XPost: alt.politics.org.fbi, alt.politics.trump, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.misc   
   From: timekula@twincities.com   
      
   In the fall of 2020, just months before the presidential election, the   
   Federal Bureau of Investigation lied to the news media and social media   
   platforms in order to trick them into suppressing truthful information   
   about one of the candidates.   
      
   Are you outraged? Are you waiting to find out which candidate the FBI   
   protected before you decide how outraged you’re going to be?   
      
   If you’re following the steady release of the Twitter Files, the archive   
   of internal company communications that owner Elon Musk has opened to a   
   team of independent journalists, then you already know which candidate   
   federal law enforcement officials lied to protect. If you rely for news on   
   one of the organizations that was tricked, you’ll have to wait for them to   
   decide they’re ready to talk about it.   
      
   The FBI has reacted to the disclosures in the sketchiest way possible, by   
   calling them “misinformation.” Connoisseurs of government scandals will   
   recognize this as a particularly fine specimen of the non-denial denial.   
      
   As journalist and author Michael Shellenberger wrote Thursday, “FBI calls   
   Twitter Files ‘misinfo’ but doesn’t deny that it had Hunter Biden’s laptop   
   since December 2019; told Twitter a hack-and-leak involving Hunter may   
   occur in Oct 2020; was spying on Giuliani when he gave a copy of laptop   
   hard drive to NY Post.”   
      
   To fill in the details, a laptop computer belonging to then-candidate Joe   
   Biden’s son Hunter was dropped off for repair at a computer shop and   
   abandoned. The owner of the shop took possession of it, observed evidence   
   of criminal activity on the hard drive and contacted the FBI. The Delaware   
   office of the FBI issued a subpoena for the laptop and the hard drive and   
   took possession of them in December 2019.   
      
   Having heard nothing from the FBI by the following August, the computer   
   shop owner gave a copy of the hard drive to former New York Mayor Rudy   
   Giuliani, who was President Donald Trump’s personal attorney. Giuliani   
   gave a copy of the hard drive to the New York Post, and the FBI knew this   
   because the bureau had Giuliani under surveillance.   
      
   What was on the laptop? Emails that showed evidence of then Vice President   
   Joe Biden’s awareness and involvement in business dealings his son had   
   with entities tied to foreign governments, including China. A lot of money   
   changed hands, a lot of hand-shaking meetings took place in U.S.   
   government buildings, a lot of thank-you notes were sent. Hunter Biden’s   
   business deals appear to have been based entirely on influence peddling,   
   since he had no prior experience or involvement in the types of businesses   
   that were paying him while his dad was vice president.   
      
   The New York Post published its blockbuster story on Oct. 14, 2020. Some   
   Americans already had ballots and were voting by mail.   
      
   But the story was shot down nearly everywhere. An Oct. 17 “analysis” from   
   NPR was typical, calling the story “questionable” and asserting that the   
   emails “have not been verified as authentic.” NPR’s David Folkenflik wrote   
   that the story was “marked more by red flags than investigative rigor.”   
      
   Now we know that the FBI aggressively sought to discredit the story both   
   before and after it ran.   
      
   “The FBI basically came to us, was like, ‘Hey … you should be on high   
   alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016   
   election. There’s about to be some kind of dump similar to that,’”   
   Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year.   
      
   Much more is revealed in the Twitter Files, dug out by Shellenberger and   
   others. The FBI ran a full-blown influence operation to convince U.S. news   
   and social media outlets that the scoop they were about to read about the   
   Biden family was merely Russian propaganda.   
      
   As just one example, in September 2020, NPR’s former CEO, Vivian Schiller,   
   organized an event at the Aspen Institute that was billed as a “tabletop   
   exercise” on how to handle a potential “Hack-and-Dump” operation related   
   to then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The exercise was named “The   
   Burisma Leak,” referencing the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter   
   to serve on its board.   
      
   The “confidential” document, now published from Twitter’s internal   
   communications, describes the day-by-day news reporting and commentary   
   that would hypothetically follow from the leak of the “hacked” material,   
   leading up to “Day Eleven: Thursday, October 15th, The second presidential   
   debate.”   
      
   Shellenberger reported that the exercise was attended by Meta/Facebook’s   
   head of security policy and the top national security reporters for The   
   New York Times, the Washington Post and others. “The goal was to shape how   
   the media covered it — and how social media carried it,” he wrote.   
      
   The New York Post published its blockbuster story on Oct. 14, 2020. Sure   
   enough, Twitter locked the newspaper’s account and blocked users from   
   sharing the link, even in direct messages. Facebook also took action to   
   suppress the reach of the story. Major news organizations threw shade at   
   the story and at the Post. When Trump brought up the story during a   
   presidential debate, Biden called him a liar and said intelligence   
   professionals had stated it was Russian propaganda.   
      
   Since then, the formerly skeptical news organizations, most recently CBS   
   News, have verified and admitted that the laptop and the emails were   
   authentic and not hacked.   
      
   The FBI knew that the whole time, and continues to mislead the American   
   people about its role in the suppression of truthful information   
   immediately before a presidential election.   
      
   Congress has to do something about this. Soon.   
      
   Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley   
      
   https://www.dailynews.com/2022/12/25/fbi-suppression-of-the-hunter-biden-   
   laptop/   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)