The interesting thing about Hunter Biden's plea deal is not the deal itself. Half the country believes the first son got a sweetheart deal from the government on tax evasion, and it's hard to argue against that view. Hunter Biden getting misdemeanor charges for tax evasion is child's play when compared to the broader allegations surrounding him.

What is interesting about Hunter Biden's plea deal is that it once again proves the intelligence community is full of liars at the highest levels. On October 19, 2020, fifty-one former intelligence officials signed a letter claiming that the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop was "Russian disinformation."

That's not some wild-eyed conspiracy theory description of the letter. The original letter states, "we write to say that the arrival on the US 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."

Intelligence elites sign a letter of falsehoods.

Every word of that is a lie. In the letter, these same experts try to qualify that staunch stance by saying, "we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement..." But they go on to list their reasons for why the laptop story was Russian disinformation.

In fact, the New York Post's story was entirely factual. Every word of it was accurate. More to the point, that laptop story is why Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to tax charges now. Not only was it not Russian disinformation - the laptop story directly led to a guilty plea from the son of the President of the United States.

Those so-called experts from the intelligence community have shown no remorse. The New York Post is reporting that point too - and they're right again.

The letter included signatories like James Clapper, former head of the Director of National Intelligence, Mike Hayden, former head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, former head of the CIA and DoD, and John Brennan, former head of the CIA and more. These are just the top-level names - there are forty-seven more!

Hunter Biden is the latest in a long series of intel failures.

What's even more telling about this entire episode - they purposely lied about this in the weeks leading up to an election. It wasn't the Russians attempting to sway an election - it was the national security establishment of the United States.

The latest revelation from an IRS whistleblower is that the DOJ has drug its feet on investigation Hunter Biden. Furthermore, the whistleblower attests that leakers were tipping off Biden's lawyers to know what was coming ahead of time. Time will tell whether that evidence stands up, but you'd have to lean the whistleblower's way when you look at what we have so far.

Watching yet another disappointment of the US intelligence community is a grim reminder of the flurry of failures we've had since the outset of the War on Terror era.

The intelligence elites completely whiffed on catching the buildup to 9/11. They followed that up with a whiff regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Snowden revelations revealed more dark secrets about how the various alphabet agencies spy on Americans. The Russian collusion hoax and China flying spy balloons over US territory cap some of the significant failures of the intelligence community elites of the last 25 years.

American national security is at stake.

The broader point here is larger than partisan lies and political hackery. America's security is at stake, and our national defense is being challenged. Instead of focusing on that, we have intelligence elites more content to engage in political hacket jobs in the press than US security.

There is a confusion of goals and outcomes. I'd rather have Russian disinformation in the newspapers if it means our intelligence elites are catching the essential things that keep Americans safe at night. In a country with broad free speech protections, I'm less concerned about sinister Russian disinformation in the press than hard security threats flying over my head.

China is setting up a spy base in Cuba. Russians are hacking our companies and government agencies. North Korea is testing missiles, what feels like every other day. Is it too much to ask those in intelligence leadership to focus on getting better at understanding and stopping those kinds of events? I'd prefer that to them wading into electoral politics, where they're batting a big fat zero.

Or even some accountability - that would be nice to see from anyone in the US intelligence infrastructure. With all the missteps, lies, and half-truths, it's harder for Americans to trust that US intelligence is focused on our safety. We don't need their op-ed letters to the major newspapers.

We need American security first.