Remember the media panic of 2016-8? Thanks to a dirty-trick “dossier” from the Hillary Clinton campaign and hyperventilating from Democrats, the nation spent that time obsessed with the idea that Russian intelligence colluded with the Donald Trump campaign to interfere with the presidential election. This, of course, turned out to be nonsense — and malicious nonsense at that.

But what if an intelligence service really did collude with a presidential campaign to interfere with a presidential election? Certainly the media would give that explosive development the same kind of wall-to-wall coverage, right?

Especially if it were our intelligence service?

According to a report last night from Fox News, an upcoming report from the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees will conclude that the CIA colluded with the Biden campaign to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story. Campaign advisor Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director and an advisor to Joe Biden’s campaign, pushed the agency to get at least one signatory to sign the now-discredited letter from 51 intelligence officials that claimed the laptop was likely part of a “Russian disinformation campaign” (via Lidblog):

The Central Intelligence Agency “may have assisted in obtaining signatories” for the letter signed by 51 former national security officials to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the House Judiciary and House Intelligence committees found. …

“One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (“PCRB”) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it,” the report states.

Cariens told the committees that he had been working with the PCRB in October 2020 to review his memoir. Cariens said that during a call with a CIA employee about his memoir, the employee separately “asked” him if he would sign onto the letter.

“When the person in charge of reviewing the book called to say it was approved with no changes, I was told about the draft letter. The person asked me if I would be willing to sign,” Cariens told the committees. “After hearing the letter’s contents and the qualifiers in it such as, ‘We want to emphasize that 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,’ … I agreed to sign.”

That letter was produced specifically to assist Joe Biden in a presidential debate against Donald Trump, and more generally to rebut longstanding accusations of corruption and foreign influence. The explicit intent of the letter was to help Joe Biden win the election by discrediting evidence of Hunter Biden’s connections to foreign interests and strong suggestions from the data that Joe himself participated and benefited from those. There is no other explanation for this effort other than to boost Biden’s election chances in general, and to boost his debate performance against Trump specifically.

If the CIA did assist in organizing signatories for that letter, then it interfered in an American presidential election, even if the CIA genuinely thought the laptop might be “Russian disinformation.” It’s worse if they knew or suspected that the laptop was legit, of course, but it’s interference either way, and covert interference at that. And if the CIA allowed Morell to coordinate that effort, then that is explicit collusion with a presidential campaign.

The New York Post’s Miranda Divine uses the term conspiracy rather than collusion, but it’s the same point. Morell acted on a request from then-campaign adviser Antony Blinken, the former CIA deputy director has already testified, in getting signatories on the letter. The purpose was explicitly political, as he pushed the PCRB to approve the letter before the debate “to push back on Trump” over the laptop story:

The CIA conspired with former acting director Mike Morell and the Biden campaign to produce a letter falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation — and solicited signatures from at least one former intelligence official, a staff report from the House Judiciary Committee is expected to reveal Wednesday.

Morell told the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) that he needed the letter approved as an unusual “rush job” that day, October 19, 2020, in an effort to provide then-candidate Joe Biden ammunition in the final presidential debate to discredit The Post’s report on the Biden emails which had been published five days earlier.

That day, a CIA employee working for the PCRB solicited a signature for Morell’s letter from former CIA analyst David Cariens, according to a written statement by Cariens to the Subcommittees on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and Intelligence. …

Morell told fellow signatory John Brennan, former CIA director, that he wanted the letter released before Biden’s October 22, 2020, presidential debate against Donald Trump: “Trying to give the campaign, particularly during the debate . . .a talking point to push back on Trump.”

So it’s not as if the CIA got hoodwinked by its former deputy director. Morell told the agency that the purpose of the letter was explicitly political and for the benefit of the Biden campaign. The CIA didn’t just choose sides in a presidential election, they actively benefited one side with what turned out out to be a shabby cover-up in order to get the electoral outcome they wanted.

That certainly sounds like the kind of election interference that everyone shrieked about in 2016-18, no? And the kind of collusion with a presidential campaign that was nothing but fantasy in that period but is allegedly a reality in 2020, too.

So where’s the rest of the media?

Oh, wait … I forgot that they were colluding too. Almost every media outlet suppressed and ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story, not just at the time but for months afterward. They also happily swallowed the letter from the 51 so-called intel experts that turned out to be nothing more than a cover-up on behalf of the Bidens. Big Tech climbed on board too, suppressing any discussion of the laptop story and going so far as to strip the New York Post of access to social-media platforms to keep it quiet before the election. It was the first real test of the Big Brother Government-Industrial Censorship Complex, and it passed with flying colors … for a while.

And that is still in operation to this day. You can measure its impact in the lack of coverage this revelation will get this week, this month, this year … and especially in the 2024 election.