DHS Shuts Down Partisan ‘Intelligence Experts’ Panel after Lawsuit from Conservative Legal Group

The Biden administration is shutting down a partisan panel of “intelligence experts” that featured multiple signatories of the discredited Hunter Biden laptop letter.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed last week to dissolve its “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” after conservative legal group America First Legal (AFL) filed a lawsuit arguing it was in violation of federal law.

“The Experts Group shall be wound down within thirty (30) days of the entry of the Order, it will not hold any future meetings, and the Department will not reconstitute the Experts Group inconsistent with the FACA or the Homeland Security Act of 2002. The Department will also provide the Experts Group meeting agendas and meeting minutes with participant identifying information redacted within fifteen (15) days of the entry of the Order,” reads a joint notice of stipulation and dismissal filed in Washington, D.C. district court last week. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

AFL’s lawsuit, filed with former Trump official Richard Grenell, accused DHS of violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act because of the expert panel’s partisan imbalance. Congressional Republicans also pushed DHS to disband the panel because of its partisan imbalance.

A whopping 98 percent of the group’s political contributions have gone to Democrats compared to only one percent to Republicans, AFL noted in its lawsuit. The Federal Advisory Committee Act is meant to prevent government agencies from forming advisory panels lacking in objectivity.

Two members of the short-lived panel, former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, signed the discredited letter by 51 former intelligence officials ahead of the 2020 presidential election claiming the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation. Another signatory, former senior CIA official Michael Morell, testified last year the letter was orchestrated by then-Biden campaign senior advisr Tony Blinken.

Federal investigators verified the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop in late 2019 by cross-referencing it to his Apple iCloud server, special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors said in a court filing earlier this year. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, an agent who spent years on the Hunter Biden tax case, gave a similar account of how the laptop archive was verified when he testified last year before the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Thanks to the courage of Ric Grenell in standing up to the Deep State, we have just achieved an unqualified legal victory over Mayorkas and Biden. As a result of our lawsuit in federal court, DHS is surrendering in total to our demands,” America First Legal president Stephen Miller said in a statement.

“We won. We beat Biden and DHS.”