Last week, President Biden announced new appointments to the White House's Intelligence Advisory Board, seemingly rewarding one appointee who cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. The Washington Examiner reported:
President Joe Biden’s latest pick for his Intelligence Advisory Board is an MSNBC pundit who was among dozens of former intelligence officials to sign a letter in 2020 claiming, without evidence, that the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation operation.
Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the CIA and Pentagon, was picked by Biden to be part of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board on Friday. Bash, along with roughly 50 other ex-intelligence officials, signed a letter in October 2020 claiming the Hunter Biden laptop saga had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” while Bash himself suggested on TV that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation.”
The White House describes the Board as:
[A]n independent element within the Executive Office of the President. The President’s Intelligence Advisory Board exists exclusively to assist the President by providing the President with an independent source of advice on the effectiveness with which the Intelligence Community is meeting the nation’s intelligence needs and the vigor and insight with which the community plans for the future.
Professor Jonathan Turley notes that Bash's appointment is part of a pattern by the Biden administration:
Bash is not alone in "making his bones" in this way. Biden selected Jake Sullivan as his National Security Adviser despite his own history of spreading false claims for political purposes. Not only did Sullivan push a false collusion claim but it is the basis of an ongoing criminal investigation of Special Counsel John Durham.
...What is most striking about Jake Sullivan and Jeremy Bash is that the false intelligence claims were used for political advantage. They pushed the false claim to before the election and it worked. It worked not only for Biden but for those who pushed the story.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 30, 2022
As the New York Post's Editorial Board concluded: "Team Biden is putting politics first — and so building more distrust in institutions that are supposed to serve the nation as a whole."