The Twitter Files reveal (finally) the underside of the censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal on the platform. It’s author Michael Shellenberger who takes over with part 7 to explain how the FBI discredited information about the “affaires” of Joe Biden’s son overseas, “before and after” the publication by the New York Post of an article about the scandal related to the contents of his laptop.
Michel Shellenberger asserts, in a thread released Monday, December 19, that the United States Intelligence Community has “coordinated its efforts” to discredit, “in the eyes of the media and social networks”, information related to the scandal of “laptop” of Hunter Biden. With supporting evidence, he explains how the FBI pushed Twitter to suspend all content related to this scandal on the pretext that it comes from a “Russian hack and leak operation” information.
The FBI ‘groomed’ Yoel Roth to censor this scandal
Recalling the relentless pressure exerted on ex-Twitter executives by the federal bureau and its “intrusions” in content and account moderation, Michel Shellenberger first returns to the case of Hunter Biden’s laptop. This one “begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner (…) contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him”. A few days later, “the FBI issues him a subpoena and takes Hunter Biden’s laptop”lit.
In the absence of a response from the FBI, the owner of the store, who had then transferred the files of the laptop damaged, writes to the Republican and ex-mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, who transmits the information to the New York Post. On October 13, Shellenberger continues, Hunter Biden’s lawyer learns that the article on his laptop will be published the next day. The same day, Yoel Roth receives an email from FBI agent Elvis chan, who sends him 10 documents via TelePorter, one of the channels used by the federal police to communicate with Twitter.
On October 14, the NYP published its article. “Every written fact was accurate”, says Michael Shellenberger. “And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social networks censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading”he recalls.
Matt Taibbi, the other journalist who collaborates with Elon Musk on the Twitter Files, had revealed the internal debate at Twitter around the censorship of the content of the NYP. The son of the current President of the United States was already under investigation for his financial activities since 2018. Yet, “Throughout 2020, the FBI and other agencies … have prepare repeatedly Yoel Roth to dismiss articles on Hunter Biden’s laptop and cast it as a Russian “hack and leak” operation, continues Shellenberger. Recent revelations from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirm this information. “The FBI came to us and said, ‘Hey…you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. There’s going to be some kind of dump similar to this’”a declared Zuckerberg.
Almost non-existent “Russian propaganda”
Are the warnings against actions of “Russian propaganda” were justified by new information? Nope, according to the same FBI agent, Elvis Chan. “Through our investigations, we have not seen any concurrent intrusions similar to what happened in 2016,” he admitted. Ditto for Twitter executives who reported very little Russian activity, “before and after” the outbreak of the affair laptop de Hunter Biden. “For example, on September 24, 2020, Twitter told the FBI that it had removed 345 largely inactive accounts linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts”reveals the same American author in his thread. He also cites the example of a pro-Trump article on which Yoel Roth was alerted by the FBI. “The article makes a lot of insinuations… but we haven’t seen any evidence that this was the case (of Russian interference, editor’s note) here”lit.
Despite these assurances, Twitter leaders then noticed an increase in pressure, exerted since January 2020. “We have seen a sustained push from the intelligence community to push us to share more information and change our API policies. They are probing and pushing wherever they can”, lit-on encore.
The FBI constantly asked Twitter for evidence of foreign influence and Twitter in turn always replied that they found nothing in particular. Faced with the responses of the social network, the FBI even suggests to Twitter in July 2020, through the same Elvis Chan, a security clearance for one of the platform’s leaders, in order to “see information on threats to the upcoming elections”. The FBI agent shares information about the Russian hacking organization, APT28, with Yoel Roth on August 11.
It was finally Jim Baker, a former FBI lawyer, who benefited from this authorization. He was recently fired by Elon Musk, when the Twitter boss learned that the first set of the Twitter Files had been reviewed by him. This lawyer has also been involved in several Federal Bureau cases. He resigned in 2018 following an investigation into press leaks. In the intelligence service, he played a key role in investigating allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Shellenberger points out that he wasn’t the only Twitter employee to come through the FBI. “Dawn Burton, the former chief of staff to FBI chief James Comey who launched the Trump investigation, joined Twitter in 2019 as chief strategy officer,” he said. And to add: “In 2020, there were so many ex-FBI employees working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel to onboard newcomers to the FBI.”
Jim Baker insists on the thesis of piracy
As the elections approach, around mid-September 2020, Yoel Roth and Chan Elvis agree to set up “an encrypted messaging network so that FBI and Twitter employees can communicate (…) with all of industry and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence”.
On October 14, shortly after the article in the New York Post has been published, Roth has declared : “This is not clearly a violation of our Pirated Materials Policy, nor clearly a violation of anything else”. He was answered by Jim Baker, repeatedly insisting that Hunter Biden’s documents “were either rigged, hacked, or both”, which constituted, in his opinion, “a violation of Twitter policy”.
Shellenberger opined in his tweets that he is “inconceivable that Baker believed Hunter Biden’s emails were either fake or hacked. The NY Post included a photo of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed the agency took possession of the laptop in December 2019.” he recalls.
On September 15, “at 10 a.m., Twitter executives had already signed on to a hack and leak story,” poursuit Shellenberger. “The experts’ suggestion – which rings true – is that there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials onto the laptop which magically appeared in a repair shop of the Delaware”Yoel wrote.
The FBI discredits the NY Post
This “influence operation persuaded Twitter executives that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not from a whistleblower…the FBI briefed Senators Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of ‘Russian interference’ in their investigation of Hunter Biden. What to provoke “the ire of senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation”writes Michael Shellenberger. “The useless FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media outlets with the means to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation”, denounced the two senators.
He thus concludes “that in the end, the FBI’s influence campaign against media, Twitter and other social media officials worked: they censored and discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story,” he said.
He reveals that Twitter staff were paid for the time given to the FBI. “I am happy to report that we have raised $3,415,323 since October 2019!”, lit-on.
The author also reveals in this part 7 that “FBI pressure continues”. In August 2022, Twitter executives prepared for a meeting with the FBI, the purpose of which was “to convince the platform to produce on more requests for emergency disclosures, a warrantless search, for the FBI”.
In part 6 of the Twitter Files, unveiled on Friday, Matt Taibbi laid out the social network’s relationship with the FBI, the journalist going so far as to call it a “subsidiary company” of the federal police. The documents demonstrate the character “hyper-intrusif” from the intelligence service, which worked with the platform’s previous team to moderate its content and demand the suspension of several accounts.
The FBI on Friday (December 16th) dismissed reports that its employees exerted pressure on Twitter to moderate content or suspend accounts. Matt Taibbi responded with additional revelations.
The role played by the FBI in moderating content around the elections had already been mentioned in a third part. Internal documents showed how employees of the social network tried to define the role played by the FBI and other intelligence agencies in moderating content to justify the suspension decisions taken.
The suspension wasn’t Twitter’s only weapon. In previous installments, Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger explained how social network executives, including Yoel Roth and VIjaya Gadde, formed themselves into “Supreme Court of Moderation”violating Twitter’s own policies and rules to justify banning Donald Trump and using blacklists to reduce the visibility of certain accounts.
The first set of documents from the Twitter Files were unveiled on December 2 by Elon Musk, to prove Twitter “interference” in the previous US elections through the scandal linked to the laptop of Hunter Biden, the son of the current President of the United States Joe Biden.