The Biden administration has decided to disband a panel known as the Homeland Intelligence Experts Group, which included figures such as former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
Both Brennan and Clapper were signatories of a controversial October 2020 letter that dismissed allegations regarding a laptop associated with Hunter Biden as potentially being Russian disinformation. This letter was in response to a New York Post report suggesting questionable emails linked to Hunter Biden.
According to court documents following litigation by America First Legal, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is set to wind down the panel within 30 days.
The court order outlined that the Experts Group would not hold any future meetings and that DHS would not reconstitute the group inconsistent with the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) or the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Additionally, DHS is to provide redacted meeting agendas and minutes from the Experts Group within fifteen days of the order.
The court documents specify: “The Experts Group shall be wound down within thirty (30) days of the entry of the Order, it will not hold any future meetings, and the Department will not reconstitute the Experts Group inconsistent with the FACA or the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Department will also provide the Experts Group meeting agendas and meeting minutes with participant identifying information redacted within fifteen (15) days of the entry of the Order. Based on these representations, Plaintiffs have agreed to dismiss their lawsuit with prejudice.”
The backdrop to this panel’s controversy includes heightened scrutiny from various media outlets and public figures over the contents and authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Initially, when the story broke, social media platforms like Twitter took significant steps to limit its spread, citing hacked materials policies. However, the authenticity of some contents of the laptop was later confirmed by other major news outlets including The Washington Post and The New York Times in early 2022.
In the controversial letter, the signatories stated: “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. If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”
America First Legal, a conservative legal group, responded to the disbandment with a post on X, declaring victory and noting that DHS would also be turning over internal documents to their possession.
/1🚨VICTORY🚨
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) May 3, 2024
The Biden Admin will dissolve & disband its unlawful DHS Intelligence Experts Group stacked with deep state partisans like James Clapper and John Brennan following our lawsuit with @RichardGrenell
They are also turning over their internal docs to our possession: pic.twitter.com/vFK3uSszbF
The Biden Admin will dissolve & disband its unlawful DHS Intelligence Experts Group stacked with deep state partisans like James Clapper and John Brennan following our lawsuit with [Richard Grennell]. They are also turning over their internal docs to our possession,” the group wrote in the aforesaid X post.
“John Brennan and James Clapper are two of the leaders in the ‘Letter of 51’ who used their “intelligence credentials” to mislead the American public on the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election. They stated that it had ‘all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,’ despite the FBI having validated its authenticity the prior year,” America First Legal added in a later post in the same thread.
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