The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), has expressed keen interest in gathering testimony from an FBI analyst. This specific analyst previously affirmed the legitimacy of Hunter Biden’s laptop – infamously referred to as the “laptop from hell” – to Twitter moderators, even as the social media platform was suppressing The New York Post’s explosive report concerning the device’s contents.
Chairman Jordan penned a letter last Thursday, acquired by The New York Post, in which he requested a verbatim transcript from an anonymous FBI employee. The staff member of the FBI purportedly made significant contributions to the bureau’s initiatives to silence factual information linked to the Biden family’s alleged wheelings and dealings, which emerged shortly ahead of the hard-fought 2020 presidential election.
A substantial part of the Chairman’s letter conveyed disappointment with the FBI’s decision to disregard direct queries from social media platforms regarding confirmation of the laptop’s authenticity, despite owning the laptop for close to a year and having confirmed its content. This action from the bureau allowed social networks to blunt The New York Post’s breaking news based on the inaccurately perceived notion that it was the byproduct of Russian disinformation.
On the road to the 2020 election, bureau officials held numerous meetings – over 30 in total – with Twitter and other key social media channels. Their primary narrative focused on possible Russian operations aimed at divulging damaging information about the Biden family, especially Hunter Biden’s alleged exploitation of his father’s high-ranking position within his lucrative board membership at the Ukrainian energy corporation, Burisma Holdings.
When an article exposing Hunter Biden’s introduction of a Burisma executive to his then-vice president father surfaced on Twitter on October 14, 2020, it was promptly stifled. This occurred despite an FBI analyst airing the laptop as “real” during a separate call with Facebook, before interruption by a member of the bureau’s General Counsel’s Office.
Other communications clarified that there was no evidence to imply Hunter Biden’s laptop was instigated by Russian misinformation. These disclosures, unfortunately, were left unmentioned in their dealings with Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Due to these strategic omissions, Chairman Jordan pointed out, social media platforms perpetuated stymieing the narrative, leaning on earlier cautions issued by the FBI.
The FBI, atypically reticent, validated the materials on Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop, according to testimony provided to the House. Despite these revelations, service members hailing from within the bureau professed unawareness about its origins.
Parallel to these events, 51 preceding intelligence officials distributed a letter disparaging The New York Post’s coverage of emails secured from Hunter Biden’s laptop; a move triggered by a call between then-advisor to the Biden campaign, Antony Blinken, and ex-CIA Director Michael Morell. They reasoned that the emails bore the hallmarks of a conventional Russian information operation which was used to push for online censorship.
