Hunter Biden defends laptop letter by ex-intel officials which falsely claimed Russian involvement

Hunter Biden recently joined X and has gained hundreds of thousands of followers, using his new perch to defend the infamous October 2020 letter which was written by dozens of former intelligence officials and which baselessly claimed Russian involvement in the emergence of incriminating evidence on his laptop’s hard drive.The laptop letter — which was released just ahead of the 2020 contest between Donald Trump and Hunter Biden’s father and former Vice President Joe Biden — contributed to the baseless narrative that the Hunter Biden laptop stories were nothing but a product of Russian disinformation — a narrative happily seized upon by Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and spread by some of the laptop letter signers.
Now, Joe Biden’s son is using his newfound social media presence to defend the laptop letter which was written to deflect from Hunter Biden’s shady foreign business dealings and to help his father win the presidency.
Hunter Biden — who joined X in May — was asked on Sunday why Joe Biden had claimed that the laptop was Russian disinformation, why the then-future president lied to the American public during a presidential debate, and how 50 ex-intelligence officers were convinced to lie.
“You’re arguing about whether the laptop was ‘real’ because it’s the only card you’ve got left. It was never the point. It was the bait –  and you bit,” Hunter Biden responded, claiming that “a laptop magically appears, through Rudy Giuliani, the guy taking material from a sanctioned Russian asset, to ‘prove’ the exact narrative every serious agency had already flagged as a Kremlin op. And you think the suspicious thing was the letter?”
Hunter Biden also claimed on X that “the whole case against the Bidens was a lie told by a Russian asset” which was “exactly what the 51 warned about.” He added, “The 51 didn’t fall for it. You did. And you’re STILL doing it. The laptop was never the story, you were.”
Tristan Leavitt, the president of Empower Oversight, which represented IRS agents who previously blew the whistle on the slow-walking of the Hunter Biden inquiry by the Biden Justice Department, responded to Joe Biden’s son on Sunday by pointing out that computer repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac had given the laptop — abandoned by a drug-addled Biden — to the bureau.
“The laptop didn’t ‘magically appear.’ @JPMacIsaac provided it to the FBI, which together with the IRS independently authenticated it,” Leavitt tweeted. “Your long con ability is impressive, but you can’t rewrite reality.”
IRS supervisory special agent Gary Shapley and IRS special agent Joseph Ziegler revealed that the FBI verified the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop by late 2019 — in the middle of the Ukraine-related anti-Trump impeachment effort, and nearly a year before the laptop emerged publicly and the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter was written.
The laptop contained a raft of evidence on Hunter Biden’s shady dealings in Ukraine — and Joe Biden’s apparent knowledge of some of it.
Laptop letter was explicitly written to give Joe Biden a “talking point” against Trump
Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director under Obama, injected into the American political bloodstream the idea that Trump was an “agent” of Putin and Russia, a refrain that would be repeated over and over again by the Clinton campaign in 2016. Morell went on to be the main author and organizer of the infamous October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop letter.
Morell previously told House investigators that then-future Secretary of State Antony Blinken “triggered” him to craft it. He told House investigators that prior to his mid-October 2020 phone call with Blinken, he had no intention of writing the Hunter Biden laptop letter, and testified “yes” and “absolutely” when asked if the call with Blinken, who was then a top advisor for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign, was what “triggered that intent in you.”
Morell said it was his “guess” that Blinken called him to talk about the Hunter Biden laptop because the future Secretary of State wanted it “out” in public that “the Russians were somehow involved” in the saga.
The former CIA leader said he received a call from then-Biden campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti after the late October 2020 presidential debate to thank him for “putting the statement out.”
The phone call to Morell had come from Jeremy Bash, another Hunter Biden laptop letter signer, who then got Ricchetti on the line.
Morell also said one of the reasons he crafted the letter was to help Joe Biden since he “wanted him to win the election” against Trump.
When asked if he had any direct evidence that Russia was involved in the laptop saga, Morell admitted to congressional investigators that “I did not.”
