Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe says that Hunter Biden's laptop is NOT part of a Russian disinformation campaign but says it IS in the hands of the FBI

Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Monday that Hunter Biden's laptop 'is not part of some Russia disinformation campaign' as he blasted Rep. Adam Schiff for saying dirt on Trump's rival came from the Kremlin.

He confirmed that the FBI have the laptop but did not comment on whether they are investigating its contents.

Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist who assumed his post in May, accused Schiff of having 'politicized' intelligence – and responded to Schiff's claim about the mysterious laptop that Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani says he obtained from a computer repair shop owner.

Its contents, which Giuliani provided to the New York Post, include emails purporting to show business ties between Joe Biden and his son, who in documents looks to be seeking to cash in on his father's former position as vice president in Ukraine and in China.

'It's funny that some of the people that complain the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing the intelligence,' Ratcliffe told Fox Business on Monday.

'And unfortunately, it is Adam Schiff who said the intelligence community who as you pointed out on Friday said that the intelligence community believes the Hunter Biden laptop and emails on it are part of a Russian disinformation campaign,' he added.

Schiff, a Democrat, chairs the House Intelligence Committee.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said Monday that Hunter Biden's laptop 'is not part of some Russia disinformation campaign'

The New York Post published a photograph, said to be found on an abandoned laptop, showing Hunter with a crack pipe in his mouth, left. A series of compromising pictures of Democratic candidate Joe Biden's son Hunter, 50, have been released just weeks ahead of the US election on November 3

Asked if the laptop was part of Russian disinformation, Ratcliffe replied: 'Let me be clear: the intelligence community doesn't believe that, because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff, or any member of Congress that Hunter Biden's laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign. It's simply not true.'

Ratcliffe added: 'The intelligence community has not been involved in Hunter Biden's laptop.'

However he also said that the FBI, which is part of the intelligence community, was in possession of Hunter Biden's laptop.

'The FBI has had possession of this,' Ratcliffe said. 'Without commenting on any investigation that they may or may not have, their investigation is not centered around Russian disinformation and the intelligence community is not playing any role with respect to that.'

Giuliani provided the Post with a subpoena for the laptop dated December 19 2019, an indication it has been in the bureau's possession for months.

Ratcliffe, who was a vocal defender of Trump during impeachment where Schiff played a key role, called out people using the Intel community to 'leverage some political narrative.'

Schiff told CNN that 'We know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin.'

'That's been clear for well over a year now that they've been pushing this false narrative and the vice president and his son. ... pushing this Kremlin narrative is pretty breathtaking. ... and the president is only too happy to have Kremlin help to amplify it.'

The attacks come amid continued questions about the Hunter Biden emails that have roiled the campaign in its final weeks.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, helped by Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, said it is investigating the emails and has been in touch with a 'whistleblower.'

The committee only last month produced a lengthy report that accuses Hunter Biden with 'corruption.'

Ratcliffe went after former House colleague Rep. Adam Schiff, who connected revelations from Hunter Biden to the Kremlin

Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach has claimed a second laptop belonging to Hunter Biden's business contacts in the country has been seized by law enforcement there

The Post reported, based on an email said to be included in the laptop, that Ukrainian official Vadym Pozharskyi had sought a meeting with the elder Biden in 2015.

'Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some time together. It's realty an honor and pleasure,' the email said.

However the email did not state that the two actually met, and the Biden campaign responded that 'we have reviewed Joe Biden's official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.'

President Trump has seized on the information and has made it a staple of his election rallies over the weekend, seeking to portray the Bidens as a 'crime family.'

The Treasury Department in September designated Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Derkach, who has met with Giuliani, as seeking to influence the U.S. electoral process.

Treasury said Derkach has been 'an active Russian agent for over a decade.'

Giuliani traveled to Ukraine and met with Derkach as part of his effort to dig up dirt on the Bidens.

Andrii Derkach posted to Facebook on Friday to say there is a 'second laptop' involving evidence of corruption and connected to the Bidens, The Daily Beast reported.

