I’M SURPRISED AND PLEASED THAT HE THINKS HE NEEDS ONE: James Clapper previews his defense for 2020 election interference.

In case anyone is wondering who was responsible for the idea that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper assures us it was not the 51 retired intelligence community leaders who penned the letter which said it was. Instead, it was the media who mischaracterized their words.

Clapper’s signature topped the list of prominent former government officials willing to stake their reputations on the infamous letter that was written to sow doubt about a story that, if it had not been suppressed, could arguably have changed the result of the 2020 presidential election.

Clearly, these officials had only one goal in mind: to torpedo the New York Post’s bombshell story about the emails that pointed to then-candidate Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s influence-peddling operation. Perhaps anticipating they may one day face charges of election interference, the signatories carefully worded their letter to absolve themselves of legal responsibility for their malfeasance.

Specifically, Clapper, who is best known for lying to Congress in 2013 about the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ telephone records and for his role in perpetuating the Russian collusion hoax, blamed Politico for “deliberately distorting” their letter in an October 2020 piece titled , “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.”

“There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation,” Clapper told Washington Post “fact checker” Glenn Kessler. “Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.”

Sure, they were misquoted. It just took them over two years to come out and say so.