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Controversial FBI agent Elvis Chan has denied he warned Twitter‘s then-security chief about a supposed Russian operation to hack and leak false information about Hunter Biden.
Yoel Roth had claimed in a sworn declaration to the Federal Election Committee in December 2020 that he felt compelled to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and label it as coming from ‘hacked materials’ based on the information FBI agents had given him at these weekly meetings.
‘I was told in those meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter.
‘I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,’ he said as Twitter tried to defend itself against a complaint by the Tea Party Patriots Foundation that its censorship was an ‘in-kind’ campaign contribution to then candidate Joe Biden.
But Chan, a supervisory special agent for the Bureau, insisted in a deposition in November that none of the agents specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden story as one of the possible ‘hack-and-leak’ operations.
He testified as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration, accusing the now president of organizing meetings in San Francisco for as many as seven DC-based FBI agents in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Those FBI agents would then meet with Big Tech officials to remove ‘disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content on social media platforms… under the guise of combating misinformation,’ the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri claim.
Disgraced FBI agent Elvis Chan denied in a deposition that the FBI ever mentioned Hunter Biden’s laptop as the result of a possible ‘hack-and-leak’ operation
His statement directly contradicts claims Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former security chief, made in a sworn declaration in December 2020
Under questioning by Solicitor General John Sauer late last month, Chan said he ‘would interpret’ what Roth said in his sworn testimony ‘differently.’
He insisted he had never discussed Hunter Biden’s laptop as being subject to a ‘hack-and-leak operation’ at weekly meetings with content moderation officials at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Reddit and even LinkedIn.
‘In my estimation, we never discussed Hunter Biden specifically with Twitter,’ he said. ‘And so the way I read that is that there are hack-and-leak operations, and then at the time, I believe he flagged one of the potential current events that were happening ahead of the elections.’
Chan then explained that because he does not actually remember discussing the Hunter Biden laptop ‘we didn’t discuss it.
‘So this would have been something that he would have just thought of as a hot-button issue on his own.’
Chan also revealed in his testimony that the FBI now plans to hold more upcoming meetings with Big Tech officials ahead of the 2024 presidential election — and this time will include representatives from Apple and the Wikimedia Foundation.
‘They were added because they are a cloud infrastructure company,’ he said of adding Apple to the discussions.
‘And we believe the tactical information, specifically indicators that we shared with them related to foreign-state-sponsored actors might pop-up on any screening they do on iCloud.’
Hunter Biden’s forgotten laptop had revealed some raunchy photos of the now First Son
The story about his laptop — which revealed close ties to Chinese bureaucrats — was promptly squandered on Twitter
Chan also spoke of his close relations with the so-called ‘FBI lovers’ who had tried to discredit then-President Trump with claims that his administration had close ties to the Kremlin.
He admitted he knew Peter Strzok, a former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence for the Bureau, as well as Lisa Page, an FBI attorney.
Peter Strzok, a former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence for the Bureau, was fired after it was revealed he was texting his girlfriend about his disdain for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump
The two were secretly having an affair at the time, and had texted each other about their disdain for a Trump presidency even as they were investigating whether his 2016 campaign colluded with or was aided to victory by Russia.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller later pulled Strzok from the probe in late 2017 to protect its integrity after his texts became public.
In his testimony last month, Chan said he had met with them to discuss Yahoo! News’ leak that Carter Page was being investigated for his ties to Russia.
Page immediately left the Trump campaign in the aftermath, while two campaign spokesmen denied he had ever been a part of it.
Chan said he never discussed the ‘prospect of a Russian “hack-and-leak” operation with the two Feds, but noted that Jim Baker — an attorney who previously worked for the FBI but is now working for Twitter — had been at the meetings.
Baker is now under fire for meeting secretly with some of his former colleagues at the Bureau before coercing Roth to label the Hunter Biden laptop story as ‘disinformation.’
He later sent a letter thanking the FBI for its help in suppressing the story.
Jim Baker, who before serving as deputy general counsel for Twitter held a similar role for the FBI, is now under fire for meeting secretly with some of his former colleagues at the Bureau before coercing Roth to label the Hunter Biden laptop story as ‘disinformation’
Chan’s testimony tells a different story from what Roth has claimed back in 2020 — and what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan years later.
He said in August that Facebook officials attended that same meeting — and figured the agents were insinuating that the Hunter Biden story was the result of one of these ‘hack-and-leak’ operations as well.
Zuckerberg said: ‘The background here is the FBI basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like “Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert … we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.”‘
At that point, he said: We have it on notice that basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’
Zuckerberg admitted that the FBI did not name the Hunter Biden story specifically, but it ‘fit the pattern’ of what the agency had discussed.
The Meta CEO then went onto say that he regretted the decision to suppress the story.
‘It turned out after the fact — the fact-checkers looked into it, and no one was able to say it was false,’ he said.
‘So basically, it had this period where it was getting less distribution.’
Speaking to podcaster Joe Rogan in August, Mark Zuckerberg said he also thought the Feds were insinuating that the Hunter Biden story was part of a Russian plot
In a statement afterwards, the FBI said the agency ‘routinely notifies’ social media companies about potential security threats.
The press release read in part: ‘The FBI has provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors.’
The agency added they cannot ‘ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received.’
It also read: ‘[The FBI] routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats,’ reports NBC News.
Meta later responded to the FBI’s statement on Twitter saying: ‘The FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference-nothing specific about Hunter Biden.’
But on Monday, journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed how the FBI met with Jim Baker ahead of the 2020 presidential election before he convinced Roth that the materials from Hunter Biden’s laptop could be ‘Russian disinformation.’
The trove of documents Shellenberger released detailed how several former FBI officials were joining the ranks at Twitter, and those left at the Bureau had tried to get top-level security clearance for Twitter officials so they could be notified of any alleged election interference.
Agents even allegedly paid Twitter executives $3.5million to squander the story.
As a result of these efforts, Shellenberger said, Twitter had removed all references to the New York Post’s story detailing Hunter Biden’s business dealings with China less than two hours after it was published.
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