Testimony released by the House Judiciary Committee shows the FBI knew Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop was real and that it was not Russian disinformation.
Reports from the Twitter files show that the FBI primed Twitter and presumably other social media companies to treat the laptop as Russian disinformation.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger, who worked on the Twitter files with Elon Musk, noted that the FBI ran interference to keep the laptop story from spreading or seeing the light of day.
“… [D]uring all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian “hack and leak” operation,” Shellenberger tweeted.
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapely and Joseph Ziegler testified to the House Ways and Means Committee last month that federal investigators knew in December 2019 that the laptop was “not manipulated in any way” and that it had reliable evidence on it.
However, they were obstructed from seeing it.
Jordan: FBI Obstructed Effort to Discover Laptop’s Authenticity
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan noted in his letter sent Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray that “the FBI made the institutional decision to refuse to answer direct questions from social media companies about the laptop’s authenticity—despite months of constant information sharing up to that time.”
Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), testified that Special Agent Elvis Chan had at least five meetings with Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, and he also had multiple meetings with Twitter and Reddit. Between May and November 2020, the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Administration (CISA) had at least nine “USG-Industry” meetings, including four in October 2020 around the time the New York Post published its story about the laptop.
“… FITF Section Chief Laura Dehmlow … testified that, by October 14, 2020—the day the Post published its story on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop—the individual then-serving as FITF Section Chief, Bradley Benavides, as well as individuals assigned to FITF’s Russia Unit knew that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real,” Jordan wrote in his article Dehmlow also testified that the FBI could—and did—share information with companies regarding foreign malign influence operations, like hack-and-leak operations, including those conducted by Russia-aligned actors. “
According to Dehmlow’s testimony, the FITF decided to have no comment about the laptop despite having full knowledge the laptop was real. Twitter suspended The New York Post’s account and blocked the story from being shared, Facebook de-amplified the story to reduce its footprint on its platform.
“… [T]he refusal of FBI officials—the very officials who knew the laptop was real—to verify the authenticity of the laptop allowed widespread censorship about an otherwise accurate news story,” Jordan wrote.
The Intelligence Community Weaponizes to Protect Hunter Biden
This took place as other elements of the intelligence community weaponized against The New York Post story.
At the same time, 51 former intelligence officials participated in a letter organized by now Secretary of State Antony Blinken and coordinated by former Acting CIA Director Mike Morrell that characterized the laptop story as “Russian disinformation.”
“We want to give the VP a talking point to use in response,” Morrell wrote in an email sent to intelligence officials about how they wanted to help Biden in his presidential debate with Donald Trump.
Congressional testimony noted that the CIA solicited signatories for the letter.
“A current employee of the CIA was actively soliciting people to sign onto this letter,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan told Fox News.
The Intelligence Community’s interference with the Hunter Biden laptop story is believed by some experts to have been a deciding factor in Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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