There’s another reason why Twitter censored the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020.
For a year, the FBI reportedly sat on the laptop scandal, which turned out to be loaded with controversial material. And then, the FBI held weekly meetings with Twitter, warning the social media giant to expect so-called “hack-and-leak operations” by “state actors” involving Hunter Biden in the weeks before the 2020 election.
In an exclusive story, The NY Post reports the FBI’s warnings were so specific that Twitter immediately censored the newspaper’s legitimate news story about Hunter Biden’s laptop on Oct. 14, 2020. Twitter said it blocked the story due to its “hacked materials” policy. But on Saturday, new CEO Elon Musk called that move “election interference.”
“If Twitter is doing one team’s bidding before an election, shutting down dissenting voices on a pivotal election, that is the very definition of election interference … Frankly Twitter was acting like an arm of the Democratic National Committee. It was absurd,” Musk said during a live Q&A session on Twitter Spaces on Saturday.
“The extraordinary revelation for the first time lays bare how the FBI was involved in pre-bunking the story of the laptop, which had been in the bureau’s possession for almost a year,” according to The NY Post.
“I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter,” the company’s former head of site integrity, Yoel Roth, told the Federal Election Commission on Dec. 21, 2020.
“I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,” he added.
As CBN News reported in October of 2020, The Post produced emails showing Joe Biden’s son Hunter appears to have introduced the then-Vice President Biden to a Ukrainian energy executive.
An April 2015 email reads in part, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving me an opportunity to meet your father and spen(d) some time together.”
President Biden has claimed he knew nothing about his son’s business dealings. But as multiple news outlets reported in October 2020, a former business associate of Hunter Biden said the claim made by then-presidential candidate Biden was false.
Zuckerberg Revealed the FBI Approached Facebook Too
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan last August that the FBI also approached Facebook, warning the social media site about “Russian propaganda” before The Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Facebook also censored the story by limiting its reach on the platform, according to Fox News.
FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan organized meetings with social media companies. Chan testified last week in a lawsuit against the Biden administration that he organized the meetings in San Francisco for as many as seven D.C.-based FBI agents in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. He also organized weekly meetings with Facebook, according to The NY Post.
The lawsuit was brought by the Republican attorneys general for Missouri and Louisiana. It alleges the federal government moved in conjunction with social media companies to censor “disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content on social media platforms.”
During his testimony, Chan said the FBI warned Twitter to be on guard for a “hack and leak” operation but could not recall whether Hunter Biden was mentioned.
The NY Post noted Chan’s testimony’s disparity with Roth’s sworn statement that said the FBI specifically mentioned Biden’s son.
Now Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton is pointing a finger at the FBI, wondering how deep their role in the 2020 election actually went.
“HUGE: Did FBI spying on @RealDonaldTrump lawyer @RudyGiuliani give them intel to spike Hunter Biden story just before election!” Fitton tweeted.
HUGE: Did FBI spying on @RealDonaldTrump lawyer @RudyGiuliani give them intel to spike Hunter Biden story just before election! https://t.co/gW6Oj2ajDS via @nypost
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 6, 2022
And U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) tweeted: “The FBI spied on President Trump’s campaign in 2016. And they gave Twitter the excuse to suppress the Hunter Biden story in 2020.”
Independent journalist Lara Logan also tweeted, “This now seems irredeemable – the level of FBI (& DOJ) interference in a constitutional process that’s sacrosanct has rendered those agencies enemies of the people & the state.”
“Now how do we get our country back?” she asked.
***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***
The remainder of this article is available in its entirety at CBN