Former Intelligence Heads Brennan, Clapper to Testify to House Panel Over Role in Hunter Biden Laptop Letter

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (L) and CIA Director John Brennan chat before testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Feb. 9, 2016. Molly Riley/AFP/Getty Images

Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are scheduled to testify before a Congressional panel this month as House Republicans investigate the effort to discredit negative stories about President Joe Biden’s son right before the 2020 election.

A representative from the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), confirmed to The Epoch Times that it will conduct a transcribed interview with Brennan on May 11 and Clapper on May 17.

Brennan and Clapper, both longtime government officials, were harsh critics of former President Donald Trump and held their most recent jobs under former President Barack Obama.

The pair were among the 51 ex-intelligence officials who signed the October 2020 letter (pdf) discouraging confidence in the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

This letter helped spread the now-proven false idea that the stories about the laptop’s content were just Russian disinformation, an idea that Biden’s 2020 campaign promoted.

Controversy has continued to swirl over the open letter that Clapper, Brennan, and former CIA deputy director Michael Morell signed, along with 48 other former intelligence officials.

The letter made the rounds following the New York Post’s explosive report from October 2020 on a laptop later proven to belong to Hunter Biden, son of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The letter said that the “arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving of the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The also laptop contained photographs of Hunter Biden, including one allegedly depicting him passed out while smoking a crack pipe.

With a poster of a New York Post front-page story about Hunter Biden’s emails on display, U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) listens during a hearing before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 8, 2023. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Biden’s presidential campaign at the time cited the letter as evidence that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. Polling indicates that if voters had known the laptop’s contents, some would have voted differently, which could have altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

Questions to Answer

Jordan, who heads both the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, has demanded that a number or figures, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, answer questions about details surrounding the letter.

Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that House Republicans are “weaponizing their power to go after their political opponents and re-litigate the 2020 election with misleading claims.”

“The American people see these House GOP attacks for what they are: political stunts intended to hurt President Biden, and House Republicans would be wise to instead focus on doing their job, raising the debt ceiling to avoid an economic catastrophe, and working together with the President to make actual progress on important issues,” he added.

Tom Ozimek and Mark Tapscott contributed to this report.