‘There Was No Evidence’: Ex-CIA Official Explains Why He Didn’t Sign on To Letter Panning Hunter Biden Story as Russian Disinfo

Ex-CIA official and Fox News contributor Daniel Hoffman explained his decision not to sign on to the infamous letter panning the New York Post‘s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop as Russian disinformation on America Reports Friday, following up on a Washington Times op-ed he published that morning.

51 former senior intelligence officials — including several former CIA directors and former director of national intelligence James Clapper —  signed onto a letter arguing that the story was likely the product of a Russian disinformation operation after the Post published it. The authenticity of the laptop and content of the story have since been substantiated.

“At first glance, it seemed natural to lay the blame at the Kremlin’s doorstep,” began Hoffman. “Remember, Vladimir Putin is in the Kremlin and he’s well known for cloak-and-dagger espionage operations.” The former station chief continued:

But, at the same time, there was no evidence, and the letter noted there was no evidence, and I just felt we needed to do the forensics. It was a very convoluted story. Folks will recall, there was a laptop found at a store in Delaware, and I remembered at CIA when we didn’t have all the answers, we would task our sources to get more information so we could be more definitive. And I felt like in this case the FBI could do those forensics and it was not up to us to speculate.

According to Hoffman, he was alarmed by the fact that the letter was being distributed by former CIA director Michael Morell for signature only, not edits or further debate. He also noted that he was far from the only one who decided to withhold their signature.

“Look, when I was at CIA, we would sit in Michael Morell’s office when we had a particularly difficult, challenging intelligence issue and we would hash out all the evidence we had, the intelligence we had, and then Michael would draw analytical conclusions with some level of confidence — low, medium, or high — and bring it to the White House,” said Hoffman.

“We didn’t have that debate about this laptop issue, we weren’t invited to debate it, and I also felt like I was somebody who was a Russia hand — I spent many, many years focused on Russia — and I was a little surprised that I and others who had that same experience weren’t involved in even discussing whether such a letter was worth writing,” he added.

Host John Roberts pointed out that Biden himself cited the letter in defense of himself and his son at a 2020 presidential debate, and Hoffman followed up on that point by arguing that Americans should distinguish between current and former intelligence officials when they make public judgments about various issues since politics was more likely to influence former officials’ thinking.

Watch above via Fox News.