Post on the Twitter Files // Scott Johnson
We have been able to learn in detail through the Twitter Files how the FBI and intelligence community conspired against the New York Post’s October 2020 reporting about the Biden family corruption. Jesse O’Neill reports about the latest revelations in a New York Post story “FBI pressured Twitter and sent troves of docs hours after Post broke Hunter laptop story.” The Post also has the valuable companion editorial “Evidence shows FBI campaign, Twitter and Twitter worked together in suppressing Hunter story.” The Post editors provide background information for those who want to understand this important story. The editors write:
Members of the intelligence community and censors at Twitter insist that they didn’t know that the Hunter Biden laptop was real. So they chose to be cautious. “It has all of the classic earmarks a Russian information operation,” the famous letter from 50 former officials stated.
We now know that this was a fabrication.
The FBI already owned Hunter’s computer — he gave it to them by the Delaware repair shop owner, the same man who gave it to The Post almost a year later.
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the FBI knew that the information was coming out.
Twitter Files shows that Yoel Roth (the platform’s head for trust and safety) was briefed in detail by the FBI about possible misinformation and Hunter’s name was specifically mentioned.
Michael Shellenberger released Monday’s latest bombshell and it shows an intriguing timeline.
* The Post calls Hunter Biden’s lawyer to comment on the day before publication.
* The lawyer calls John Paul Mac Isaac the computer repairman. Side note for all those who claimed that The Post did not do due diligence on the laptop: The lawyer never received Mac Isaac’s name. Told that Hunter had his laptop, he knew which repair shop he should call, which added another layer of confirmation. Hunter and the Biden campaign did not deny that the laptop was Hunter’s, they just disparaged the process of getting it.
* Two hours after Mac Isaac’s phone call, “FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan” sends 10 documents through Teleporter to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-Head Of Site Integrity. This is a one-way communication channel between the FBI and Twitter. Shellenberger writes. What are those documents? We don’t know but we do know that…
* The Post publishes Hunter Biden’s first story the next day. Twitter then moves almost immediately to ban us.
It is impossible to believe Chan and other FBI officials, not to mention the still-well connected former intelligence operatives who signed the letter, didn’t know Hunter Biden’s files had been released into the wild. They knew they weren’t “hacked” or made up.
Knowing that the information would eventually leak, experts spent months preparing for how to stop it. Shellenberger points out that Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a possible ‘Hack-and-Dump” operation in September 2020. This was a month before The Post reported the news. Hunter Biden! They presented a fake scenario in which Burisma documents, detailing payments to the son of the former vice president, were leaked online.
Roth was prepared to question everything when Hunter Biden’s legitimate news broke.
The Twitter Files are not a sign of caution. It is a coordinated effort by the FBI and the Biden campaign to cast aspersions on a damaging story and limit its reach.
We welcome more transparency from Republicans, who have promised an investigation once they take control of Congress. Our suggestion for first witnesses Chan and Roth. What was the contents of those 10 files? What did Chan know about the Hunter Biden laptop before he made it public? What did he say to Twitter?
The rest of the media might then decide that collusion between the FBI and a political campaign is worthy of coverage.
