Twitter Files 7 Continued: The FBI Moves In

by Sharon Rondeau

(Dec. 21, 2022) — In tweets subsequent to those presented in The Post & Email’s report Monday from journalist Michael Shellenberger’s release of “Twitter Files 7,” Shellenberger further detailed the steps the FBI took to contain the dissemination of the Hunter Biden laptop story issued by The New York Post on October 14, 2020.

Twitter, followed by other social-media platforms, immediately censored the story and suspended The Post‘s account for more than two weeks.

In tweet #10 on Monday, Shellenberger reported, “On Dec 2, @mtaibbi described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article. Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms,” presenting Taibbi’s release of the first batch of “Twitter Files.”

“Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms,” Shellenberger amplified, presenting in his next tweet a video in which investigative reporter Peter Schweizer provided an overview of his findings on the Biden family’s highly profitable overseas business dealings.

“And yet,” Shellenberger continued, “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,” then presenting a link to letters written by the law firm Covington & Burling, which represented Twitter in response to complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by the Tea Party Patriots and Republican National Committee (RNC) claiming that through suppressing The Post‘s story, Twitter made an “in-kind contribution to the Biden for President campaign committee.”

“Exhibit A” of the 30-page document is a “Declaration” by then-head of Twitter Site Integrity Yoel Roth stating that “As a matter of practice, neither I nor the other members of the Site
Integrity Team communicate directly with persons outside Twitter that report content for violating Twitter’ s policies,” which the Twitter Files releases have proved false.

Roth admitted, however, that “Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security.”

In its December 21, 2020 letters, Covington defend the company’s “Hacked Materials Policy,” which was updated approximately two weeks after The Post published its first article on the laptop, and the decision by Roth to censor it, citing First Amendment rights.

Covington claimed to the Commission that Twitter “simply implemented its pre-existing policies, which are politically neutral on their face.”

“The N.Y. Post articles plainly violated Twitter’s Private Information Policy, as they reproduced materials containing personal email addresses and phone numbers. That alone justified the enforcement action,” Covington additionally contended.

Since the Twitter Files’ publication, former President and 2024 contender Donald J. Trump has claimed that Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story was just one more way in which the 2020 election was “rigged” against him.

Shellenberger pointed out that “They (“the FBI and other law enforcement agencies”) did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. ‘The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, “Hey… you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that,”‘” Shellenberger quoted Zuckerberg from an August 2022 interview with broadcaster Joe Rogan.

The FBI ultimately did not find activity reported in 2016 against the DCCC and DNC, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan testified in late November, but the “basis” for warning “the companies” about a “hack-and-dump operation” was that “it could happen again” and “in case they saw something that we did not.“

Earlier in Twitter Files 7, Shellenberger demonstrated that the FBI questioned Twitter’s vigilance about bad actors on the platform.

“Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity,” Shellenberger wrote in tweet #15.

“In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform,” Shellenberger reported, providing examples of Twitter’s announced findings in that area in two following tweets.

As a result of Twitter executives’ “pushback” against the FBI’s requests for them to share information “outside of normal legal channels,” Shellenberger reported in #21 and 22, in July 2020 the FBI suggesting to Roth the issuance of “temporary Top Secret security clearances” “so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.”

“You get to pick who they would be,” Chan wrote to Roth in an email dated July 15, 2020, referring to the specific Twitter employees who would received the clearances.

At the time, the FBI was surveilling the communications of then-Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, who provided a copy of the Hunter Biden laptop to The New York Post from which it gleaned the material for its October 14, 2020 story.

In response to a tweet in Shellenberger’s reporting, Giuliani tweeted Tuesday, a tweet Twitter indicates was “removed,” The FBI surveillance dated back to approximately the *very same day* I signed on to represent President Donald J. Trump as his attorney,” which reportedly commenced in 2018.

Despite having his home and office raided in April 2021 and an investigation launched into whether he engaged improperly with the government of Ukraine in 2019 on Trump’s behalf, Giuliani “will not face criminal charges for foreign contacts ahead of 2020 election,” CBS reported in November.

On May 10, 2019, Giuliani tweeted, “Explain to me why Biden shouldn’t be investigated if his son got millions from a Russian loving crooked Ukrainian oligarch while He was VP and point man for Ukraine. Ukrainians are investigating and your fellow Dems are interfering. Election is 17 months away.Let’s answer it now”.

Twitter came to hire an increasing number of former FBI agents, Shellenberger reported in tweet #29. “As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees…working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.”