The former acting CIA Director who helped orchestrate the now-infamous letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation in 2020 also played a central role in advancing the Hillary Clinton campaign’s effort to link Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin during the 2016 election.
Mike Morell, who served as acting CIA chief under President Obama, was instrumental in promoting the narrative that Trump was an “agent” of Russia—an accusation that became a frequent talking point for the Clinton campaign.
Just as he helped organize the 2020 letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials casting doubt on the laptop’s authenticity, Morell also spearheaded a similar effort in 2016. That year, he led a letter signed by more than 50 former national security officials implying Trump had suspicious ties to the Kremlin, Just the News reported.
Newly declassified evidence reveals that in 2016, the FBI received intelligence suggesting Hillary Clinton planned to deflect attention from her own classified email scandal by linking Trump to Russia.
According to the intelligence—sourced from Russian channels—FBI leadership may have inadvertently advanced Clinton’s strategy by launching a broad investigation into unfounded allegations of Trump-Russia collusion.
Clinton campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri strongly implied in a 2017 Washington Post op-ed that the campaign had approached former Morell during the summer of 2016 to encourage him to speak out publicly about Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. Clinton herself echoed that sentiment in her 2017 memoir, What Happened.
Morell told The New York Times that his decision to speak out in 2016 was made independently and not influenced by outside pressure. However, according to Just the News, public records indicate that Clinton—working in coordination with top campaign figures including communications director Jennifer Palmieri, general counsel Marc Elias, campaign manager Robby Mook, chairman John Podesta, and policy adviser Jake Sullivan—spearheaded a broader effort to tie Trump to Putin as the 2016 presidential race intensified.
Palmieri wrote in her 2017 Washington Post story that “the week after the convention” in late July 2016 “we sought out credible national security voices to sound alarms” and that “I was surprised by the enthusiasm with which some, such as former acting CIA director Michael Morell, jumped into the fray.”
“When I worked in the Obama White House, people in national security positions had been uneasy making broad public arguments, particularly about political matters. Not this time,” Palmieri wrote in 2017. “They were so concerned about the situation that, to me, the language they used to describe the threat they believed Russia and Trump posed was shocking.”
Palmieri said that “I remember my jaw dropping as I sat in our Brooklyn campaign headquarters and read the op-ed Morell submitted to the New York Times in early August [2016]” as she linked to Morell’s piece.
