The social network says it censored the story after being tipped off by government agents
Hunter Biden on April 18 / Getty Images
Chuck Ross • October 10, 2022 2:45 pm
Two FBI officials tipped off Facebook ahead of its decision to censor news about Hunter Biden’s laptop donated to Democrats in 2020, according to court filings and campaign finance records.
Laura Dehmlow, unit chief for the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, head of the FBI’s cyber division in San Francisco, were “involved” in communications between the FBI and Facebook that led to in “suppressing the social media giant.” the story of the Hunter Biden laptop,” according to a court filing Thursday. The FBI’s interactions with Facebook have been of interest since Mark Zuckerberg said in August that Facebook blocked access to an October 2020 New York Post article about Biden’s laptop, because the FBI had earlier warned the company to be on “high alert” for Russian efforts to release disparaging information about the Bidens before the election.
According to campaign finance records, Dehmlow gave $60 to the Democratic National Committee in 2020. Chan contributed $50 each to Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to their re-run campaigns in November 2020. According to the court filing, Facebook parent company Meta identified Dehmlow and Chan in response to a subpoena for records of interactions with the Biden administration. The document, released by the Missouri attorney general’s office on Monday, does not detail Dehmlow and Chan’s interactions with Facebook or any other social media company. The attorney general’s office has sued the Biden administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to “censor free speech.”
The contributions are likely to reignite long-standing concerns about political bias in the FBI’s investigation of Hunter Biden, who is under federal investigation over his taxes and foreign business dealings. Republican lawmakers have accused the FBI of shutting down aspects of the Biden investigation and inaccurately referring to reports about the Biden family’s business dealings as Russian disinformation.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) have been asking the FBI for months for information about who met with social media companies to warn them about Post The laptop story, which cited Hunter Biden’s emails with his Ukrainian business partners. After Zuckerberg’s comments, Republicans asked the FBI and Justice Department to detail interactions with the social media companies and accused the agencies of “falsely” portraying negative reports about the Biden family as Russian disinformation.
Twitter joined Facebook in censoring the postHunter Biden story based on information from intelligence officials. Yoel Roth, head of Twitter’s integrity unit, said it blocked access to the story because the officials, who have not been identified, said there were “rumors” that Russia would release disparaging material about Hunter Biden.
Facebook and Twitter executives have admitted they were wrong to censor Biden’s story. There is no evidence that Russia hacked Hunter Biden or released his emails. A Delaware computer repair shop owner says Biden dropped off his laptop for repairs in April 2019 but never picked it up. The store’s owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, provided the FBI with a copy of Biden’s hard drive in late 2019 and released another copy to the media in 2020.
According to Grassley and Johnson, FBI whistleblowers allege that an FBI official in the Washington Office who oversaw aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation closed the investigation into the derogatory allegations against him in October 2020. The official, Timothy Thibault, criticized Republicans in numerous social media posts.
FBI Director Christopher Wray created the Foreign Influence Task Force in 2017 “to identify and combat foreign malign influence operations targeting the United States.” According to the FBI, the task force is primarily focused on foreign influence operations in which foreign actors “use false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms to discredit American individuals and institutions.”
Chan, who works in the FBI’s San Francisco office, has spoken publicly about his interactions with social media companies in the run-up to the 2020 election. He said he was “very involved in helping to protect the election in USA in 2020” and that the FBI “worked in collaboration with the private sector”. He said he met with tech and social media companies “on a weekly basis” before the election to share intelligence about any “unusual” activity on their networks.
“This is where the FBI and the US government can help companies,” he said.
The FBI has been dogged by accusations of political bias since investigating former President Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia. Peter Strzok, who led the investigation, was fired after the revelation of anti-Trump messages he exchanged with FBI lawyer Lisa Page. Another FBI attorney who worked on the investigation, Kevin Clinesmith, sent text messages after the 2016 election asking for “Viva le resistance,” a reference to the anti-Trump groups that emerged after the election.
The FBI and Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.
