Twitter Files Overshadow The Bigger Scandal: FBI Lied To Tech Giants To Interfere In Election 

Elon Musk’s release of internal communications pre-dating his purchase of Twitter is providing an ever-expanding menu of scandals. From Twitter coordinating censorship decisions with the government and politicians, to the censorship of scientists discussing the Covid response, to the blacklisting of prominent conservatives — including candidates for office — to the banning of the president of the United States from Twitter based on a pretext, each edition of the “Twitter Files” launches a new angle of outrage over the tech giant’s politically motivated decision-making.

But the barrage of information is blinding both pundits and the public to the most egregious political scandal in recent history: Our FBI interfered in the 2020 election by lying to tech giants about the Hunter Biden laptop story to induce Twitter, Facebook, and likely others to censor the story.

‘Hacked Materials’

The Hunter Biden laptop story, of course, refers to the New York Post’s Oct. 14, 2020 article, “Smoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad,” that details emails, text messages, and videos recovered from the hard drive of a laptop Hunter abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware. In the first dump of the Twitter Files, independent journalist Matt Taibbi focused on “How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story.”

Internal communications revealed that Twitter censored the New York Post’s story based on its “hacked materials” policy, preventing users from sharing the story and even suspending the New York Post’s official account. Those same communications showed Twitter staffers questioning the propriety and/or veracity of the “hacked materials” explanation, with both Yoel Roth and Jim Baker defending the decision.

Roth, who at the time was Twitter’s head of trust and safety, acknowledged the situation is “emerging,” as “the facts remain unclear,” but justified the censorship based on “the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016.” Twitter’s then-Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker agreed that “we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked,” but nonetheless concluded that “it is reasonable for us to assume they may have been and that caution is warranted.”

Baker added: “[T]here are some facts that indicate that the materials may have been hacked, while there are others indicating that the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes. We simply need more information.”

None of the documents Taibbi released detailed the “facts” Baker or others at Twitter thought “indicate” the materials may have been hacked. Taibbi added, though, that while “several sources recalled hearing about a ‘general’ warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence — that I’ve seen — of any government involvement in the laptop story.”

Whether the absence of such evidence stems from the government’s lack of a specific warning about the laptop story, or from a secreting of such communications, is unknown. After the release of part one of the Twitter Files, Musk fired Baker reportedly for “vetting the

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases