Left: FBI seal on the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Building in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Right: Hunter Bide at the federal court in Wilmington, Del., June 3, 2024.

Left: FBI seal on the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Building in Washington, D.C., in 2018. Right: Hunter Biden at the federal court in Wilmington, Del., June 3, 2024.

© Jim Bourg, Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

 

 

 

FBI Spent a Year Preparing Platforms to Censor Biden Story, Withheld Info on Laptop’s Authenticity

 

October 30, 2024

By James Lynch

Reprinted from the National Review

 

The FBI spent the better part of a year preparing social media platforms to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and withheld information from the companies when they wanted to know whether or not the laptop was authentic, despite knowing the laptop was real long before the 2020 election.

Even though the FBI authenticated the Hunter Biden laptop archive in late 2019, the bureau met with tech platforms over 30 times beginning in early 2020 to “prebunk” allegations that the Biden family traded off Joe Biden’s name to make a fortune from foreign business deals, according to a bombshell House Judiciary Committee report obtained by National Review. The FBI declined to comment on the report.

“In many of these meetings between federal agencies and Big Tech, the FBI raised the topic of potential ‘hack-and-leak’ operations amid conversations about “election security” and potential foreign influence operations,” the report reads.

“In response, some platforms even adopted new content moderation policies specifically designed to address hacked materials.”

The FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop hard drive and verified the device by cross-referencing it to Biden’s Apple iCloud identification, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified last year. During Hunter Biden’s gun trial, the prosecution presented the physical version of Biden’s laptop and brought FBI special agent Erica Jensen to the stand to explain how it was verified.

Jensen gave a detailed explanation of how the FBI obtained the device after receiving a tip from a Delaware computer store and cross-referenced its serial number to Biden’s iCloud storage accounts for other devices. The FBI used forensic tools to retrieve data from the laptop archive after getting a search warrant to examine the device.

After authenticating the device, the FBI team on the Hunter Biden briefed the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) multiple times because of the case’s connection to Ukraine. Months before the laptop story broke, the FITF was aware that the FBI possessed Biden’s laptop, multiple FITF officials testified to the Judiciary Committee, according to the report.

Nonetheless, the FBI and other federal agencies began holding meetings with social media platforms to ensure they were ready for a “hack-and-leak” operation connected to Biden and his business dealings with Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, the report lays out.

There were two different categories of meetings between the social media companies and federal government leading up to the 2020 election. One kind of meeting consisted of the FITF briefing individual companies on real or anticipated foreign threats. The other type of meetings were broader discussions between the FITF, other agencies, and social media platforms.

Throughout 2020, the FITF held over two-dozen meetings with individual companies to pass along intelligence on foreign threats. The possibility of a Russian “hack-and-leak” operation was mentioned during the meetings. Similarly, the broader government meetings happened monthly starting around April 2020 and then weekly as the election drew near. Repeatedly, those meetings featured conversations about “hack-and-leak” threats.

Specifically, the FBI warned multiple times that a “hack-and-leak” story involving Burisma and Hunter Biden was set to drop in October 2020, the congressional report asserts based on internal documents from the tech firms.

The FBI’s briefings prompted Facebook employees to predict a “hack-and-leak” about Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma before the laptop story came out showing exactly that.

“We are likely to have in the next few weeks a leak or series of leaks about Biden’s supposed link to Burisma, where we won’t be able to prove they were ‘hacked’, but where we will have responsible USG players publicly saying this is part of a foreign influence operation,” a Facebook employee predicted in September 2020.

On September 21, 2020, another employee notified Facebook vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg and Facebook vice president of global public policy Joel Kaplan that government partners altered them to the high possibility of a Russian-concocted leak connecting the Biden family to Burisma.

Both of those predictions manifested only weeks later when the Biden laptop archive became known to the public.

The New York Post first reported in October 2020 emails on Biden’s laptop showing how he used his father’s name to advance lucrative business deals with Ukrainian and Chinese entities. Immediately, Facebook and Twitter rushed to suppress the Biden laptop story as the FBI trained them to do, without evidence the laptop was part of a “hack-and-leak” operation, the report shows.

“Some companies wanted more information, though, and reached out to the FBI to be certain that this was the hack and leak they had been warned of before making final decisions about whether to continue their censorship of the story and the content within. But the FBI refused to acknowledge that it possessed and had authenticated the laptop,” the report reads.

Internal messages indicate that Facebook employees first reacted to the Post story by noticing it was exactly as the FBI had predicted. Soon, they realized they lacked evidence demonstrating the email archive was hacked or stolen. Rather than use its hacked materials standard, Facebook censored the Biden laptop story under its “misinformation” policy, and severely limited its reach.

The FBI had pre-scheduled FITF meetings with Facebook on Twitter on October 14, 2020, the day the Post’s reporting came out. Two senior FBI employees with knowledge of the meeting testified that during the meeting, an FBI analyst said the laptop was real before the bureau’s lawyer shut down the discussion and said the FBI would not comment further.

Following the meeting, the FITF had internal deliberations and decided it would not comment on the laptop because it was part of an ongoing investigation. At the FITF’s Facebook meeting and the U.S. government meeting, the FITF applied its “no comment” policy. Later on, the FITF shared a follow up statement with representatives from Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft informing them that the laptop was not the product of a “hack-and-leak” enterprise, but did not give any additional information.

Therefore, the FBI failed to disclose to the platforms that it possessed and authenticated the laptop materials reported by the New York Post only weeks before the 2020 election. Days after the Post’s reporting, a group of 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter falsely claiming the laptop resembled a Russian disinformation campaign. Michael Morell, the intelligence official who spearheaded the letter, did so in coordination with the Biden campaign to help Joe Biden win the 2020 election.

When Meta was deciding how to handle the laptop story, Clegg and Kaplan considered how it might influence their relationship with a potential Biden administration moving forward.

“Obviously, our calls on this could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else,” Clegg said on WhatsApp as the two were deciding on whether to reverse Facebook’s choice to demote the laptop story.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Google did not touch the Hunter Biden story because its threat analysis group did not find any evidence it was the product of a hack. Google had been privy to warnings from the FBI and other agencies about the potential for a “hack-and-leak” scheme, but did not reflexively crack down on the Post’s reporting.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment. But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the Judiciary Committee in August admitting Facebook was wrong to censor the Biden laptop story. Zuckerberg also criticized the Biden administration for subsequently pressuring the platform into restricting certain content related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022 and turned over a trove of internal documents to shine light on how the company handled the Hunter Biden laptop story internally. Those documents, known as the “Twitter files,” are cited in the congressional report and demonstrated how Twitter suppressed the laptop story by labeling it “hacked materials” without any evidence backing it up.

Musk fired the Twitter executives responsible for censoring the Biden laptop story. Two of them, Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde, testified last year and expressed regret over their decision to clamp down on the Post’s reporting.

Biden’s business dealings have since been the subject of a wide-ranging House GOP investigation that uncovered $27 million of payments from to Hunter Biden and his business partners last decade. The investigation also revealed details of Joe Biden’s numerous interactions with his son’s business partners and how the Justice Department slow-walked the Hunter Biden case for five years.

Eventually, special counsel David Weiss’s team prosecuted Hunter Biden on gun and tax charges. In June, Biden was convicted on three federal gun charges in Delaware and three months later he pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges in California to avoid going to trial. Both of his sentences are scheduled for later this year.