The seventh edition of the "Twitter files," released Monday by author Michael Shellenberger in a series of tweets, explores how the intelligence community, including the FBI, "discredited factual information about Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings."
In this latest installment, "we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community, aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published," Shellenberger wrote. "The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him. On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden's laptop."
After a series of events, the New York Post eventually ran its explosive story on Oct. 14, 2020, "revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate," Shellenberger wrote. "And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans. Why is that? What, exactly, happened?"
The censorship of the article came despite the fact that "Hunter Biden earned tens of millions of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China's government, for which Hunter offered no real work," Shellenberger wrote in one of the tweets.
He added: "We have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms," including that "during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed [then Twitter head of trust and safety] Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation."
This pressure on Twitter and other social media platforms continued "even after Twitter executives repeatedly reported very little Russian activity" during that election cycle.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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