How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020
In Twitter Files #6, we saw the FBI relentlessly seek to exercise influence over Twitter, including over its content, its users, and its data.
In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.
The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him
On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden's laptop.
By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to @nypost
Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.
Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.
7. At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter.
8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.
9. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.
Why is that? What, exactly, happened?
10. On Dec 2, @mtaibbi described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article.
Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms
11. First, it's important to understand that Hunter Biden earned *tens of millions* of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China's government, for which Hunter offered no real work.
Here's an overview by investigative journalist @peterschweizer
12. And yet, during 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.
This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.
13. They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, ‘Hey... you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There's about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'"
14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel?
No, they weren't
“Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov.
15. Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity.
E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 “largely inactive” accounts “linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.” They “had little reach & low follower accounts."
16. In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform
"We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim” by @oneunderscore__@nbc News of foreign-controlled bots.
“Our review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort…”
17. After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter's Roth says, "The article makes a lot of insinuations... but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction).”
18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process.
19. Pressure had been growing:
“We have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).”
20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting.
“[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).”
21. Despite Twitter’s pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.
22. Then, in July 2020, the FBI’s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.
23. On August 11, 2020, the FBI's Chan shares information with Twitter's Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI's secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.
24. Recently, Yoel Roth told @karaswisher that he had been primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out.
When it did, Roth said, "It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells."
25. In Aug, 2020, FBI’s Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance?
When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, "I don't know how I forgot him" — an odd claim, given Chan's job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI.
26. Who is Jim Baker? He's former general counsel of the FBI (2014-18) & one of the most powerful men in the U.S. intel community.
Baker has moved in and out of government for 30 years, serving stints at CNN, Bridgewater (a $140 billion asset management firm) and Brookings
27. As general counsel of the FBI, Baker played a central role in making the case internally for an investigation of Donald Trump
28. Baker wasn't the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter.
Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.
29. As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — "Bu alumni" — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth.
In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential "Hack-and-Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden
The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it
31. The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News
Attendees included Meta/FB's head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for @nytimes@wapo and others
32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.
They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence].
33. Then, on Sept 15, 2020 the FBI’s Laura Dehmlow, who heads up the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, request to give a classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present.
34. On Oct 14, shortly after @nypost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, “it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else," but adds, “this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.”
35. In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15.
36. And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019.
37. As for the FBI, it likely would have taken a few *hours* for it to confirm that the laptop had belonged to Hunter Biden. Indeed, it only took a few days for journalist @peterschweizer to prove it.
38. By 10 am, Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story
“The suggestion from experts - which rings true - is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware”
39. At 3:38 pm that same day, October 14, Baker arranges a phone conversation with Matthew J. Perry in the Office of the General Counsel of the FBI
40. The influence operation persuaded Twitter execs that the Hunter Biden laptop did *not* come from a whistleblower.
One linked to a Hill article, based on a WaPo article, from Oct 15, which falsely suggested that Giuliani’s leak of the laptop had something to do with Russia.
41. There is evidence that FBI agents have warned elected officials of foreign influence with the primary goal of leaking the information to the news media. This is a political dirty trick used to create the perception of impropriety.
42. In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of “Russian interference” into their investigation of Hunter Biden.
The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.
43. “The unnecessary FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation.”
44. Notably, then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker was investigated *twice,* in 2017 and 2019, for leaking information to the news media.
“You’re saying he’s under criminal investigation? That’s why you’re not letting him answer?” Meadows asked.
45. In the end, the FBI's influence campaign aimed at executives at news media, Twitter, & other social media companies worked: they censored & discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story.
By Dec. 2020, Baker and his colleagues even sent a note of thanks to the FBI for its work.
46. The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.
“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” reports an associate of Jim Baker in early 2021.
47. And the pressure from the FBI on social media platforms continues
In Aug 2022, Twitter execs prepared for a meeting with the FBI, whose goal was “to convince us to produce on more FBI EDRs"
EDRs are an “emergency disclosure request,” a warrantless search.
In response to the Twitter Files revelation of high-level FBI agents at Twitter, @Jim_Jordan said, “I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People.”