“We want to give the Vice President a talking point”
The recruitment email that Morell had sent to prospective signatories made it clear that he and former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos “drafted the attached because we believed the Russians were involved in some way in the Hunter Biden email issue and because we think Trump will attack Biden on the issue at this week’s debate, and we want to give the Vice President a talking point to use in response.”
Although the October 2020 letter hedged a bit at various times, it did repeatedly contend there was Russian involvement with the laptop stories, arguing that “if we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election” and expressing “our view that the Russians are involved in the Hunter Biden email issue.” The letter claimed that the laptop saga “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation” and that “our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”
In their letter, the signatories also cited another article which claimed that “federal authorities are investigating whether the material … is part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia” — though the signers added that “we do not know whether these press reports are accurate.”
“There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan,” Biden told Trump during the October 2020 debate when Hunter Biden’s business dealings were raised. “They have said this is, has all the — four, five former heads of the CIA. Both parties say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”
Joe Biden was referring to the Politico report by Natasha Bertrand titled “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say” which had first shared the letter.
The New York Post stories detailing the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son in China and Ukraine were blocked on social media and self-censored by legacy media who only admitted the authenticity of the laptop after Biden won the election.
The Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics reportedly found that “79 percent of Americans suggest President Donald Trump likely would have won reelection if voters had known the truth about Hunter Bidenʼs laptop.”
Then-Director of National Intelligence and now-CIA Director John Ratcliffe had said in mid-October 2020 that “there is no intelligence that supports that, and we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff or any other member of Congress that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”A report released by Biden’s ODNI in March 2021 concluded that “Russian state media, trolls, and online proxies, including those directed by Russian intelligence” had pushed negative content about Joe and Hunter Biden, but it did not reference the Hunter Biden laptop story and reached zero public conclusions related to it.
A number of media figures, including MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and NPR, initially claimed in early 2021 that the ODNI report had dismissed the Biden laptop story, before they largely backtracked on their false assertions. Hunter Biden himself also wrongly made this claim.
Huge sums of foreign cash flowed to Hunter Biden
Ziegler himself filed the August 2019 search warrant application for Hunter Biden’s Apple accounts, the documents reveal. The application was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware and was approved by a judge.
Ziegler himself filed the August 2019 search warrant application for Hunter Biden’s Apple accounts, the documents reveal.
The search warrant application filed by IRS Special Agent Joseph Ziegler said that, in 2014, Hunter Biden began receiving roughly $83,333.33 per month from Burisma. The payments were sent to an account held by Rosemont Seneca Bohai (RSB) — a partnership in which Devon Archer held a 99% interest — and the RSB account at Morgan Stanley would receive the payments from a Burisma account and then send them to accounts held by Hunter Biden.
The IRS agent’s application said that, in 2014, $1,538,505 was sent from Burisma to the RSB account, and then the RSB account then sent $315,000 to Hunter Biden’s accounts.
Ziegler wrote that, in 2015, $83,333.33 per month was sent from Burisma to an RSB Stanley Morgan account and an RSB Bank of New York Mellon account, totaling $1,941,131 in payments. The memo line for payments was “consulting services” and “Monthly Director Fee” — with the RSB account then sending $386,979 to Hunter Biden’s accounts.
The IRS agent said that, in 2016, Burisma accounts began sending $83,333.33 in monthly payments to Hunter Biden’s company — Owasco — where the payments were received in a Wells Fargo account. That year, Hunter Biden received nine payments of $833,333.33 from Burisma and three additional payments of $83,731, $84,922, and $83,293 — for a total of $1,002,017.
Hunter Biden’s efforts to exploit his father’s position in Washington to help Burisma have been extensively documented by Just the News and other media outlets.
Joe Biden’s son’s American law firm drafted a 58-page plan in 2014 to extricate the controversial energy company from an ongoing criminal investigation in Ukraine that relied heavily on trying to influence Hunter Biden’s father and the Obama administration in Washington, Just the News previously reported.
Payments from Ukraine and China go to Hunter Biden
Unredacted IRS and FBI search warrants tied to the federal investigation into Hunter Biden provide details on the information that investigators had in their possession about President Joe Biden’s son’s business deals linked to Ukraine, China, and elsewhere.
