The FBI issued a warning to top U.S. tech companies just before The New York Post began reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, cautioning that Russian operatives were preparing a similar release of sensitive information. As the story unfolded, internal discussions at Facebook showed executives considering their content moderation in ways that would align with what they anticipated from a Biden-Harris administration, according to an interim report from the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, the NY Post reports.

 

The report’s revelations come at a pivotal time, with former President Donald Trump leading in polls for the November 5 election. Trump’s supporters are pushing for significant changes at the FBI, including possible reforms or antitrust actions against tech platforms like Facebook. The report also includes a message from an unnamed Microsoft employee, who wrote on October 14, 2020, the day The New York Post began its coverage of the Biden family’s international dealings: “FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge.”

Communications among Facebook staff reflect a skeptical stance toward The Post’s findings, labeling them as the “exact content expected for hack and leak.” One employee noted, “Right on schedule,” while Nick Clegg, then Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, acknowledged in a message to VP Joel Kaplan that their actions could impact how the future Biden administration might perceive them: “Obviously, our calls on this could colour [sic] the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else…”

The Post reportedly spent close to a month verifying the authenticity of the laptop’s contents before publishing but did not make clear to what extent the FBI was aware of that process. Despite the FBI’s early possession of the laptop—seized from a Delaware computer repairman in December 2019—the agency privately cast doubt on the story, even as former intelligence officials and then-candidate Joe Biden asserted a Russian origin.

The New York Post’s reporting highlighted interactions between Joe Biden, then vice president, and international associates of his son Hunter and brother James, in regions like Ukraine and China where Biden had a role in U.S. policy. The story was later corroborated by other outlets and even used in court by federal prosecutors. Nonetheless, Republicans believe Biden’s narrow win over Trump in swing states may have been influenced by the suspicions surrounding the laptop’s authenticity.

John Paul Mac Isaac, the Delaware repairman who became a whistleblower, provided the laptop to the FBI after Hunter Biden abandoned it. Mac Isaac believed it contained evidence of international misconduct. He also provided a copy to The New York Post. Congressional Republicans now argue that the FBI and tech companies collaborated to influence the 2020 election—a sentiment they say was acknowledged by employees at the social media firms at the time.

In a message from July 15, 2020, disclosed in the report, a Facebook employee said, “[W]hen we get hauled up to [Capitol] [H]ill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections, we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. Government] to plan for it.” Although the FBI informed some Twitter staff that the laptop was authentic on the day of The New York Post’s story, this information was reportedly not widely shared internally at Twitter, nor has evidence emerged showing a similar clarification was given to Facebook.

The House Republicans’ report, drafted by Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), asserts, “[I]f the FBI’s intent was truly to help social media companies combat actual foreign influence operations, the FBI should have shared the single most important fact: the influence-peddling allegations in the Post story were based off of real, credible information, including information in the FBI’s possession.”

The report criticizes the FBI for failing to disclose key facts, saying, “The FBI failed to do so. While the FBI eventually conceded that it had no indication that the allegations in the Post story were Russian disinformation—only after an FBI agent mistakenly revealed to Twitter that the laptop was ‘real’—the FBI still withheld the fact that it had seized and authenticated Hunter Biden’s laptop months prior.”

The report concludes that both Twitter and Facebook continued to suppress what it calls “the most significant news story of the election cycle,” ultimately shielding the Biden-Harris campaign from allegations of family-related corruption.

The FBI, under Director Christopher Wray, faces criticism from congressional Republicans, with some questioning its investigation into alleged Iranian hacking of the Trump campaign in the current election cycle. House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) criticized what she called “the FBI’s deep corruption regarding foreign election interference from Iran targeting President Trump,” calling it “a corrupt coverup”—a post shared by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).

Frustrations among Trump’s allies remain high over the FBI’s high-profile, extensive investigation into alleged Russian collusion during the 2016 election, which ultimately found no evidence of a conspiracy. Critics also point to the bureau’s role in two criminal cases against Trump, one involving the handling of classified records and another focused on challenges to the 2020 election results.

{Matzav.com}