all awake, they’ll make the laptop computer story front and center of their questioning. They’ll ask how Mr. Bash came to the conclusion that this was a “Russian disinformation scheme,” even though it is a wildly improbable tale given that there are easier and more reliable ways to spread rumors. That’s relevant to evaluating his ability to function in the postion.