Secretary of State Mac Warner, participating in last week’s WV MetroNews gubernatorial forum, said he believes the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. (Photo courtesy of WV MetroNews)

CHARLESTON — Since making controversial comments about the 2020 presidential election last week, West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner continues to say the election was stolen from former president Donald Trump without providing evidence to back up those claims.

During a forum last week on WV MetroNews with several Republican candidates for governor, host Hoppy Kercheval asked the candidates whether they agreed with Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was stolen, Warner was the only candidate to definitively say yes.

“The (election) was stolen, and it was stolen by the CIA,” Warner told Kercheval. (They) colluded…to sell a lie to the American people two weeks before the election.”

Warner was referring to an Oct. 19, 2020, letter signed by 51 former intelligence and national security officials mostly from Democratic presidential administrations raising concerns about an Oct. 14, 2020, story published by the New York Post based on information obtained from a hard drive from a laptop linked to Hunter Biden, the troubled son of President Joe Biden.

In multiple media interviews this week and in an op-ed, Warner has attempted to further explain his reasoning on why he believes that actions taken by former federal officials, media, and tech companies in the fall of 2020 helped lead to a result where Trump lost and Biden — then the former Democratic senator from Delaware and a former vice president to former President Barack Obama — won.

Secretary of State Mac Warner signs papers certifying the 2020 presidential election after he state’s electors cast their votes for former president Donald Trump. (Photo by Steven Allen Adams)

In a sit-down interview Wednesday, Warner said he answered Kercheval the way he did because he does believe that the actions of former intelligence officials, the FBI, and tech companies unfairly placed a thumb on the scales of the 2020 election in favor of Biden over Trump.

“Hoppy asked that in a binary choice, yes or no,” Warner said. “When I answered yes, it’s because if I’d answered no, I would’ve been untrue to myself and untrue to the voters of West Virginia because there were problems with that election. And the main bottom line up front is I don’t want three-lettered agencies determining the outcome of presidential elections in the United States of America.”

BOOTING UP

According to reporting by the New York Post in October 2020, a laptop computer was dropped off at a repair shop in Biden’s home state of Delaware in April 2019 due to water damage. After attempts by the store owner to locate the client that dropped off the laptop, the hard drive was later seized by the FBI after the store owner alerted law enforcement.

However, the store owner made a copy of the hard drive and sent copies to attorneys for Rudy Giuliani, an adviser and private attorney to Trump. The hard drive’s contents were later peddled to media outlets by Giuliani and Steve Bannon. Data on the laptop included videos that appear to show Hunter smoking crack, engaging in sex acts and other explicit images. It also included hundreds of thousands of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Mac Warner, Gov. Jim Justice, and Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announce the moving of West Virginia’s 2020 primary election from May to June during the beginning months of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo courtesy of the WV Governor’s Office)

According to testimony earlier this year before the judiciary and intelligence committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, the letter from the 52 former intelligence and national security officials came about three days after the publication of the New York Post story when U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinkin, then an adviser to Biden’s presidential campaign, called former Obama administration deputy CIA director Michael Morrell to talk about the story.

From that phone call came the Oct. 19, 2020, letter signed by 51 former federal officials, including at least three former CIA directors, raising concerns that the revelation of the Hunter Biden laptop and its contents mere weeks before the 2020 general election “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” though the letter writers also acknowledged they had no proof of Russian involvement at the time.

“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails…are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement, just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.” According to the letter. “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.”

Republicans have long been trying to find a link between Hunter Biden’s questionable business dealings and President Biden, either when he was vice president or the four years between leaving the Obama administration and running for president. Hunter Biden is facing nine federal charges related to tax fraud, some of which are felonies. And the U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to open a formal impeachment inquiry against President Biden.

Hunter Biden spoke on the steps of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday morning after ignoring a subpoena from the House to testify in a closed-door hearing.

“Let me state as clearly as I can: My father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home, nor abroad,” Hunter Biden said.

DEEP STATE

Congressional Republicans and Warner see this conversation between Blinkin and Morrell as proof that the letter was a plot between the Biden campaign and the intelligence community to sow disinformation to obfuscate the reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop.

“There were two intents,” Morrell said in his congressional testimony. “One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on the issue; and, two, it was (to) help Vice President Biden.”

“(Blinkin) saw this Hunter Biden laptop as being a major problem for Biden as we were heading into just three weeks before the election. So he planted the idea in the former CIA acting director’s head, Mike Morrell, that this was Russian disinformation,” Warner said.

“Biden used that in the debate just two weeks prior to the election,” Warner continued. “The American voters went to the polls thinking that the Hunter Biden laptop was not just not real, but it was Russian disinformation and there were all these allegations or assertions about Trump working with the Russians and so on.”

Warner also blames the FBI, who had access to the Hunter Biden laptop for nearly one year, for not coming out prior to the 2020 election to say that the laptop was legitimate and not a set-up by Russia. Multiple media outlets have confirmed that the laptop and its information did belong to Hunter Biden, though not all of its contents have been verified.

“The FBI covered it up,” Warner said. “The FBI had had that laptop for 11 months and they knew it was authentic. They knew it wasn’t Russian disinformation and they’ve admitted to that. But that’s come out only recently, again, two years after the fact.”

