Fifty-one current and former U.S. intelligence community officials signing onto a 2020 letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell had the hallmarks of a "Russian information operation" was itself a deep state operation against the people of the United States, Jesse Watters said Wednesday on "The Five."
Watters and other panelists on "The Five" criticized one signatory, ex-CIA intel officer and Lawfare blogger David Priess, for being a part of the signature campaign.
Priess told "Special Report" on Tuesday it is not his fault if the letter was misconstrued by the public or Joe Biden – who appeared to cite it during a presidential debate as proof the story about his son was indeed Kremlin disinformation.
When host Greg Gutfeld labeled Priess an "embarrassment" on "The Five," Watters disagreed, saying that what he did is purportedly standard among officials in a now-politicized Central Intelligence Agency.
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"This is exactly what the CIA does. If the CIA tells you something, it's probably not true. And if 50 CIA agents tell you something, it's definitely not true," he said.
"They ran a counterintelligence operation on the country, and it worked. And guess who fell for it? The left. Because they're idiots."
Political analysts have suggested the suppression and attempted discrediting of the now-verified Hunter Biden laptop likely led many American voters, particularly Democrats, to continue supporting Joe Biden without full knowledge of alleged involvement in foreign business deals with Hunter.
On "The Five," Watters also pointed to Biden's denials of any wrongdoing by Hunter in his interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on Tuesday.
He pointed out Biden originally had said his son did nothing wrong, However, the president admitted in the Tapper interview Hunter was recently "a junkie" as he addressed Hunter's reported recovery from hard drug use.
Watters questioned how a drug abuser of Hunter's caliber could engage in high-profile foreign dealings, and why foreign actors would be "pouring millions of dollars into him."
"He wasn't doing anything except accepting money for, you know what," he claimed.
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Gutfeld later credited Fox News anchor Bret Baier with pressing Priess on the original laptop topic, calling the ex-agent "hysterical."
He expressed hope that if Republicans retake Congress, Priess and many of the other signatories are hauled before the legislature to answer questions under oath on their behavior.
"This reveals a successful effort to censor an important story in order to sway an election. So we have to find out more about that," he said.
Gutfeld added that if the signatories were truly offering apolitical analysis, the letter would not have been rushed together right before a key election.
