Twitter Files Part 7: The Guns Begin to Smoke

This starts to bring it all together.

This isn't smoking gun proof yet.

But this begins to show us where to find the smoking guns.

And it tells us that yes, the FBI deliberately ran a coordinated disinformation campaign against the people of the United States of America, and a coup against the lawful government of the United States of America that the people had elected.

Michael Shellenberger @ShellenbergerMD

In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.

The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him

On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden's laptop.

By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to
@nypost

Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden's lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.

Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.

7. At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter's then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter.

Are you kidding me?

So in other words, the FB knew the Post was about to publish, so they directed Chan to start priming Twitter to suppress the story.

8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden's son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.

9. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.

Why is that? What, exactly, happened?

This might be what the "Intelligence" Community's pressure on Twitter to recognize state propaganda efforts was all about -- to get them to accept that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian Disinformation, without having to go on the record to make that false claim.

Watch them shrilly scream about foreign propaganda in the lead-up to the Hunter Biden laptop story:

18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process.

19. Pressure had been growing:

"We have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff)."

20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren't finding anything worth reporting.

"[W]e haven't yet identified activity that we'd typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context)."

The "Intelligence" Community is basically calling Twitter a liar for not finding any foreign propaganda efforts on Trump's behalf.

Gee, I wonder if Twitter will attempt to appease them by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story when it drops.

The FBI is very serious about stopping these "threats," such as stories that may hurt the Candidate Who's Supposed to Win:

21. Despite Twitter's pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.

22. Then, in July 2020, the FBI's Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.

23. On August 11, 2020, the FBI's Chan shares information with Twitter's Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI's secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.

This next section makes me suspect even strongly that James Baker was used by the FBI as an agent of influence, and that he's lying about what he did at Twitter and who he talked to when he was there.

25. In Aug, 2020, FBI's Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance?

When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, "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.

26. Who is Jim Baker? He's former general counsel of the FBI (2014-18 ) & one of the most powerful men in the U.S. intel community.

Baker has moved in and out of government for 30 years, serving stints at CNN, Bridgewater (a $140 billion asset management firm) and Brookings

Brookings is a Hillary Clinton foreign policy disinformation shop which pushed Russiagate hard. Multiple Russiagate figures worked there, including Iggy Danchenko.

27. As general counsel of the FBI, Baker played a central role in making the case internally for an investigation of Donald Trump

28. Baker wasn't the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter.

Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.

29. As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees -- "Bu alumni" -- working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.

30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth.

In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute "tabletop exercise" on a potential "Hack-and-Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden

The goal was to shape how the media covered it -- and how social media carried it

31. The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News

Attendees included Meta/FB's head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for @nytimes @wapo and others

32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.

They also agree to create a "virtual war room" for "all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI" [Office of the Director of National Intelligence].

In the next section, you'll see that Yoel Roth doesn't think the Laptop story is foreign disinformation, just a "subtle leak."

But James Baker, a member of the Clinton Mob and the FBI swamp that saved her, keeps pushing the "foreign hack and leak" claim, despite knowing for a fact that that is a lie.

And then suddenly Twitter is newly committed to this "foreign hack and leak" disinformation cover story.

Think maybe James Baker relayed the FBI's cover story to them?

33. Then, on Sept 15, 2020 the FBI's Laura Dehmlow, who heads up the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, request to give a classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present.

34. 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."

35. In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15.

36. And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019.

37. As for the FBI, it likely would have taken a few *hours* for it to confirm that the laptop had belonged to Hunter Biden. Indeed, it only took a few days for journalist @peterschweizer to prove it.

38. By 10 am, Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story

"The suggestion from experts - which rings true - is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware"

Experts?

Which experts do you mean, Twitter?

Do you mean James Baker and Elvis Chan?

39. At 3:38 pm that same day, October 14, Baker arranges a phone conversation with Matthew J. Perry in the Office of the General Counsel of the FBI

Well done, boys! Your conspiracy against the people and government of the United States worked perfectly.

40. The influence operation persuaded Twitter execs that the Hunter Biden laptop did *not* come from a whistleblower.

One linked to a Hill article, based on a WaPo article, from Oct 15, which falsely suggested that Giuliani's leak of the laptop had something to do with Russia.

I'd like to know who wrote that story, and who the "sources" were.

In the next section, Shellenberger reminds you that the FBI then arranged for a fake "defensive intelligence briefing" to Republican Senators Grassley and Johnson, and then leaked the existence of that briefing to the media.

The purpose of this fake briefing was to discredit them and their claims about the laptop story -- the FBI is now framing Senators. The disinformation was, "We told them this was all a Russian lie and showed them the proof that it was but these Russian agents are still out there peddling this Russian lie; don't listen to them. They're Russian stooges."

Of course, the FBI had no evidence the laptop came from Russia. They had proof it was real and came only from Hunter Biden and his Russian Hookers.

It was all part of the disinformation operation -- discrediting the opposition.

41. There is evidence that FBI agents have warned elected officials of foreign influence with the primary goal of leaking the information to the news media. This is a political dirty trick used to create the perception of impropriety.

42. In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of "Russian interference" into their investigation of Hunter Biden.

The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.

43. "The unnecessary FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation."

44. Notably, then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker was investigated *twice,* in 2017 and 2019, for leaking information to the news media.

"You're saying he's under criminal investigation? That's why you're not letting him answer?" Meadows asked.

"Yes"

He means that Baker was under criminal investigation for illegally leaking.

45. In the end, the FBI's influence campaign aimed at executives at news media, Twitter, & other social media companies worked: they censored & discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story.

By Dec. 2020, Baker and his colleagues even sent a note of thanks to the FBI for its work.

46. The FBI's influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.

"I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!" reports an associate of Jim Baker in early 2021.

47. And the pressure from the FBI on social media platforms continues

In Aug 2022, Twitter execs prepared for a meeting with the FBI, whose goal was "to convince us to produce on more FBI EDRs"

EDRs are an "emergency disclosure request," a warrantless search.

In response to the Twitter Files revelation of high-level FBI agents at Twitter, @Jim_Jordan said, "I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People."

Anyone who reads the Twitter Files, regardless of their political orientation, should share those concerns.

/END

Thanks to Jane D'oh for the tip.

posted by Ace at 02:42 PM

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