The multiple search warrant applications were released, with only some redactions remaining, last year following an agreement between Hunter Biden’s legal team and the Justice Department. The search warrants detail the knowledge that federal investigators had years ago related to lucrative payments Hunter Biden had received from Ukrainian gas giant Burisma, since-defunct Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC, Romanian businessmen, and more — sometimes including when Joe Biden was still vice president.
Ziegler also wrote that, in 2016, $551,005 was also sent from a Bank of America account in the name of Robinson Walker LLC to Hunter Biden’s Owasco Wells Fargo account. Ziegler said the money appeared to originate as $2,213,546 from Bladon Enterprises Limited (owned by Romanian businessman Gabriel Popoviciu) with the money then divided up between Hunter Biden, his business associate Rob Walker, and an account held in Abu Dhabi in the name of European Energy and Infrastructure. The foreign company was associated with James Gilliar, who was also a Hunter Biden business partner and the author of the infamous “Big Guy” email.
The IRS agent said that, in 2017, Burisma sent Hunter Biden’s Owasco account $630,556. Ziegler wrote that the Owasco Wells Fargo account also received $2,761,959 in other payments, including $1,445,387 held in the name of Hudson West III at Cathay Bank. The IRS agent said that CEFC official Gongwen Dong originally owned Hudson West III, with Gongwen Dong also reportedly the director of the U.S.-based CEFC Infrastructure. Ziegler said that, in August 2017, DBS Bank Hong Kong Limited funded a $5 million loan into the Hudson West III account, and wrote that Cathay Bank said that at some point ownership of the Hudson West III account transferred from Gongwen Dong to companies belonging to Hunter Biden and his Chinese-American business associate Mervyn Yan.
Ziegler also wrote that Hunter Biden received $100,000 from CEFC Infrastructure. The Owasco Wells Fargo account also received $2,731,494 in other payments, Ziegler said, including $2,187,494 from the Hudson West III Cathay Bank account.
The IRS agent detailed another $544,000 bank transfer “made possible by” a $1 million wire received from Hudson West III on March 22, 2018. Ziegler said the memo line for the payment was “Dr. Patrick Ho Chi Ping Representation” and that Hunter Biden “never entered an appearance on behalf of Ho in the criminal action.”
Hunter Biden and his associated businesses are also believed to have received at least $5 million in payments from Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC in 2017 and 2018, and Ye deputy Patrick Ho also agreed to pay Hunter Biden a $1 million retainer. Hunter referred to Ho as “the f***ing spy chief of China” in a May 11, 2018, voice recording. Ho was sentenced to three years in prison in March 2019 for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and was deported to Hong Kong in June 2021 after serving his sentence.
In seeking access to Hunter Biden’s Apple account, Ziegler said that records showed Hunter Biden had exchanged emails with Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi and Burisma board of directors chairman Alan Apter, as well as with Gongwen Dong and Mervyn Yan.
During an October 2020 debate with Trump, then-candidate Biden incorrectly claimed that his son never made money from China, despite being aware of Hunter Biden’s dealings with CEFC. The House Oversight chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., revealed that “from 2015 through 2017, Biden family members and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments” from accounts tied to Walker.
Comer said more than $1 million was sent in incremental payments to Hunter Biden, his uncle and Joe’s brother James Biden, and Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s deceased son, Beau Biden, with whom Hunter was having a romantic relationship in 2017 following his brother’s death, shortly after Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese company called State Energy HK.
State Energy HK was “affiliated” with CEFC “at the time of the transfers,” according to a report issued by Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson in 2020. State Energy HK detailed a 2017 transaction with CEFC in a business report.
Shortly before the March 2017 Chinese wires from State Energy HK occurred, Ye, the now-former CEFC leader, met with Hunter Biden on Feb. 14, 2017, in Miami, Florida. It was there that Ye reportedly gifted Hunter Biden with a 3.16-carat diamond allegedly valued at $80,000.
