Monday brought yet another installment of the "Twitter Files" — this time courtesy of Michael Shellenberger — that dove back into the way Twitter handled The New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's "laptop from hell" with a specific look on how the FBI and other intelligence agencies worked to undermine and discredit the revelations.
1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop
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 #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," Shellenberger explained before laying out a timeline of how things went down:
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
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden's laptop. https://t.co/TdaYhHMVRH pic.twitter.com/JxdkrkgAkI
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 https://t.co/TdaYhHMVRH
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day. pic.twitter.com/59RV5h8ZsM
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. pic.twitter.com/7j59zfBuJQ
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
The next morning, the Post ran its story on Hunter's laptop and its contents. But, as Shellenberger reminds "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." So, he asks, "Why is that? What, exactly, happened?"
Part of the reason, Shellenberger provides evidence for, was the weekly meetings between the intelligence community and Twitter in which the company's censors were warned of Russian "hack and leak" operations.
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.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.https://t.co/IvTjyYw9iR pic.twitter.com/5iq2ATB3bW
But, as it turns out, there wasn't any specific evidence that such operations would involve Hunter Biden, Shellenberger notes.
14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel?
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
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. pic.twitter.com/tFPMqbydbA
What's more, "Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity" to the FBI, as seen in another communication in which the social media company told the FBI it had removed just 345 "largely inactive" accounts "linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts" with "little reach & low follower counts."
16. In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
"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…” pic.twitter.com/fWYNv7mMea
And, despite the FBI's repeated requests, Twitter never found anything worth reporting.
20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
“[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).” pic.twitter.com/ghGNz4ZzXB
Still, the relationship between Twitter and FBI deepened in July 2020 as top secret clearances were arranged for Twitter executives in order to brief them on threats to the 2020 elections.
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. pic.twitter.com/YXCR2Guxz5
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
The FBI's work to plant the seeds of Russian hack-and-leak operations clearly worked, as confirmed recently by former Twitter executive Yoel Roth:
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.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
When it did, Roth said, "It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells." pic.twitter.com/RKoR4NtH1s
It turns out the disposition toward following the FBI's warnings blindly and without regard for facts may have also been due to the fact that Twitter was crawling with former feds beyond just Jim Baker.
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. pic.twitter.com/prVhPGohOC
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
The working relationship between the FBI, Twitter, and the mainstream media got so deep that there was even a war game of sorts organized to do a dry run for a "hack-and-dump" operation involving Hunter Biden — in September 2020
30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
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 pic.twitter.com/lQSorONUSh
So naturally, when The New York Post published its explosive story on Hunter Biden's laptop, Twitter's Roth noted that "this feels a lot like" a hack-and-leak operation despite admitting it "isn't clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else."
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.” pic.twitter.com/xMnEWzgxdU
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
But Roth's acknowledgement that the Post's story didn't violate Twitter policy — an assessment with which a number of other employees agreed — didn't stick because Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker insisted it was a violation despite clear evidence to the contrary.
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. pic.twitter.com/hwr2zBouly
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
In the end, Baker and his former associates at the FBI won the debate and Twitter went all-in on the phony narrative to actively suppress the story.
38. By 10 am, Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
“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” pic.twitter.com/n2Xj9mP1Hs
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.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
By Dec. 2020, Baker and his colleagues even sent a note of thanks to the FBI for its work. pic.twitter.com/ZEASt2aXXm
There are more Twitter Files releases expected in the days ahead from Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and others in the days ahead. We're still waiting to learn more about how Twitter handled COVID, masking, and vaccine-related tweets and those who were labeled "science deniers" by big tech, Democrats, and the mainstream media.
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