Former Obama CIA Chief Backs Nikki Haley
Michael Morell, the former CIA director, spearheaded the 2020 letter from intelligence officials attempting to discredit reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop.
Michael Morell, a retired CIA chief, mobilized one of the most overt and controversial efforts by intelligence agents to shape a recent presidential election.
In October 2020, Morell organized a letter from 51 former spy chiefs that declared the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop to contain “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The authoritative intervention helped momentarily discredit evidence that Hunter introduced his father to his Ukrainian business client, which directly contradicted the Biden campaign’s claims that Hunter never lobbied his father. Twitter and Facebook limited users’ ability to share Post’s reporting over concerns that it was the result of a disinformation effort.
Last year, the House Judiciary Committee released a report showing that Morell played a central role in interfacing with the Biden campaign to gather signatures for the intelligence official “disinformation campaign” letter. In closed testimony, Morell confirmed his intention in organizing the letter was to help the Biden campaign. The investigation also showed that Morell had written an email to John Brennan, another former CIA chief, in which he noted that the Hunter Biden letter was designed to “give the [Biden] campaign, particularly during the debate,” a “talking point to push back on [President] Trump on this issue.”
Subsequent reporting confirmed the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop emails.
Morrell is now backing Nikki Haley.
Federal Election Commission records show that Morell, the former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who served in senior intelligence roles under President Barack Obama and George W. Bush, gave the former South Carolina governor $1,000 in November.
Morell did not respond to a request for comment. We also asked whether he planned to formally endorse Ambassador Haley’s campaign through an opinion column, as he did for Hillary Clinton in August 2016.
Haley, who has called for bombing Iran, as well as escalating U.S. military confrontations with Russia, China, and against adversaries throughout the Middle East, is now a favorite of many D.C. establishment interests. Jon Lerner, one of Haley’s closest campaign strategists, is a member of the Vandenberg Coalition, a neoconservative group founded at the beginning of Biden’s presidency attempting to revive support for greater U.S. military engagement overseas. Last October, one of the authors profiled the group and its attempts to influence the 2024 presidential election.
Despite limited voter support, major donor interests continue to support the former U.N. ambassador’s bid.
The FEC records suggest many high-ranking former intelligence and national security officials are backing Haley, who has consolidated support among most Republicans seeking an alternative to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary.
Another interesting former intelligence official backing Haley’s presidential bid is Doug Feith, who served as under secretary for defense policy for Bush after a stint as a Lockheed Martin lobbyist. Feith was a driving force in the Iraq War push to exaggerate the evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, the primary narrative used to justify the unprovoked U.S. invasion.
Feith, who now works at the Hudson Institute, donated $3,300 to Haley’s campaign.