He claims to know of a second laptop, used by 'two representatives for the interests of Burisma founder Zlochevsky.' Hunter served on the board of directors at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In the post Derkach says that laptop 'was given to Ukrainian law enforcement' and that Burisma representatives were now serving as 'witnesses in criminal proceedings.'

HOW HUNTER'S EMAILS EXPLODED AS TWO WORLDS COLLIDED

January 2009: Hunter Biden quits lobbying because his father has become vice president, and sets up investment and advisory firm firm Rosemont Seneca with friends Christopher Heinz - John Kerry's stepson - and Devon Archer , a former Kerry aide

July 2010: Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, who owns its biggest natural gas company Burisma joins the government of its president Viktor Yanukovych

February 2014: Yanukovych is deposed in a revolution which claims scores of lives and Burisma Zlochevsky is thrown out of government too

April 16: Burisma is secretly accused of money-laundering by Britain's Serious Fraud Office. On the same day Archer meets Joe Biden at the White House. Six days later Archer joins the board of Burisma

April 28: Britain's Serious Fraud Office freeze $23 million of Burisma's cash, every dollar which exists in the UK's banking system

May 12: Hunter joins the board of Burisma to improve 'corporate governance.' Hunter's salary is later revealed to be $50,000-a-month. Burisma board advisor Vadym Pozharskyi who had met Hunter in Lake Como, Italy, days earlier, emails him asking to 'use his influence' to stop prosecutions. During the summer, the new prosecutor-general of Ukraine opens an investigation into Burisma

February 2015: Senior diplomat George Kent, on temporary assignment to Kyiv, learns of Hunter's role. He phones a staffer at Biden's office to it could 'create perception of a conflict of interest.' That month Viktor Shokin takes office as Ukraine's prosecutor general, despite already being the subject of questions about his own links to corruption

April 17: Email from Hunter's laptop shows Pozharskyi writing Hunter: 'thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent some together.'

Summer: The Burisma investigation appears to become dormant

January 2016: Biden travels to Ukraine amid mounting international disgust at Shokin failing to tackle corruption. One of the concerns raised by the European Union and IMF is that he has failed to investigate Burisma. Biden tells Poroshenko he needs to go. He later boasts: 'I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.' Shokin in fact is finally removed from office in March after internal turmoil in Kyiv

2018: Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani starts 'investigating' the Bidens' links to Ukraine, enlisting the help of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who are now indicted on fraud charges. Ukraine's latest prosecutor general announces he will investigate Burisma early the next year

April 12, 2019: Hunter - or a man saying he is Hunter - takes three damaged Macs to John Paul MacIsaac's Apple repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware. MacIsaac puts data from one on a new hard drive

April 25: Joe Biden announces presidential run

July 11: The laptops have not been picked up and are now considered 'abandoned' according to MacIsaac's terms and conditions

Summer: MacIsaac claims he becomes worried about what he has seen on the laptop whose contents he put on a disk, and thinks he might be killed by a Biden associate for having it in his shop

Fall: MacIsaac either contacts the FBI or is contacted by them; he has said both

December 9 or 19: The FBI pick up the laptop, but MacIsaac has made a copy for himself. Giuliani later says the shopowner has made four. They give him a grand jury subpoena to hand it over, even though he was going to anyway

Early January 2020: The FBI tell MacIsaac not to talk to anyone and to stall if a Biden representative comes to get the laptop back

February: Trump is acquitted at end of his impeachment trial

May: On Giuliani's account, MacIsaac hands over the hard drive to Robert Costello, Giuliani's attorney, by this month at the latest as well as trying to give it to other Republicans

September: Steve Bannon, Trump's ex-aide and now indicted on fraud charges, tells New York Post about existence of laptop

September 28: Bannon boasts to a Dutch TV interviewer 'I have Hunter's hard drive'

October 11: Giuliani gives Post the hard drive

October 14: Post publishes emails and partially-clothed pictures of Hunter from the laptop - one of them with an apparent crack pipe - and says it has an 11-minute sex-and-drugs video. Giuliani promises there is 'more to come,' Republican senators promise to investigate but Democrats say the former New York mayor has 'paraded with Russian agents'