I am concerned about the impact of social media on children, but this bill is a Trojan horse to create digital IDs, which is a giant leap into the totalitarian dystopia depicted in "Black Mirror," and already in place in China. And @AlboMP has proven censorial and untrustworthy.
Lovers of free speech just scored victories in the US, EU, and Ireland. But now we’re in pitched battles in Britain & Australia, which is at dire risk of trying to censor the entire planet. This is about all of us, so I’m flying down. Share this to show solidarity. LFG!!!
I am headed directly to Canberra to meet with other free speech lovers and the wise and just representatives of the Australian people, who I am confident will kill the @AlboMP governments aggressive and hostile assault on the freedom that enables democracy and all other freedoms.
Australia belongs to its people and it is up to them and their representatives to decide whether they want to remain a liberal democratic nation or instantaneously become a totalitarian one.
But it is the duty of friends of Australia to bluntly warn that @AlboMP is pushing a censorship law that would not only end free speech for Australians but also be viewed as a hostile assault on the free Internet worldwide by people in other nations, including in the US, its best ally.
Trump's nominees are weird, say elites. But it was the elites' weird ideas that caused wars, addiction/OD crisis, Covid lockdowns, trans madness, censorship, and worse. Trump's nominees trigger the covert narcissism of elites who are rightly defensive at their appalling record.
Democrats act like they’re starting to get it, but they’re not. Their problems are all much worse than they realize. It’s not just that the Party is leaderless. It’s that the Party and the establishment institutions upon which it relies are discredited with half the country and are about to become more discredited with even more Americans as the truth fully comes out about censorship, Covid, weaponization of government, the transgender medical mistreatment scandal, and much else that the media and elites have lied about over the last 20 years. The media isn’t what people thought it was. It was never a reflection of reality. It was a reality distortion machine and propaganda industry in service of maintaining the narrow interests and power of a tiny group of decadent and psychologically disordered elites and their deeply deformed, dishonest institutions. Some might be reformed but others are too far gone to be saved.
The media says Trump's nominees are dangerous, but they're not. Their positions and priorities are well within the mainstream. The threat they pose isn't to the American people, it's to the pathocrats who created and worsened our border, public health, and foreign policy crises.
Over the last few years, the American people have come to believe that our establishment institutions are at least partly responsible for a series of self-inflicted wounds. Our health and medical establishment either failed to address or enabled declining life expectancy, a mental health crisis including an addiction epidemic, and a botched response to Covid. Our military and foreign policy establishment unnecessarily started and prolonged war and conflict in the Middle East and violated civil liberties at home in the name of fighting terrorism. And liberalized migration laws have depressed working-class wages, swamped the ability of cities to absorb the new migrants, and created a humanitarian disaster on the border.
Given all of that, the President-elect Donald Trump’s nominations make sense. As Border Czar, Thomas Homan will take strong action to close the southern border and deport criminals. National Director of Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard will bring greater skepticism to foreign military entanglements and calls to restrict civil liberties for national security. And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will stand up to the corporations that most everyone agrees have put self-interest before the public’s interest on everything from drug safety to food quality.
We shouldn’t be surprised that some of them hold views that many of us disagree with. The main criticism of Trump’s nominees is that they have dangerous and fringe views. Homan said he would deport whole families. Gabbard said the Russian-backed Syrian dictator was not America’s enemy. And Kennedy espouses marginal and unsubstantiated views on everything from nuclear power to 5Gs.
But Homan has made clear his focus will be on deporting criminals, not families, whatever one thinks of Gabbard’s position on the Syrian conflict, it’s obvious from the context that she made her remarks in service of her loyalty to the US, not Russia, and Kennedy has said, repeatedly, that he won’t ban vaccines.
And throughout history, most real reformers and innovators have held fringe views and have had aspects of their personalities that are problematic. In most cases, those flaws or idiosyncrasies proved to be a small price to pay for their willingness to overcome the many obstacles required to achieve serious reforms of deeply entrenched institutions. This is true not just of Homan, Gabbard, and Kennedy, but also of Defense Secretary and Attorney General nominees, Pete Hegseth and Matt Gaetz, respectively. The accusations the media has made against the two men are so far unsubstantiated by the available evidence.