Comer wrote in 2023 that CEFC deputy Gongwen Dong formed CEFC Infrastructure in Delaware in May 2017 and that Hudson West V, a company directed by Dong that received a $24 million wire from Ye and formed a partnership with Hunter Biden, was the sole equity member of CEFC. A week later, the memo said Hudson West V “assigned 100 percent of its interest” to the Chinese company Shanghai Huaxin Group. Shanghai Huaxin “funded the CEFC Infrastructure bank account with a significant injection of $10 million from China” in June 2017, Comer said, and then CEFC Infrastructure wired $100,000 to Hunter Biden’s Owasco P.C. on Aug. 4, 2017.
The IRS agent said that investigators had unearthed thousands of WhatsApp messages, thousands of iMessage texts, and hundreds of WeChat messages from Hunter Biden, including a WeChat message found between Hunter Biden and Gongwen Dong and WeChat messages between Hunter Biden business associates Eric Schwerin and Katie Dodge about the Hunter Biden-linked Bohai Harvest RST Chinese investment firm.
Kevin Morris, a close Hunter Biden confidante who loaned him millions of dollars, appeared to be transferred ownership of Skaneateles sometime in 2023. Skaneateles was an LLC started by Hunter Biden through which he held his 10% share in Bohai Harvest RST (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Company, or BHR, according to the company’s business records.
Comer said in June 2023 that “the circumstances surrounding Hunter Biden’s transfer of his interest in a Chinese-backed investment fund are suspicious.” The Chinese firm BHR had invested in a number of controversial Chinese companies that have been sanctioned by the U.S., and it teamed up with a Chinese defense company that helped build up the Russian military and has been tied to the Russian war effort in Ukraine.
Another application for a search warrant released last year which sought access to Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud account and its cloud backup was filed in December 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. It was filed by an FBI special agent whose name remains redacted and later signed off on by a federal magistrate judge.
Concerns about Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma arose even inside Obama Admin
Obama Administration records also show internal concern about Hunter Biden’s role on the Ukrainian energy giant Burisma while Joe Biden was leading the Obama Administration’s Ukraine policy. Hunter Biden said in 2019 that he spoke with his father about his position on the Burisma board just once, saying his father told him, “I hope you know what you are doing.” Hunter Biden says he replied, “I do.”
Joe Biden’s son was asked if he would have been asked to be on the Burisma board if his last name was Biden. “Probably not, in retrospect,” he said. “But that’s — you know — I don’t think that there’s a lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t Biden.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., released a joint report in 2020, with much of its focus on then-Vice President Biden’s role in helping guide the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy while Hunter Biden held a lucrative position on the board of Burisma.
Much of the 2020 report’s focus was on Joe Biden’s role helping guide the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy while Hunter Biden received a lucrative position in 2014 on the board of Burisma, run by Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky.
“On April 16, 2014, Vice President Biden met with his son’s business partner, Devon Archer, at the White House. Five days later, Vice President Biden visited Ukraine, and he soon after was described in the press as the ‘public face of the administration’s handling of Ukraine.’ The day after his visit, on April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma,” Grassley and Johnson wrote. 
“Six days later, on April 28, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Fourteen days later, on May 12, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, and over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.”
The report said George Kent, former acting deputy chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, “raised concerns to officials in Vice President Joe Biden’s office about the perception of a conflict of interest with respect to Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board” in early 2015. The report alleged that “Kent’s concerns went unaddressed” and that he wrote an email to his colleagues stating that “the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine” in September 2016.
The report also contended that senior Obama State Department official Amos Hochstein “raised concerns with Vice President Biden, as well as with Hunter Biden, that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board enabled Russian disinformation efforts and risked undermining U.S. policy in Ukraine” in October 2015.
The Deputy Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv also sent an email to Kent and others on November 22, 2016 warning about the Ukrainian oligarch who owned Burisma and about Hunter Biden’s role at the company, noting that “Zlochevsky is wanted in Ukraine for crimes related to corruption, but the case against him has been marred by even more corruption.”
The counselor added: “I should note that there were two American members of the Burisma board: Hunter Biden and Devon Archer. Archer was recently indicted in a federal fraud case […] More than one U.S. firm in the energy sector has told us the [sic] Burisma is still doing business ‘the old way’ and little has changed despite Zlochevsky’s departure from the scene.”
