RNC Demands FEC Reexamine Complaint Alleging Hunter Biden Laptop Story Suppression Was Illegal Campaign Contribution

On Tuesday, the Republican National Committee urged the Federal Election Commission to reopen an investigation over Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story in the wake of revelations from the Twitter files, which showed the Feds coordinated with the social media giant to suppress posts around the president’s son and his computer. 

Fox News reports that Matthew Raymer, chief counsel for the RNC, wrote the FEC and said, “These revelations, commonly referred to as the ‘Twitter Files,’ expose how previous senior management took active measures to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and other information harmful to the Democratic Party and its candidate.” 

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel Tweeted, “The RNC filed an FEC complaint over Twitter’s censorship in October 2020. In light of this month’s damning revelations, we demand a re-examination of our complaint with an emphasis on investigating whether ex-Twitter employees provided false information to the FEC.”

“It is clear that Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter laptop story had no legitimate basis under Twitter’s rules, and Twitter’s overly aggressive & wide-ranging efforts to silence the story just weeks before the 2020 election show clear political bias.”

In 2021, the FEC dismissed allegations from the RNC that Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story constituted election law violations. According to the FEC, Twitter had a commercial reason for suppressing, censoring, and blocking people from seeing or liking posts about the story. Twitter Safety said at the time the stories around Hunter Biden’s laptop were violating its “hacked materials policy.”

When the RNC filed the complaint with the FEC in October 2020, they said Twitter’s censorship was akin to an “illegal corporate in-kind political contribution” to the Biden campaign. 

The FEC said it found “no information that Twitter coordinated” their decision, a claim the Twitter files revealed to be false. In 2021, the FEC also said that Twitter did not violate election law by “shadow banning” conservative voices on their platform, something the Twitter files revealed the social media giant did deliberately.

The RNC argued the FEC needed to reopen the investigation after it was revealed how often Twitter would “remove or otherwise suppress individual tweets at the Biden campaign’s request.”

The RNC point to the information that Twitter worked with the Feds but also with members of Biden’s campaign, as revealed by the “More to review from the Biden team” internal email from Twitter.

In 2020, before and after the US presidential election, Twitter had weekly meetings with federal law enforcement, something they disclosed to the FEC in 2021.

Former head of Twitter Trust and Safety Yoel Roth submitted a disclosure to the FEC in 2021 that said the FBI warned the social media company of an upcoming Russian disinformation dump. Roth and Twitter execs claimed the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” was such disinformation.  Its contents implicated Joe Biden‘s son in corruption connected with profiteering and influence peddling, compounded by Hunter Biden’s love for hookers, illegal guns, and crack.

An FEC disclosure signed by Roth read: “Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security.”

Roth said, “These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”

The FBI has known of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents since 2019 when they were contacted by John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the Delaware repair shop where the president’s son left his computer. The FBI eventually came with a warrant and seized the laptop and Hunter Biden’s hard drive, but the shop owner had already made a copy.

Former FBI Assistant Special Agent Tim Thibault, who was found to have Anti-Trump content on his social media, was accused of suppressing the investigation into the laptop and he eventually resigned.

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