Conversation

Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7 The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020
7,175
151.7K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.
307
30.6K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to
@nypost
nypost.com
Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian...
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine...
300
25.2K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac. Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.
Image
102
20.2K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
9. 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?
324
32.4K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
10. On Dec 2,
@mtaibbi
described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article. Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms
Quote Tweet
Matt Taibbi
@mtaibbi
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
Show this thread
174
24.5K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
13. They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, ‘Hey... you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There's about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'"
Embedded video
0:23
546.1K views
371
26.6K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel? No, they weren't “Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov.
Image
Image
Image
Image
269
23.9K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
15. Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity. E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 “largely inactive” accounts “linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.” They “had little reach & low follower accounts."
Image
170
20.9K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
16. In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform "We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim” by
@oneunderscore__
@NBC
News of foreign-controlled bots. “Our review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort…”
Image
Image
153
19.7K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
17. After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter's Roth says, "The article makes a lot of insinuations... but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction).”
Image
Image
95
19K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process.
Image
Image
187
19.3K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
19. Pressure had been growing: “We have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).”
Image
138
18.8K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting. “[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).”
Image
Image
161
19.3K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
21. Despite Twitter’s pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.
Image
119
18.2K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
22. Then, in July 2020, the FBI’s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.
Image
385
20K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
23. On August 11, 2020, the FBI's Chan shares information with Twitter's Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI's secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.
Image
135
16.8K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
24. Recently, Yoel Roth told @karaswisher that he had been primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out. When it did, Roth said, "It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells."
Embedded video
0:41
326.6K views
258
16.8K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
25. In Aug, 2020, FBI’s Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance? When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, "I don't know how I forgot him" — an odd claim, given Chan's job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI.
Image
Image
183
18.2K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
26. Who is Jim Baker? He's former general counsel of the FBI (2014-18) & one of the most powerful men in the U.S. intel community. Baker has moved in and out of government for 30 years, serving stints at CNN, Bridgewater (a $140 billion asset management firm) and Brookings
Image
Image
Image
Image
168
18K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
28. Baker wasn't the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter. Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.
196
19.1K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
29. As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — "Bu alumni" — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.
Image
505
25.2K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth. In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential "Hack-and-Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it
Image
Image
Image
Image
406
20.3K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
31. The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News Attendees included Meta/FB's head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for
@nytimes
@wapo
and others
Image
422
18.6K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate. They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence].
Image
Image
254
13.3K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
33. Then, on Sept 15, 2020 the FBI’s Laura Dehmlow, who heads up the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, request to give a classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present.
Image
176
12.4K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
34. On Oct 14, shortly after
@NYPost
publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, “it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else," but adds, “this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.”
Image
155
11.9K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
35. In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15.
Image
Image
Image
278
14.3K
Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
36. And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The
@nypost
had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019.
Image
Image
Image
256
15K
Show replies