The FBI held weekly meetings with former Twitter integrity head Yoel Roth before the 2020 election, warning of “hack-and-leak” schemes by “state actors” involving Hunter Biden, according to the New York Post,
As a result, the social media giant quickly squelched the story when news of Hunter Biden’s laptop broke weeks before the election, according to the report.
Roth made the revelations in his sworn declaration to the Federal Election Commission in late December 2020.
“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,” Roth told the FEC Dec. 21, 2020, according to the Post.
Following the FBI’s directives, Twitter immediately censored the New York Post’s laptop scoop in October 2020, citing their “hacked materials” policy.
In short, the FBI used Twitter and other social media platforms to pre-debunk the story, likely aiding Joe Biden’s presidential aspirations.
Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, labeled the company’s past activity as election interference in a tweet last week.
Exactly. The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections.
Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 30, 2022
“The obvious reality, as long-time users know, is that Twitter has failed in trust & safety for a very long time and has interfered in elections. Twitter 2.0 will be far more effective, transparent and even-handed,” Musk said on Twitter.
Do you think that our elections can be trusted?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 100% (3 Votes)
Later in the week, while discussing the issue during a live Twitter Q&A session Saturday, Musk said, “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.”
The FBI agent overseeing this operation was Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, who wrote a postgraduate thesis putting forth the unproven claim that Russia helped former President Donald Trump get elected by interfering in the 2016 election, the Post reported.
Chan has provided testimony to the Missouri solicitor general John Sauer regarding the FBI’s involvement during a lawsuit by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, according to National Review.
The lawsuit alleges that big tech companies colluded with federal agencies to censor speech along ideological lines.
Chan admitted that the Bureau warned Twitter about the “hack and leak operations” but unlike Roth, he did not specify whether the Hunter Biden laptop was a key driver of that decision, as reported by National Review.
Roth, who has since resigned from his position after the Musk takeover, saw to it that the story could not be circulated or shared on the platform.
With more “Twitter Files” set to be released by Musk and his team, additional information may be provided to this development in the coming days regarding FBI involvement.
More information could also shed light on whether the Biden team themselves were instrumental in the 2020 censorship efforts.
