Mike Huckabee
We talk a lot here about election interference, and not just the direct kind that might have happened with mail-in ballots on Election Day. Much of that interference --- perhaps the type that, overall, bore the most fruit in 2020 and likely affected the outcome --- has to do with the suppression of information that Americans deserve to know before casting their votes. And nowhere is this more obvious than with the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020. At that time, the government was working overtime to make sure you didn’t see it, or, if you did, that you quickly discounted it as “foreign disinformation.” This from the party that professes so loudly to care about “our democracy.”
Oh, they love democracy, all right, as long as they can game the system and manipulate enough voters to vote their way.
Even as the 2020 election recedes in our rear-view mirror, we’re able to piece together more of what was done then to censor needed information. This discovery comes to us thanks in large part to outside-government organizations such as Judicial Watch, whose Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests continue to bear fruit, as you’ll see below. And now there’s America First Legal, headed by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who has shown himself to be eminently worthy of The Second Trump Administration if that’s where he would like to be. Maybe as communications director/press secretary?
In late October, AFL filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging a “coordinated communication” and an unreported in-kind contribution to the Joe Biden presidential campaign and related entities in violation of federal law. This has to do with that bogus “classic earmarks” letter signed by 51 former U.S. intel officials, with the goal of censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
“There are reasons to believe that the public statement by 51 former intelligence officials was a coordinated political operation to help elect Vice President Biden in the 2020 election...” the complaint reads.
The full complaint runs 13 pages with 110 pages of exhibits, stating that “the Biden for President Campaign in 2020, the Biden Victory Fund, the Democratic National Committee, and the Biden Action Fund should have reported on coordinating efforts” as in-kind donations.
It’s hard to say how the value of that letter to Biden’s campaign can even be determined. At the risk of sounding like a parody of the old MasterCard commercial, we’d say it’s...priceless.
As is now well known, that “classic earmarks” determination by the intel “experts” was completely bogus. In late 2019, a year before the letter was signed, the FBI had taken possession of Hunter’s laptop from computer shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac and were perfectly aware of what was on the hard drive. They had to know without a doubt that every disturbing entry was real. But it didn’t matter --- the officials who unquestioningly signed that letter hadn’t even seen the contents of the laptop. They did it to help Joe Biden win, perpetuating yet another hoax on the American people to interfere with an election.
As FOX NEWS reports, “The Obama administration officials who signed include former [CIA] Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence [DNI] James Clapper, and former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Former George W. Bush DNI Michael Hayden, a vocal Trump critic, also signed.” We would add the note of sad irony that both Brennan and Clapper, and additional signatory Paul Kolbe of the CIA, have recently been named by DHS Director Alejandro Mayorkas to a new intelligence “expert” board.
The complaint also mentions that Clapper and Panetta donated to the Biden Victory Fund and the Biden for President campaign in 2020.
Based on testimony from former CIA Deputy and Acting Director Mike Morell to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, we know that then-Biden campaign adviser (now Biden’s Secretary of State) Tony Blinken spearheaded the effort to create this letter. Morell testified that he’d been recruited by Blinken to write the letter.
According to the Judiciary Committee, Morell also explained that Biden campaign manager Steve Ricchetti called him following the October 22 debate to thank him for writing it. (During the debate, Biden had played the letter up big, using it as evidence that the laptop story was “Russian disinformation” when he had to know it wasn’t.) “Morell also explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of that statement,” the committee said. “Morell further explained that one of his two goals in releasing the statement was to help then-[former] Vice President Biden in the debate and to assist hm in winning the election.” In other words, it was FOR THE CAMPAIGN.
This bogus letter was also used to provide cover for the censorship by Twitter and Facebook of the Hunter laptop story. Why, how could it not have been Russian disinformation when 51 intel experts had encouraged that conclusion?
Reed D. Rubenstein, senior counselor and director of oversight and investigations for America First Legal, concludes that we’re seeing a “pattern” of election meddling, citing intelligence officials’ failed attempt to help Hillary Clinton win in 2016 by lying about “Trump/Russia collusion.” (Recall examples such as Alpha Bank?)
As Rubenstein said, “The [FEC’s] charge includes election integrity --- Americans have the right to know who is coordinating with federal candidates. But this right is only as effective as the agency that enforces it. The FEC must act here.”
In other censorship news, thanks to yet another FOIA request, Judicial Watch has uncovered more government censorship through private entities, this time about COVID, as evidenced in dialogue between the Biden Surgeon General and Facebook in mid-2021. No wonder we can’t believe anything we hear from either the government or social media on this (or any other) subject.
In just 14 pages of conversation between U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and top FB executives, we see the path to stunning submission to the government by FB, as they sought “to better understand the scope of what the White House expects of us on misinformation going forward.”
Murthy enumerated several helpful suggestions for combating misinformation, such as focusing on addressing “misinformation in live streams, which are more difficult to moderate due to their temporary nature and use of audio and video.” Also, FB should “prioritize early detection of misinformation ‘super-spreaders’ and repeat offenders” and “impose clear consequences.” They also should “amplify communications from trusted messengers and subject matter experts” (presumably those agreeing with Dr. Fauci and the CDC).
It’s fascinating to read the correspondence between Murthy and Nick Clegg, VP of Communications and Global Affairs at Facebook, to see how Clegg diplomatically pushes back on some of this, saying they’re “partners in the same battle” but that he “thought the way we were singled out over the past few days has been surprising and misleading, and I believe unproductive to our joint efforts, too.” Still, Clegg later seems to have resolved his concerns and settled into his role as co-censor, later writing that he “wanted to make sure you saw the steps we took just this past week to adjust policies on what we are removing...as well as steps we are taking to address the ‘disinfo dozen’: we removed 17 additional Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts tied to the disinfo dozen...(resulting in every entry of the disinfo dozen having had at least one such entity removed.”
Aren’t you intrigued to know who the “disinfo dozen” were and what they were daring to say in their social media posts? Were they saying that masks didn’t stop the spread? That vaccines didn’t guarantee protection against infection and transmission? That COVID might have started in the Wuhan lab? That mRNA vaccines were experimental and might be dangerous to some? “Misinformation” like THAT?
Well, we looked them up and found them identified in an article from the FORBES archives that supported “removing their platforms.” (Not that the writer was calling for censorship, he said as he called for censorship.) The heretics included Dr. Joseph Mercola and (yes) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Ironically, if you want to see some REAL misinformation about COVID vaccines, read this now-horribly-dated FORBES article, which is rife with it, such as that the vaccines are “highly effective” and are “the only realistic way to end the pandemic.”
Anyway, Clegg later writes to Murthy about “how we can partner in this next push to vaccinate children.”
There’s much more to this; I hope you’ll read the Judicial Watch press release at the link. Tom Fitton, president of JW, said, “These emails confirm that Facebook censored Americans at the direction of the Biden White House and Biden’s Surgeon General’s political operation. This is a massive violation of the First Amendment.”