by Deroy Murdock
Democrats whine on and on about “The Big Lie.” In their minds, this phrase summarizes President Donald Trump’s argument that vote fraud, ballot irregularities, and ninth-inning rules changes sank his 2020 reelection bid.
However, Democrats are mum about the Big Lie that slimed Joe Biden into the White House.
Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell recently sang like a sparrow to the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees. He explained how he, Biden’s presidential campaign, and top U.S. spies bamboozled the American people less than three weeks before Election Day—even as voters were casting early ballots.
Biden’s Big Lie was decisive. In its absence, polls show, he would not be occupying the Oval Office. Instead, Biden would be in Delaware, driving the 1967 Corvette that he parked in the garage of his Wilmington mansion, right beside boxes of illegally stored classified records.
On Oct. 14, 2020, a New York Post exclusive exposed Hunter Biden’s so-called “Laptop from Hell.” Abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop, its emails and other contents uncovered Joe Biden’s son’s international influence peddling and dodgy deals while his father was vice president.
That Oct. 17: Biden campaign adviser Antony Blinken, now U.S. secretary of state, rang Morell to discuss the Post’s scoop. Morell swiftly orchestrated “A Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails.”
Oct. 19: This communique, signed by Morell and 50 other former intelligence leaders, said: “ … the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” It added: “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election … .” (Emphasis theirs.)
The regime media echoed loyally, as Politico’s headline typified: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.”
Oct. 22: In the second of two presidential debates, Biden deployed the Blinken-Morell statement to rebuff Trump’s accusations of Hunter’s (and, thus, Joe’s) corruption.
“Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, [sic] he’s [Trump’s] accusing me of is a Russian plan,” Biden said. “They have said that this has all the characteristics—four, five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”
Morell testified that Biden campaign Chairman Steve Ricchetti soon phoned him: “Steve thanked me for putting the statement out.”
The “Russian disinformation” label was a Big Lie. In a Feb. 1 letter, Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, conceded that “the Laptop from Hell” stored “hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data.” CBS News and The Washington Post also authenticated the laptop as Hunter’s.
This rancid scheme fueled Biden’s closing argument. He presented Morell and Blinken’s falsely exculpatory statement as organic rather than perpetrated on his behalf.
Trump’s charges were not “a bunch of garbage.” They were the truth.
Alas, Biden’s Big Lie, based on a letter filled with lies, convinced millions of voters that Trump was hallucinating or, even worse, helping Russia try to steal the White House.
The regime media used Morell-Blinken’s phony missive to justify their widespread non-coverage of the New York Post’s 10-megaton laptop revelations.
Twitter, Facebook, and other social media giants cited Morell-Blinken to censor online discussion of the laptop and squelch customers who shared this story. For 15 days, Twitter even padlocked the account of the New York Post, America’s oldest living newspaper, which Alexander Hamilton founded in 1801.
Mission accomplished: “The Laptop from Hell” got zipped into a digital body bag. Aside from Fox News viewers and those who actively sought the Post’s updates, most Americans heard little to nothing about Hunter’s computer and its explosive contents.
Biden’s Big Lie got him elected.
According to a Nov. 24, 2020, Media Research Center/Polling Company survey of 1,750 Biden voters in seven swing states, 45.1% were unaware of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Among those voters, 9.4% said that such knowledge would have switched their votes from Biden to Trump, a third-party candidate, or nobody.
Had Biden lost these votes, Trump would have secured Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin; 311 Electoral College votes, and four more years in the White House.
Last December, TIPP Insights polled 501 adults who followed the Biden-graft story. TIPP asked: “Would knowing the laptop contents were real and not ‘disinformation’ have changed your vote?”
“Very likely,” 28% replied.
Assuming, logically, that Hunter Biden’s laptop would have cost Biden votes, losing 28% of his ballots (or even 14%) would have crushed Joe Biden’s chances.
These surveys confirm that Biden’s Big Lie worked. Blinken’s nudging the CIA’s former chief to recruit 50 more top spies to smear the Post’s laptop story as a Russian hoax was, itself, a hoax. It deceived enough Americans to back Biden and boot Trump.
This cynical, naked, bald-faced Big Lie is the putrid foundation beneath Joe Biden’s presidency.
The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.
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Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.
Photo “Joe Biden” by President Joe Biden. Photo “Donald Trump” by GPA Photo Archive. Background Photo “Election Day” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.
