December 4, 2024
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Just a few days ago, NATIONAL REVIEW ran an unfortunate column by legal analyst Andrew C. McCarthy advising the new Trump 47 administration against using “retributive” lawfare against those who spent years abusing the legal system and violating his rights to damage him politically. (We linked to his piece, and then to the Julie Kelly commentary that magnificently dismantled it). But yesterday, NR redeemed itself by posting a related story from James Lynch that shows just how far the FBI went to interfere with the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story. We’re not attorneys, but if McCarthy believes these people should be given the kid-glove treatment now, he is just wrong. They all need the book thrown at them.
As Lynch tells it, we know now that the FBI spent “the better part of a year” working with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to censor the Hunter laptop story as “Russian disinformation,” withholding information from them that would have told them the laptop was authentic. As you know, the FBI had been aware of its authenticity ever since they took possession of it in November 2019. According to FBI whistleblower Gary Shapley, they authenticated its content soon after, obtaining a warrant and retrieving the data from the laptop’s archive.
But they worked harder on misleading social media than we’d even known. This is the stunning new part, from NR’s story on a bombshell House Judiciary Committee report:
“After authenticating the device, the FBI team on the Hunter Biden (case) briefed the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) multiple times because of the case’s connection to Ukraine. Months before the laptop story broke, the FITF was aware that the FBI possessed Biden’s laptop, multiple FITF officials testified to the Judiciary Committee, according to the report.”
Many months ago, we reported on the media workshop held before the 2020 election by our intel community for media and social media platforms at the Alpine Institute. But as Lynch says, the Judiciary investigation found this was just part of the government’s influence, as the FITF met with them over 30 times (!), beginning in early 2020, to “pre-bunk” allegations that the Biden family had peddled influence to profit from the Biden name.
The FBI declined to comment for NATIONAL REVIEW. Wouldn’t you know.
According to the report, the FITF gave social media a heads-up about potential “hack-and-leak” operations, in the context of election security and potential foreign influence operations. In effect, they primed them to accept that the Hunter laptop story, when it came out, would be fake.
“In response,” the report reads, “some platforms even adopted new content moderation policies designed to address hacked materials.” FBI officials were popping champagne corks.
According to the Judiciary report, the warnings got quite specific, with the FBI warning “multiple times that a ‘hack-and-leak’ story involving Burisma and Hunter Biden was set to drop in October 2020,” Lynch writes.
To cite just one example of how social media staffers interpreted this, one from Facebook “predicted” in September 2020 that “We are likely to have in the next few weeks a leak or series of leaks about Biden’s supposed link to Burisma, where we won’t be able to prove they were ‘hacked,’ but where we will have responsible USG [U.S. government] players publicly saying this is part of a foreign influence operation.”
So when Miranda Devine came out with her NEW YORK POST story about the laptop, what were FB and Twitter employees supposed to think of it? They thought just what the administration wanted them to think, as they’d already been vaccinated against the truth. Just in case, the FITF had even scheduled meetings with both Facebook and Twitter on October 14, the day Devine’s story broke.
(We would add that the FBI surely had been spying on both Devine and her source Rudy Giuliani. How else would they have known the exclusive story was going to break?)
Most of the rest of this, you already know. As the report reads, “The FBI refused to acknowledge that it possessed and had authenticated the laptop.” It was a big con, which later allowed then-candidate Joe Biden to further con American voters when he denied the laptop was real. (Of course, the fake “classic earmarks” letter signed by 51 former intel officials also helped him carry off his lie.)
Interestingly, while FB and Twitter reflexively cracked down on the laptop story, Google left it alone, as their own in-house threat analysis found no evidence the laptop was the product of a hack. Can’t believe we’re saying this, but Google actually deserves a little credit here.
Still, this report from the Judiciary Committee offers even more on the extent to which the FBI tried to interfere in the 2020 election by suppressing real news. Later on, after Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into “X,” he fired the two executives responsible for censoring the Hunter laptop story. As reported by NATIONAL REVIEW, Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde expressed remorse during testimony last year about their decision to suppress the NY POST’s reporting.
For when you have time, here’s the full report from the House Judiciary Committee on how the CIA was involved in discrediting the Hunter laptop story. As you know, former deputy CIA Director Mike Morell (who was still under contract to the CIA at the time) coordinated the “classic earmarks” letter.
The committee’s pithy conclusion: “The infamous Hunter Biden statement had all the hallmarks of an intelligence community influence operation.” How sad that an agency that is supposed to work against our adversaries on foreign soil was turned against American voters.
