On October 14, 2020, the Hunter Biden laptop controversy began when the New York Post published a story about a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden that had been abandoned at a Delaware computer shop in 2019.[1] Five days later, a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in four different administrations, including the Trump administration, released the Hunter Biden laptop letter, an open letter stating that the laptop "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation".
By May 2023, no evidence had publicly surfaced to support suspicions that the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation scheme.[2][3] FBI investigators handling Hunter Biden's laptop quickly concluded in 2019 "that the laptop was genuinely his and did not seem to have been tampered with or manipulated".[4]PolitiFact wrote in June 2021 that the laptop did belong to Hunter Biden, but did not demonstrate wrongdoing by Joe Biden.[5]
Details
Three days prior to the letter's release, House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff said on CNN, "Well we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin ... Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the president is only too happy to have Kremlin help and try to amplify it," though Schiff did not specifically refer to the laptop story. During an interview with Fox News on October 19, 2020, Trump's Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe disputed Schiff's statement, saying "there is no intelligence that supports that", and accused Schiff of mischaracterizing the views of the intelligence community by describing the alleged emails as part of a smear campaign against Joe Biden.[6] Schiff's spokesman accused Ratcliffe of "purposefully misrepresenting" the congressman's words.[7] In March 2021, two months after Ratcliffe left as DNI, the intelligence community he had overseen released analysis finding that proxies of Russian intelligence promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about the Bidens "to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration."[8]
Further dispute over the interpretation of the letter arose when, on the day of its release, Politico published a story with the misleading headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say," though the body of the story did not support that wording. Instead, the story's lede accurately quoted the letter's words: "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation".[9] During the second 2020 presidential debate held on October 22, 2020, Joe Biden repeated the article's misleading claim in stating, "Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan".[10] He would later repeat the claim in a 60 Minutes interview held on October 25, 2020.[11]
Reactions
Many Republicans and their allies have since cited the Politico headline to insist the intelligence community had lied for the benefit of Joe Biden in the election weeks later and The Wall Street Journal noted in 2022 how failure on the part of several media outlets to thoroughly investigate the Biden campaign's claims played a role in shaping public perception prior to the election.[12][better source needed]
On February 13, 2023, The Washington Post fact-checker wrote that the Politico headline "likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day."[13] Former Director of National IntelligenceJames Clapper asserted the letter's message had been distorted, saying "all we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five."[14] Another signer, longtime State Department and intelligence official Thomas Fingar remarked, "No one who has spent time in Washington should be surprised that journalists and politicians willfully or unintentionally misconstrue oral or written statements." Despite the criticism, Politico stood by the story.
Former Politico reporters Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri said on 23 January 2025 that, because of "dumb decisions of cowardly editors", they were told "Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop". Caputo said the Politico story about the letter had a "terrible, ill-fated headline ... because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true".[15]
Revocation of security clearances
On January 20th 2025, Donald Trump issued an executive order revoking the security clearances of all the officials who signed the letter. The executive order states "The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions". Lawyers including Mark Zaid and Dan Meyer said that the revocation can be challenged in court.[16][17][18]
White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor
Director, Terrorism Threat Integration Center
Analyst and Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Deputy Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Director of the Office of Russian and European Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
PDB Briefer to President George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency
^"Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails". via Politico. October 19, 2020. Archived from the original on October 20, 2020. Retrieved January 26, 2025. We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement -- just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.
