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Disturbing new Twitter Files have revealed how an ex-FBI officer turned Twitter lawyer held a secret one-on-one briefing with the Bureau before pushing the social media network to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The revelations from journalist Michael Shellenberger Monday show how the FBI pushed Twitter staffers to receive top-level security clearance in July 2020.
They wanted to grant the firm’s staffers that access to show what they claimed were threats posed to the November 2020 presidential election by foreign interference.
At one point, FBI agent Elvis Chan acted surprised at being reminded that Twitter’s general counsel Jim Baker was the FBI’s former general counsel, and held that very clearance.
On September 15 2020, another FBI agent, Laura Dehmlow, requested she be allowed to give Baker a top secret briefing with no other staff present.
Baker’s shameless attempts to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story – which has since been proven to be accurate – where also shared by Shellenberger.
Monday’s Twitter Files release also showed that so many ex-FBI staffers had joined the social media network, there was now a private Slack channel set up just for them.
This was ostensibly to ‘onboard’ them at the firm and help show them the ropes – although the latest batch of Twitter files have sparked concerns about what else those former government operatives may have been up to.
Jim Baker, who before serving as deputy general counsel for Twitter held a similar role for the FBI
The most recent ‘Twitter Files’ also revealed how an FBI official-turned Twitter lawyer sent a letter thanking the Bureau for its help suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Baker, who before serving as deputy general counsel for Twitter held a similar role for the FBI, worked closely with Bureau when it teamed up with the social media company to fight what it called election interference from foreign nations.
Baker and the FBI worked together to try to push the narrative that the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop had been hacked from another source by Russian agents and placed on the laptop that was later found at a Delaware repair shop, and that the laptop never belonged to Biden at all.
As a result of those efforts Twitter blocked The New York Post’s reporting of the story on the social media website. At the end of the process, the latest Twitter files revealed that Baker and his team agreed to sign a letter to the FBI agents who worked on the project, thanking them for their efforts.
The revelations are the latest to come out of the Twitter Files, which Elon Musk has been releasing to demonstrate the social media company’s past censorship initiatives.
Elon Musk continues to find every avenue he can to slash costs at the social media company, which he acquired for $44billion in October
Today’s batch of Twitter Files were reviewed and released by journalist Michael Shellenberger, who along with journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss have been combing through piles of internal Twitter communications dating to before Musk’s takeover.
Shellenberger found that less than two hours after Hunter Biden’s attorney found out about the New York Post’s story about the laptop, FBI agent Elvis Chan sent a collection of documents to Twitter’s then-head of site integrity Yoel Roth.
Hours after The Post published their laptop story the next day, it was almost immediately censored by Twitter and thus undermined in the public eye.
The files showed that as Hunter Biden was earning millions in foreign business dealings, the FBI had advised Twitter to be on the lookout for Russian misinformation about him.
‘During all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation,’ Shellenberger wrote.
Despite those efforts by the FBI, Twitter executives found there had been ‘very little’ Russian activity that raised any suspicions.
‘Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity. E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 ‘largely inactive’ accounts ‘linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.’ They ‘had little reach & low follower accounts,’ he wrote.
One of the many lurid images that was found on Hunter Biden’s forgotten laptop
An image of Hunter Biden that was lifted from his forgotten laptop
Despite Twitter continually finding nothing suspicious, the FBI repeatedly reached out to the social media company and requested further information about their information, which Twitter declined to disclose.
But in July 2020 Chan arranged security clearances for Twitter officials so they can be told about election interference it is expecting to see in the Trump-Biden runoff.
Baker became involved at this time because he had previously held top secret security clearance during his work for the FBI – during which he had been involved in one of the Bureau’s investigations into Donald Trump.
Chan acted as if he were surprised when he was told Baker was at Twitter and had clearance, saying ”I don’t know how I forgot him.’
‘An odd claim, given Chan’s job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI,’ Shellenberger noted.
Baker was not the only former FBI staffer. According to one internal Twitter email reviewed by Stellenberger there were so many they had their own Slack channel and regularly communicated.
Once Baker was given clearance, Shellenberger wrote that the FBI fed him information intended to influence Roth and other Twitter executives into believing that the laptop story was hacked.
Though initially Roth continued to resist the idea that Twitter was experiencing any foreign interference, but October when The Post published the laptop story he conceded that the laptop might have been planted by as a ‘subtle leak operation.’
‘On Oct 14, shortly after @NYPost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, ‘it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else,’ but adds, ‘this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.” Shellenberger wrote.
Baker grabbed onto this statement by Roth, and harped on the idea that the laptop’s contents were in some way illegitimate.
‘Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy,’ Shellenberger said.
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