Another factor for Warner was the effort by social media companies, such as Twitter (now known as X) and Facebook to block or throttle access to the New York Post story in 2020 on the advice of the FBI that the information in the story could be based on a Russian disinformation campaign. Social media companies were criticized during the 2016 presidential election for not doing enough to counter Russian disinformation efforts using their platforms.

“The FBI went to big tech to have them suppress the story,” Warner said. “(Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg) said, yes, the FBI came to me and said, you might want to suppress that because it’s Russian disinformation. So this lie continues and it gets worse.”

There has yet to be any evidence that the intelligence community letter and/or actions or inaction by the FBI and tech companies swayed the 2020 one way or another. But this is not the first time that actions by the FBI have been cited as affecting an election.

Political experts cite the closing and re-opening of an FBI investigation into former New York congressman Anthony Weiner in relation to former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton that possibly tanked her election prospects against Trump going into the final weeks of the 2016 election.

“I just think the FBI needs to be clear with the American people, regardless of the timing, regardless of whether it helps or hurts somebody, they should inform,” Warner said. “I think they have an obligation to say no. And they did later, but they didn’t do it at the right time. Timing is important here when you have people heading to the polls and early voting was already occurring.”

SOWING DOUBT

Warner, who took office in 2017, is known for overseeing successful state and local elections, assisting counties in cleaning up voter rolls, helping modernize county voting machines, focusing on ways to help military, overseas residents and those with disabilities voter easier and increasing election security.

But since the 2020 presidential election, Warner has expressed skepticism about the outcome of the election. The same day Warner oversaw the certification of West Virginia’s election results on Dec. 9, 2020, he participated in a Stop the Steal rally on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.

The Secretary of State’s Office used an advisory opinion from the Attorney General’s Office to send every registered voter an application for an absentee ballot for the 2020 primary months into the COVID-19 pandemic and allowed voters to cite COVID as a valid medical reason to request an absentee ballot for the 2020 primary and general election. Gov. Jim Justice used his authority within his state of emergency powers to move West Virginia’s primary from May 12, 2020, to June 9, 2020.

However, Warner believes that other states did not follow their election laws during the 2020 election, using the COVID pandemic in order to expand access to ineligible voters, counting ballots that would have otherwise not been accepted in a normal election due to lack of signature and other irregularities; ballot drop boxes, and other issues.

“You’ve got the Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin examples and so on, where the states and their elected officials stepped outside their authority,” Warner said. “We need to abide by the law and not let state authorities, whether it’s secretary of State at the state level, or the county authorities or the county clerks at the county level, to change those rules. If they do, then I contend that they are operating outside the law and the votes that come in outside the law should not be counted.”

More than 60 state and federal lawsuits were filed in relation to the 2020 presidential election, when Biden defeated Trump 306 electoral votes to 232 electoral votes. According to an independent investigation by prominent conservatives who determined Trump fairly lost the election, there were 64 cases filed by Trump attorneys challenging the results of the election.

“Of the 64 cases brought by Trump and his supporters, twenty were dismissed before a hearing on the merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before a hearing on the merits, and 30 cases included a hearing on the merits,” the report stated. “Only in one Pennsylvania case involving far too few votes to overturn the results did Trump and his supporters prevail.”

“We conclude that Donald Trump and his supporters had their day in court and failed to produce substantive evidence to make their case,” the report’s authors stated.

In a report published at the end of 2021, the Associated Press found after a review of potential voter fraud cases in six battleground states that fewer than 475 votes would have changed, with Biden winning by 311,357 votes out of 25.5 million ballots cast in those six states in the 2020 election.

But Warner has continued to court election denial claims, including attending a ReAwaken America rally over the summer to promote his beliefs. ReAwaken America is a project of noted conspiracy theorist Clay Clark and former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was only in the administration a short time before resigning and later pleading guilty to lying to the FBI after an investigation into Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador prior to Trump taking office.

Flynn, a retired U.S. Army general, was pardoned by Trump and now travels the country promoting the idea that Biden stole the 2020 election. Flynn endorsed Warner for governor in November. According to an Associated Press/Frontline investigation, at least 80% of Flynn’s endorsements during the 2022 election cycle were for candidates that openly believe Trump won the 2020 election.

“If elections are in question, then respect for government is diminished and our consequent ability to protect the country is degraded,” Flynn said in a statement last month. “Secretary Warner’s work on election integrity and security has set the example for what is needed right now across this entire country. As governor, Mac Warner will bring his signature ability to handle the most vexing, complex problems to every issue confronting West Virginia.”

Warner believes it is his duty to ask questions about the validity of the 2020 election, even though many acknowledge that West Virginia’s elections that year were secure and smooth while navigating the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Warner compared the 2020 election to the battle of Osan and Task Force Smith, the first engagement of the Korean War in 1950.

“We sent 500 people into Korea to stop the invasion and they weren’t prepared. And they got slaughtered: 150 Americans killed on one day. And the mantra after that was, ‘no more Task Force Smiths,” Warner said. “That’s the analogy now for the next election: no more Task Force Smiths. No more 2020 elections where the CIA’s lying to us and the FBI’s covering it up. Let’s not allow that to happen.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com.