In his 2021 memoir, Hunter Biden defended Zlochevsky, claiming the Ukrainian “was concerned with protecting his company from Vladimir Putin’s advances” and “wanted to lure more U.S. and European investors” — claiming that was why he was hired. Hunter called the Burisma work “inspiring” and “consequential” while also admitting that “the pay was good” and that “there’s no question my last name was a coveted credential.”
IRS whistleblowers thought Biden pushing for Shokin firing was shady
Trump and his allies claimed Biden improperly used his position as vice president to pressure Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to protect his Hunter Biden from an investigation into the corrupt Ukrainian energy giant Burisma, where Joe Biden’s son held a lucrative position. Democrats countered by saying the focus on Burisma was part of an effort to hurt Trump’s main rival in the 2020 contest.
Joe Biden boasted to The Atlantic in 2016 and to a Council of Foreign Relations panel in 2018 that he ordered Ukraine to fire Shokin or else the White House would renege on a commitment to provide $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. “I remember going over […] and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko and from [then-Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor [Viktor Shokin],” Biden said in January 2018. 
“And they didn’t […] They were walking out to a press conference. I said, ‘Nah, […] We’re not going to give you the billion dollars.’ They said, ‘You have no authority. You’re not the president.’ […] I said, ‘Call him.’ I said, ‘I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars.’ […] I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch, he got fired.”Ziegler spoke to the House in December 2023 about Hunter Biden’s machinations in Ukraine.
The IRS whistleblower pointed to an October 2015 proposal sent by the Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star to Burisma Holdings to provide “government relations support” — which was shared with Hunter Biden and Burisma adviser Vadym Pozharskyi. The IRS whistleblower pointed out that the agreement stated that part of the scope of work was the “closure of the file against Mr. Zlochevsky” — the CEO of Burisma.
“As an investigator, I would interpret these emails to mean that they did not want to put the true purpose of the agreement in writing, but that everyone involved knew that the unstated goal was to have the Ukrainian Prosecutor General (Shokin) removed, in an effort to close the criminal case against Nikolay Zlochevsky,” Ziegler told Congress. 
Ziegler assessed that “there was a clear involvement between Hunter Biden, Burisma officials, individuals with Bluestar, the Vice-President’s Office, and current and former individuals with the administration.”
“Going back to the video of Vice President Joe Biden in Ukraine saying, ‘if you don’t fire Viktor Shokin by the time I leave’ and he looks at his watch, he’s like, ‘you’re not getting the money’ — this is like a Biden family tradition almost, right? To shake down people to get exactly what you want,” Shapley said in a December 2025 podcast.
Hunter: “I’m the most transparent m’fer in the world”
“What were the intelligence officials wrong about or covering up?” Hunter Biden tweeted on Sunday in defense of the October 2020 laptop letter. “It’s 2026, I went through 6 years of investigations by every 3 letter agency, an impeachment inquiry, numerous Senate committees, and my entire digital footprint is online for the public to see. I’m the most transparent m’fer in the world. There was no Ukraine corruption, no bribe. The allegation was false, and the only thing proven was the Russian op behind the allegation proven by convictions and sanctions.”
Hunter Biden initially reached a plea agreement with then-special counsel Weiss on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun in what congressional Republicans dubbed a “sweetheart deal” in June 2023. The deal collapsed under scrutiny by a federal judge the next month, thanks in part to the revelations made by the IRS whistleblowers.
After his plea deal collapsed, Hunter Biden was convicted by a Delaware jury on gun charges in June, and then pled guilty to tax charges in California in September 2024. He was found guilty of making a false statement on his gun application and being in possession of a firearm while being an illegal drug user. Hunter Biden then pled guilty to what the DOJ described as “a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed.”
Then-President Joe Biden pardoned his son in December of 2024, despite repeatedly saying that “I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.”
As for the pardon, the IRS whistleblowers previously responded by saying that “no amount of lies or spin can hide the simple truth that the Justice Department nearly let the President’s son off the hook for multiple felonies.” The whistleblowers wrote that “we produced mountains of evidence and testified under oath about the machinations his Justice Department, including Mr. Weiss, used to shield the Biden family from a thorough investigation of alleged corruption in Ukraine, Romania, and China.”
Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment sent to him through his X account. 

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