The release of the Twitter Files Part 7 by journalist Michael Shellenberger shows suppression of the Hunter laptop scandal goes far beyond Twitter and includes an FBI campaign targeted at other social media companies, as well as mainstream news media, before the New York Post’s bombshell story about the contents of the laptop..Shellenberger recalled Twitter Files No. 6, released Friday, showed the FBI had a system in place in which it had "constant and pervasive" contact with Twitter executives, acting as if it were a "subsidiary" of the social-media giant..The latest release of Twitter’s internal communications also revealed the FBI paid Twitter $3.4 million for its work..In an email from February 2021, an unnamed Twitter employee estimated the company's Safety, Content & Law Enforcement had 'collected $3,415,323' in less than two years from the FBI for 'law-enforcement related projects.' .The staffer was emailing then-general counsel Sean Edgett and then-deputy general counsel Jim Baker in the damning message. The subject of the email read: 'Run the business — We made money!'.Twitter CEO Elon Musk said of the emails: 'Government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public.' .Shellenberger recounts the FBI obtained the laptop in December 2019, when Delaware computer store owner John Paul Mac Isaac contacted the bureau after discovering evidence of criminal activity on the machine, giving it to the Bureau..The FBI launched an investigation, but by August 2020, when Mac Isaac had not heard back from the FBI, he emailed Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer at the time, who was under FBI surveillance. .In early October, Giuliani gave the contents of the hard drive to the Post, which published its story on Oct. 14..The FBI’s campaign, working with the intelligence community (IC), was to convince the media outlets the laptop contained ‘Russian disinformation’ of which the Bureau had no evidence..Media were pressured by the FBI and IC to censor the revelations in the Post’s story about Joe Biden's knowledge of his family's influence-peddling operation, even though none of the agencies had any evidence of a purported Russian disinformation operation, according Shellenberger..“During all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Twitter to dismiss reports of the laptop as a Russian "hack and leak" operation, as Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety for Twitter at the time, stated in a sworn declaration in December 2020,” wrote Shellenberg..The FBI did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg..Of significance is in July 2020, the FBI's Elvis Chan, an assistant special agent in charge at the office in San Francisco, where Twitter is headquartered, arranged for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives to enable the FBI to share information about "threats" to the upcoming elections..“Yet, as Chan has admitted, the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation were not based on any new intelligence,” wrote Shellenberger..Meanwhile, Twitter insisted publicly that there was no evidence to support claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform..On Aug. 11, 2020, as Shellenberger reported, Chan "shared information with Roth related to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI's secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.".When the Post published the laptop revelations, Roth said in an internal communication the story "isn't clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else," but he said "this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.".Baker, a former FBI attorney, replied to Roth, insisting the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked or both, and violated Twitter policy..However, Shellenberger observed it's not conceivable that Baker believed the messages on the laptop were either fake or hacked..The FBI had possession of the laptop for 11 months, as documented by a subpoena and it would likely take only a few hours to confirm it belonged to Hunter Biden, wrote Shellenberger, arguing it only took a few days for journalist Peter Schweizer to do it..An investigation into Twitter's behavior around the 2020 presidential election by the incoming Republican majority in the House of Representatives has been promised with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy telling Fox News this week: “This is going to be a much bigger situation than people realize.” .McCarthy said in an appearance on Mornings with Maria on Fox News: “We’re going to do more than just subpoena them. We’re going to change the course of where the FBI is today.”.“Every day we learn something more.”
