Hoo boy. If Michael Shellenberger‘s latest tranche from the Twitter Files gets corroborated, the FBI didn’t just target speech on social-media platforms in a presidential election. The files released today suggests that the FBI acted to preemptively suppress an accurate news report even before it got published — with no actual evidence that it was part of an intelligence operation.

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

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

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.

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

Before we go much further, let’s ask ourselves this question: what the hell is the FBI doing in these transactions at all? They do have authority over domestic counter-intelligence, but that doesn’t give them carte blanche to surveil domestic communications, let alone control them. The FISA statutes make that very clear; they have to have some sort of probable cause to get warrants from a FISC judge to surveil domestic communications — and nothing in those statutes allows the FBI to censor those.

That is a question that Congress needs to ask. The federal government — and government in general — has no business interfering with public speech in this manner. They certainly could have said that evidence says some story line is really a product of a disinformation campaign, and recommend that people ignore it. This, however, amounts to an unconstitutional, Big Brother-esque intrusion on free speech, especially given the obvious chilling effect their “partnership” with platforms would have.

The FBI didn’t rely on public advisories, however. They tried doing this secretly, and in the end, on the basis of nothing at all:

12. And yet, during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian “hack and leak” operation.

This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.https://t.co/IvTjyYw9iR pic.twitter.com/5iq2ATB3bW

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

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. pic.twitter.com/tFPMqbydbA

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

The obvious implication here is that the FBI knew that the Hunter Biden laptop story was coming and wanted to stuff it for their own reasons. What were those? We still don’t know, but it wasn’t because they had any evidence that it came from a Russian intel operation, let alone the level of evidence that would have been needed for a FISA warrant.

Speaking of pressure, the FBI kept increasing their efforts to co-opt Twitter executives into acting as proxies for their counterintel operations. At one point, the FBI issued top-secret security clearances to some Twitter managers, including Yoel Roth, and then briefed them on “disinformation” campaigns to sensitize Twitter to the problem.

And that worked spectacularly:

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).” pic.twitter.com/ghGNz4ZzXB

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

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. pic.twitter.com/YXCR2Guxz5

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

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." pic.twitter.com/RKoR4NtH1s

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

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 pic.twitter.com/3yO5ZIc2Jy

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

“Hack and leak,” Roth says, not “hack and leap,” although that may be a Freudian slip. Roth claims in this clip that he didn’t think the Hunter laptop story quite fit with a Russian disinformation profile, but the idea that it was “hacked” — which it wasn’t — likely rationalized the suppression of the story at Twitter. And the same was likely true of all these media outlets that the FBI effectively deputized into service as government censors by proxy.

Where in the Constitution or in federal statute does the FBI or Homeland Security — also involved in similar efforts — have the authority to do that? And just how did the FBI decide to use a Hunter Biden “test case” for its training a few weeks before the New York Post reported on it? Hmmmmmmmmmm.

Furthermore, since when do American news organizations willingly sign up to suppress information from the public on behest of the FBI? It’s one thing to cooperate on publication of leaked information if it puts someone in physical danger, but it’s another entirely to act as the FBI’s censor on reported material.

At Twitter, the FBI virtually set up shop to operate this censorship by proxy less than a month before it would succeed in suppressing the Hunter Biden story:

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. pic.twitter.com/1uhJ39OYSS

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022

Did the New York Times, Washington Post, and Facebook use similar methods to coordinate censorship with the FBI? Why haven’t these “news” organizations disclosed these connections to FBI supervision of their news output before now?

This is not just a disgrace, it’s a political scandal that may rival or even surpass Watergate. It may have had more impact on a presidential election, for one thing, and this time the conspirators include the media — especially the newspaper that blew the lid off Watergate back then and which lectures us today that “democracy dies in darkness.” The new Congress needs to put an end to Big Brother, identify everyone who participated in this government censorship combine, and put together cases for impeachment and prosecution of those involved.