DES MOINES, Iowa – Campaigning in Des Moines’ Beaverdale neighborhood Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told The Iowa Star that Secretary of State Antony Blinken should face serious consequences if it turns out he was the point man for a disinformation campaign on Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop.
“It’s prosecution worthy,” the Ohio businessman told The Iowa Star after speaking to veterans at the Beaverdale VFW Post 9127.
As Fox News reported, the State Department has refused to answer questions about a claim from a former CIA official that Blinken led efforts in 2020 to have intelligence officials write a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Blinken was a senior adviser to Biden’s presidential campaign at the time of the publication of the letter — not long before the 2020 presidential election. Arguably, the false supposition from some of the most powerful former members of the U.S. intelligence community influenced the outcome of the election.
On Friday, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel. said the department would not be answering any questions about Blinken’s alleged involvement in the letter.
“That is… not a State Department issue so I don’t have a comment for you on that,” he said.
Ramaswamy said testimony from former CIA Deputy Michael Morell that Blinken was the “impetus” for the letter that was ultimately signed by 51 current and former intel officers is a “big deal.” The letter attempted to debunk a bombshell series of stories from the New York Post that reported on the laptop and the Biden families unsavory connections and deals with Ukrainian interests.
“I want to follow the facts,” said Ramaswamy, who was on the third day of a four-day campaign bus trip through Iowa. But if he [Blinken] was personally involved in actually this kind of corrupt cover-up operation, absolutely he should resign. I think there should probably be accountability beyond that.”
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), whose committee has been investigating Biden family corruption allegations for years, said the Secretary of State should resign, if his signature role in the disinformation campaign is corroborated.
“And if he doesn’t resign, he should be impeached,” Johnson told The Star News Network in an interview Friday. “Again, so many members of the Biden administration have this level of deceit, dishonesty and corruption. This is a lawless administration.”
Morell reportedly testified that he agreed to sign the 2020 letter, in part to help Biden “win the election.”
Republicans on the two committees want Blinken to provide them with the names of everyone he contacted in October 2020 to help put the letter together.
“Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020, you [Blinken] reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. At the time you served as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign. According to Morell, although your outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the [New York] Post story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner wrote in their letter to the secretary.
Democrats on the committee attacked the Republicans’ assertions late last week, with a Democratic Judiciary committee spokesman insisting Jordan “released cherry-picked excerpts of a transcript interview,” according to CNN.
“To be clear, no part of that interview demonstrates that Tony Blinken or any other Biden campaign official asked Mike Morell to write a letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop,” the spokesman wrote in a statement.
But the committees’ letter to Blinken asserts that “Morell also explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of the statement” and that “Morell further explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist him in winning the election.”
“You can’t commit fraud and not hold people accountable. You’re just going to get more of it,” Ramaswamy said.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