If the Hunter Biden laptop had been totally buried, we would’ve been none the wiser about the Biden family “business,” casting our ballots in blissful ignorance, just as the left wanted us to. Yes, Hunter’s dirty mess came out, but President Biden has made sure his son won’t have to pay, at the same time trying to minimize the damage to the rest of the family, including himself.
(Side note: To those urging Trump not to take any action against the Deep State spooks responsible for this, recall that polls showed that if voters had known the laptop was real, Biden would have lost the 2020 election by a wide margin. Therefore, they are directly responsible not only for election interference and all the damage caused by Biden-Harris, but for handing Biden the power to cover up the biggest influence peddling scandal in American history, plus any other crimes his son might have committed over an 11-year period. Still want to let all these accomplices off scot-free?)
On Day 1 of Biden’s presidency, spokesperson Jen Psaki promised his administration would “bring transparency and truth back to the administration.” Honestly, this makes us think Karine Jean-Pierre gets a bad rap, because that statement from Psaki is just as ludicrous as anything ever uttered by KJP. The DAILY CALLER’s Katelynn Richardson has a good report on what Protect the Public Trust has to say about this administration’s lack of transparency and disregard of its own ethical promises.
She gives example after example…
In more backlash from President Biden’s all-inclusive pardon of his son, California Judge Mark Scarsi joins Special Counsel David Weiss and Delaware U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in less-than-heartfelt acceptance of this move. Like them, he simply “terminated” the case under his review without actually dismissing it.
This piece at REDSTATE is a must-read, as it includes Judge Scarsi’s scathing comments. Reading between the lines, he seems disgusted by the President’s complaints about Hunter being treated differently. The President might be granted the authority to issue a pardon, he says, but, “Nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.” That, and more, here…
The Hunter pardon has generated an avalanche of stories and opinions, so let’s run through a few...
John Nolte at BREITBART tells how the swampy media are trying to spin the real story. For example, the laughable NEW YORK TIMES tries to make you believe that Biden wasn’t lying; he just changed his mind. Nolte’s piece on this should be used in journalism classes, but it won’t be.
(Note: we see that more commentators are picking up on the fact that Hunter, now that he’s been pardoned, can no longer hide behind the Fifth Amendment.)
Joe Manchin has an idea about who Biden should pardon next, and it’s Donald Trump. Manchin says it would “balance the scales of justice.” That’s precisely why it won’t happen.
HOT AIR has more examples of leftists twisting their tiny brains into mini-pretzels trying to praise Biden for pardoning his son after praising him for NOT pardoning his son.
Okay, now let’s contrast the leniency shown to Hunter with the atrocious treatment of the January 6 protesters, most of whom did nothing more than walk peacefully (“parade”) through the Capitol building (or not even that).
Victims of the weaponized justice system are speaking out, as reported by Catherine Salgado at PJ MEDIA, who quotes our friend Brandon Straka of #WalkAway: “I’m still serving a sentence for standing outside the Capitol for eight minutes. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden could have murdered someone over the past decade, and nothing’s gonna happen.”
Here’s a compelling, must-read rationale for Trump pardoning ALL January 6 defendants, especially in light of the Hunter pardon. (Scott Adams, in his Tuesday podcast, happened to say this very thing. Perhaps he had read this.) We’re talking a blanket pardon for everyone, no matter what they allegedly did, because of the inherent political bias of the prosecutions. Defendants simply could not get a fair trial when they were labeled “domestic terrorists,” “Insurrectionists” and “enemies of the state.” Much more, some of it hilarious, at REDSTATE…
RELATED: Speaking of the weaponized “justice” system, let’s get in our Way-Back Machine and take a quick look at Trump’s first sham impeachment. It’s just been found that a ‘journalistic entity” called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP, formed in 2008), which helped shape the impeachment narrative against President Trump, is primarily funded by...drum roll, please!...U.S. government agencies.
Though we had never heard of it, this is apparently an extremely influential group, operating in over 60 countries and employing over 200 reporters. They partner with the WASHINGTON POST, THE NEW YORK TIMES and THE GUARDIAN. The head of the OCCRP says the government never exerted editorial control, but they did “veto top personnel hires, including editorial hires.” (Why, that would NEVER affect editorial content!) This report is an eye-opener.
ALSO RELATED: If you know anyone who thinks Kash Patel is somehow wrong for the job of FBI director, please tell them to listen to John Solomon’s interview with retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeff Danik, in which Danik enthusiastically endorses Patel and explains why.
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