US Intel Chief Says No Evidence Of Foreign Involvement In Hunter Biden Laptop Affair; Others Say FBI Still Investigating

US media is report­ing that the US direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence has called there is no evi­dence of for­eign involve­ment in the emails alleged­ly found on a lap­top linked to Hunter Biden, the son of US Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Joe Biden. Accord­ing to the NBC News report, the mat­ter of for­eign influ­ence is still under inves­ti­ga­tion by the FBI:

Octo­ber 19, 2020 WASHINGTON — The direc­tor of nation­al intel­li­gence insist­ed Mon­day that there is no evi­dence the Rus­sians or oth­er for­eign actors were behind the emails alleged­ly found on a lap­top linked to Hunter Biden, even as offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter tell NBC News the FBI con­tin­ues to probe that ques­tion. John Rat­cliffe, a for­mer Repub­li­can House mem­ber from Texas who has come under heavy crit­i­cism over alle­ga­tions he has politi­cized intel­li­gence to help Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, told Fox Busi­ness anchor Maria Bar­tiro­mo that a lap­top alleged­ly left at a Delaware repair shop “is not part of some dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign.” “Let me be clear,” he said. “The intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty does­n’t believe that because there is no intel­li­gence that sup­ports that.”  A Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al offi­cial famil­iar with the mat­ter told NBC News the FBI was active­ly exam­in­ing that ques­tion, con­firm­ing what two oth­er peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter said Fri­day night — that fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors are try­ing to deter­mine whether the mate­ri­als alleged­ly found on the lap­top were the fruits of a for­eign intel­li­gence oper­a­tion designed to inter­fere in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Rat­cliffe acknowl­edged that the lap­top is “in the juris­dic­tion of the FBI,” adding, “The FBI has had pos­ses­sion of this,” but “their inves­ti­ga­tion is not cen­tered around Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty is not play­ing any role with respect to that.” The FBI seized the lap­top and a hard dri­ve through a grand jury sub­poe­na. The sub­poe­na was lat­er pub­lished by the New York Post, which pub­lished a series of sto­ries last week based on emails, texts, pho­tos and videos it said came from the lap­top. The Post said it obtained the mate­r­i­al from Pres­i­dent Trump’s attor­ney, Rudy Giu­liani. The first Post sto­ry high­light­ed what it called a “smok­ing gun email” that sug­gest­ed a meet­ing between Biden and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a Ukrain­ian com­pa­ny that once paid Hunter Biden. The Biden cam­paign denies that the meet­ing hap­pened, and the sto­ry was greet­ed with wide­spread skepticism.

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The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed last month that US intel­li­gence agen­cies had warned the White House late last year that Russ­ian intel­li­gence offi­cers were using Pres­i­dent Trump’s per­son­al lawyer Rudolph W. Giu­liani as a means to trans­mit dis­in­for­ma­tion aimed at under­min­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Joe Biden