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Notes -
Twitter Files 7
Another Twitter Files post: Link
Michael Shellenberger writes this one, arguing that the FBI worked hard to prime social media platforms into thinking a hacked release would come out prior to the 2020 election. He writes the following.
The FBI's regular meetings with people like Yoel Roth were characterized by the latter as telling him that state actors might try a "hack and leak" operation prior to the election.
The FBI was aware that there wasn't anything to go by on this claim, as Special Agent Elvis Chan testified.
Twitter found no evidence of significant Russian/foreign interference on the platform, and Roth repeatedly informed Chan/the FBI on multiple occasions about this.
Twitter repeatedly resisted efforts by the FBI to get data outside the normal search warrant process and was aware that the FBI was trying to probe a lot.
The FBI eventually got temporary clearances to share top-secret info with Twitter executives regarding APT28, a Russian hacking organization. Roth described himself as being "primed primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out."
Former FBI employees were so numerous at Twitter that they had their own internal slack channels.
In September 2020, Roth and others partook of a tabletop exercise to simulate a "hack and dump" operation regarding the Biden campaign. The goal was apparently to "shape" how the media would respond.
When the Hunter Biden leak finally happened, Roth would argue that it appeared more like a subtle leak, since nothing appeared in clear violation of the rules. Jim Baker would respond that it seemed hacked, so Twitter was reasonable in suppressing it until more information came out. But this is nearly impossible, since the FBI's subpoena for the laptop was attached to the NYPost article.
Roth appeared to buy this story now, and in an email said that it was likely that hacked materials were uploaded to the laptop and given to the shop.
There is a pattern of the FBI trying to warn elected officials with a goal of leaking to the news. They did this with Senators Grassley and Johnson, who were investigating and believed that it compromised their credibility. Jim Baker was apparently investigated twice for leaking information (in 2017 and 2019).
As a reminder, the above is what he's arguing, not what I think is necessarily true.
From what I can see, it appears the FBI was very insistent upon the possibility of a 2016 DNC-style hack. I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable until the election is settled - that the hack didn't happen doesn't mean you could conclude it wouldn't were you in the months leading up to the election.
Far more damning is the attempts at getting Twitter's information outside the normal search warrant process. Twitter and its staff are vindicated in this regard, they appear to not have given in to the FBI's requests in 2020. A caveat to this, however, is that we don't necessarily know why they shut off this access in the first place, and how long it was open before that.
A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here. The closest I could come to explaining my feelings here is that I don't want these people to ever be more than formal acquaintances because it ends up reducing the chance of them acting as independent stations of power.
They literally had a hack and dump scenario with Hunter Biden. Isnt that a bit of a smoking gun?
Except it wasn't a Hack and Dump, while yes it was widely reported as such at the time, it turns out that Hunter Biden is exactly the sort of coked-out idiot to leave his laptop full of incriminating evidence at the service desk and then forget to pick it up.
Your link doesn't say that. It says the emails were genuine, and dances around implying that means the laptop was. I though the claim was the that the emails were acquired by the Russians via hacking and laundered through "finding" the laptop. Your link provides no discussion or evidence of that claim, just asserts it's false without evidence and tries to claim legitimacy by linking to a New York Times article which also does not discuss the provenance of the laptop.
I have not looked into this issue to have any strong opinions on where the laptop actually came from; I am not making any claims either way. I'm merely pointing out that your link isn't either.
NY Post publishes a story claiming that the FBI in possession a bunch of evidence implicating Biden in al sorts of shady dealings and is purposely burying it in an effort to hurt Trump/help Biden win. A bunch of intelligence officials including the Obama's SecDef and the Director of the NSA sign an open letter declaring the laptop story to be a Russian disinformation op. The official NY Post gets banned from Twitter and links to the article get scrubbed from both Twitter and Facebook. Two years after the fact even the hardcore partisans at CNN and MSNBC concede that it wasn't the Russians and that the linked emails were likely genuine, but that doesn't matter because the original purpose of helping Biden win has been served.
Declaring? I see a lot of hedging that it might be from the Russians, not an explicit acknowledgement that it was.
The fact that two years later, conservatives are still complaining about the censorship of the story rather than discussing the contents of the laptop to me show that the censorship was far more damaging than helpful to Biden's cause and that there really isn't that much to the underlying laptop contents.
Everybody has known that Biden was engaging in pay for play schemes since the 90s. For all his "aw shucks" good guy posturing he didn't become a billionaire in Baltimore on a public servant's salary. Accordingly Biden being corrupt is not news. The FBI working with the media to quash a story/actively intervening on behalf of the DNC for the second presidential election in a row on the other hand is a new development.
I think you're off by a factor of ~100. Googling puts his net worth at 2.5M in 2016; 17M in 2020. Given he has made his tax returns public for decades, it seems implausible he could hide 98% of his wealth.
Yeah and it turns out that his corrupt son pays for things on his behalf per the corrupt son. Wonder if the corrupt brother also pays for things on his behalf.
You wouldn’t see those items on his tax return though that is tax fraud. Doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. And before you say “you can say that about anyone” the difference is here we have the corrupt son saying he gives over a large amount of money to his father. Statement against interest.
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When you looked at richest/poorest Senator lists, Biden was always at the bottom, or just above Bernie during his whole entire time there, and only became slightly more wealthy because of the usual appearance fee circuit, some book deals, and the like. Part of the reason the whole 'Biden is secretly corrupt' is failing outside the most partisan Red Tribers, when less than great views about Obama or Hillary extended past that, is that it doesn't pass the BS meter of the median voter - the median voter can buy Hillary is corrupt, Obama is conceited, and Trump is an asshole. They simply see nothing showing that Biden is making secret deals.
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The argument is that if people knew the contents of the laptop and Biden ‘s pay for play, then he wouldn’t have won.
And yes, more people should be upset about it. The media has done a good job primarily making it seem like story is about Hunter or Twitter.
But something can help you then and hurt you now. I’d say Biden is probably happier to deal with the censorship story after being elected compared to having the story cost him the election.
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