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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?
And the fbi was in possession of the laptop. If this isn’t direct interference in an election then I don’t know what is. The fbi literally knew the laptop was real and not a hack then misinformed the American people which led to a change in election outcomes.
I concur. This is shaping up to be the biggest American scandal ever — or at least it should be but won’t.
yeah this is orders of magnitude worse than the iran contra affair - i mean sure IC had sweeping geopolitical implications and directly exposed the judicial system of being a dog and pony show but this hunter biden laptop dick pic story, now this is the real deal.
Your sarcasm aside, the story is that Joe Biden and his family effectuated a pay to play scheme. Not good. dismissing it as dick pics is one of the lowest cheapest ways to distract from the meat. You latch on to the sensational to avoid having to discuss the substance.
But my whole post (and Sliders) wasn’t about Biden directly. It was the FBI and the IC interfering in an U.S. presidential election to help one major candidate. That is a major scandal far worse than Iran Contra.
The substance is that Hunter Biden attempted to leverage his father's political status to elevate his personal business prospects. This is shady as fuck, but lots of connected people have shitty kids, its not that big of a deal unless Joe Biden was a willing participant, which as far as i can tell hasn't been shown.
How is the FBI pulling strings at twitter to suppress the distribution of this laptop's contents "interfering in an U.S. presidential election"? Is there any source that shows that the FBI knew that there was no planted information on that laptop? I just think we are applying the clarity of hindsight to a situation that may have been murky at the time, and also assuming a lot of motives. Beyond all that i think funding terrorist organizations in nicaragua and iran is a bit more scandalous than the fbi running interference on a laptop of questionable importance.
There are multiple incidents within the Hunter files showing Joe was involved. There is also testimony. Is it conclusive? No. But there is a decent amount of smoke.
As for the FBI, the evidence is (1) they had the info for a long time (and so were able to test the validity of it — it wasn’t new to them contrary to what you are saying), (2) they kept prompting Twitter (and Facebook) that a hack was going to be coming, (3) an NGO (which had overlapping people it seems) specifically war gamed with Twitter executive a hack and dump of Hunter Biden, and (iv) connected former FBI agents at Twitter pushed to ban the story.
So they knew the laptop was real, they were aware the info might be coming up, they primed the social media networks to think any leak — especially one connected to Hunter — would be illegitimate, and they had personal at Twitter who knew better but pushed in the opposite direction. That is election interference your attempts to downplay the severity of the details.
And yes, it is more scandalous compared to the IC interfering in third world countries. IC doing shady shit in third countries while not great is relatively par for the course for shady organizations such as the IC. But IC interfering in a domestic presidential election because one of the candidates was against the IC? That is eliminating civilian control of the IC; effectively usurping the constitutional order that the president is in charge of the executive.
Lots of smoke no concrete proof, sorry but that's not the biggest scandal in US history by a long shot.
You literally don't know that the FBI knew it was "real", you are just assuming and assigning malice.
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