And none of the allegedly wrong views or bad deeds of Trump’s nominees outweigh the potential of the nominees to reform the institutions that are directly responsible for the invasion of Iraq, prolonged occupation of Afghanistan, entanglement in foreign conflicts, corporate capture of the FDA, the weaponization of government, Covid school closures, authoritarian and gratuitous Covid vaccine mandates, unhealthy diets, the addiction crisis that kills 100,000 Americans per year, the humanitarian disaster along the border, and the mistreatment of children with pseudoscientific transgender medicine.
Strong leaders committed to reforming America’s military and foreign policy establishment, its public health, food, and medical establishments, and its immigration and border security establishment are precisely what the American people wanted when they voted for Trump. If those nominees pursue destructive agendas in lieu of doing their jobs, we will be the first to call them out for it. But the establishment has no ground on which to stand...
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Over the last decade, Democrats & the media said that those of us who opposed DEI, racial quotas, and open borders had gone “far right.” We hadn’t. Rather, Democrats and the media had gone far left. We are only now emerging from 10+ years of extreme, psychopathic gaslighting.
Make no mistake: it was the mainstream news media that induced the mass psychosis that radicalized Democrats into believing that the US had somehow become *more* racist, against all available evidence.
The media did this. The mass brainwashing came from college-educated elites in control of the most powerful propaganda machine in world history. They got Democrats to believe the ludicrous view that their fellow Americans had somehow become secretly racist, practically overnight.
None of @RobertKennedyJr 's views "have any value whatsoever," say the media. But even the author admits RFK's right about fluoride, raw milk, and the danger of Big Pharma. Elites are freaking out because they know RFK will hold them accountable for their gross abuses of power.
This article is downright nasty: "But RFK Jr. is indeed a grade-A crank. Why should he have input on anything?"
Anything? Really?
"Let’s not pretend that Kennedy’s views have any value whatsoever."
The author is guilty of the obnoxious and over-the-top rhetoric he accuses @RobertKennedyJr of.
I don't agree with RFK about nuclear and vaccines, but it's wrong and gratuitously malicious to say Kennedy's views have no "value whatsoever" and to suggest he shouldn't have "input on anything."
Even the author admits that RFK is right about excess corporate power. "I’m ready to acknowledge the merit of Kennedy’s frequent claim that medical regulators are beset by conflicts of interest."
But then the author completely misrepresents his views, saying "Kennedy sounds less like a reformer and more like someone trapped in a web of conspiracy."
That's just false. Kennedy's views of Big Pharma are little different from the conventional, Ralph Nader-influenced views of the Democratic Party from 1962 to 2016.
Kennedy is criticizing the revolving door between Big Pharma and the government, which is the opposite of a "conspiracy" or a "theory."
RFK's whole problem with the revolving door is that it's legal and right out in the open, i.e., the opposite of a conspiracy, which is secret and (usually) illegal.
It is notable that the author never mentions the disastrous Covid lockdowns, abusive vaccine mandates, and other abuses of medical power.
His entire focus is to attack the people who rightly denounced the over-reaction.
The author is particularly disrespectful toward two of the people who were most right about the disastrous Covid lockdowns — @DrJBhattacharya @MartyMakary @VPrasadMDMPH — and most courageous in speaking out against them.
The author can't keep his own argument straight. He says Kennedy is wrong about everything — and then agrees with him on three things, one of which, corporate oversight and accountability, is at the center of Kennedy's career.
The author then claims that "Neither Makary nor Prasad responded to requests for comment for this story" before saying that, in fact, one of them did: "Bhattacharya wrote back to say that “politically minded doctors” such as myself “have done much damage to public confidence in public health.'”
That's some amazingly blatant "medical misinformation" coming from a magazine that has been one of the main advocates for government censorship of "medical misinformation" on X and other social media platforms.
The unhinged quality of the article may be explained because the author is rightly triggered at the possibility that politically-minded doctors, journalists, and the medical establishment upon which both groups depend may finally be held accountable for their role in the disastrous Covid lockdowns and authoritarian vaccine mandates.