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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.
As much as I'd like to be skeptical of the IC, its hard to square these two claims.
Well, the IC made the statement with zero investigation of the underlying data. It was then used by the media and Biden campaign to say “misinformation.”
Yes the IC letter worded it carefully but they knew damn well how it would play out and they had zero reason to believe what they said.
I share most of the same skepticisms, but I disagree that they worded things carefully. The limits of their knowledge was stated clearly and prominently. Informative press would have highlighted this, but we privilege a free press over an accountable press for obvious reasons.
But there was zero reason to release anything. There was evidence they could’ve examined showing it was authentic. The only reason they made the statement was to run cover for the Biden campaign.
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