Sometimes, I could watch Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) all day. Kennedy was his classic self on Tuesday while questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop and why the FBI didn’t come out before the 2020 election and admit that the laptop was, in fact, real. Wray fidgeted and squirmed his way through his answer.
"Why didn't the FBI just say, 'Hey, the laptop's real?'" Kennedy asked. "Why didn't you tell everybody, 'The laptop's real; we're not vouching for what's on it, but it's real. This isn't a fiction'?"
"Well, I, as you might imagine, the FBI cannot — especially at a time like that — be talking about an ongoing investigation," Wray replied. "Second, I would tell you that at least my understanding is that both the FBI folks involved in the conversations and the Twitter folks involved in the conversations both say that the FBI did not direct Twitter to suppress—"
"But others were in government," Kennedy pointed out.
"Well, I can't — again, I can't speak to others in government," Wray said. "That's part of the point that I was trying to make because the—"
Kennedy then proceeded to lecture Wray that the FBI isn't supposed to be a political entity. "You're not part of the White House and part of Homeland Security. You're not supposed to be political. You see all this controversy going on. Why didn't the FBI say, 'Timeout folks; we're not getting middle this, but the laptop's real?'"
"Again, we have to be very careful about what we can say, especially in the middle of an election season, because that's precisely some of the problems that led to my predecessor's, uhh, negative findings from the inspector—"
"Did you hear a gavel?" Kennedy asked, aware that his time for questioning was up.
SENATOR KENNEDY: "Why didn't the FBI just say, hey, the laptop's real?!"
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) December 5, 2023
FBI DIRECTOR WRAY: "We have to be very careful about what we can say, especially in the middle of an election season..." pic.twitter.com/jRAUdrh56g
Kennedy brilliantly got Wray to admit that he was making a political decision by not correcting the public record about the Hunter Biden laptop. Let's not forget that Joe Biden said it was Russian disinformation. A whopping 51 former intelligence officials decided to sign on to a letter claiming that the laptop was Russian disinformation. Those former intelligence officers most likely all knew it was real, too.
Why did they do it? To give Biden a debate talking point. Biden even used the letter, which was published three days prior, during a debate with Donald Trump to discount it entirely.
“Look, there are 50 former National Intelligence folks who said that what this — he’s accusing me of — is a Russian plan,” Biden said in the debate. “They have said that this has all the characteristics — four — five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him, his, and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.”
Except the laptop was real, and Joe Biden knew that it was real. At that point, the FBI had an obligation to tell the public what most of them already knew at the time — and what everyone eventually admitted after the election was over — that the laptop was genuine.
Remember how Big Tech literally censored and suppressed the story over the claims it was Russian disinformation? What kind of impact could the truth have had on the election? We'll never know for sure. But at least we know that Wray admits that his department made political considerations in not telling the public the truth.
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