In his eagerness to ingratiate himself with mega-podcaster Joe Rogan, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg inadvertently revealed that the FBI had been extra specific than beforehand identified in its non-public warning about Russian disinformation shortly earlier than The Publish printed the Hunter Biden laptop story, which the social media firm suppressed earlier than the 2020 election.
Whereas Fb gained’t say precisely what the FBI instructed them, it has instructed The Publish that Hunter Biden was not talked about. But it surely refuses to rule out whether or not Joe Biden or Ukraine have been raised within the FBI’s defensive briefing to Fb weeks earlier than the Oct. 14, 2020, publication of our story implicating the then-Democratic presidential candidate in his son’s profitable Ukrainian influence-peddling schemes.
“Mainly, the background right here is the FBI mainly got here to us, some of us on our group, and was like, ‘Hey, simply so you recognize try to be on excessive alert,’ ” stated Zuckerberg. “ ‘We thought there was numerous Russian propaganda within the 2016 election, we have now it on discover that mainly there’s about to be some form of dump that’s much like that so simply be vigilant.’ ”
When Rogan requested if the FBI had instructed Fb to be on guard particularly for our story about Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, Zuckerberg claimed, slightly unconvincingly that he did “not bear in mind . . . particularly” however “it mainly match the sample.”
In response to questions from The Publish, final week Fb refused to offer the date of the FBI non-public briefing or particulars of the “sample” the FBI instructed them to look out for.
Since our story had nothing to do with Russian disinformation, what made Fb suppose it was the “dump” the FBI warned them about? We requested Fb: “Was there point out made within the FBI briefing of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Ukraine or a laptop computer?”
Fb’s reply was curious. “The FBI shared common warnings about overseas interference — nothing particular about Hunter Biden.”
Word the omissions.
Suspicious timeline
No matter was stated, the briefing should have been particular sufficient for Fb to acknowledge instantly that our story was precisely what the FBI was warning about and transfer at report pace to throttle it. At 11:10 a.m. the morning the story went live, Democratic operative Andy Stone, Fb’s communications supervisor, issued an announcement on Twitter saying “we’re lowering its distribution on our platform” whereas the story is “reality checked by Fb’s third-party reality checking companions.”
All morning the bombshell story had been the topic of frenetic commentary from journalists on twitter. However Stone’s announcement killed it stone lifeless. Twitter adopted Fb’s lead and locked The Publish’s account for 2 weeks.
Mission achieved. Polls present that the end result of the election could have been totally different if the story had not been censored.
The FBI’s involvement within the censorship amounted to election interference, and as we have now learned since from whistleblowers, the interference by a cabal of FBI brokers to suppress derogatory details about the Biden household prolonged nicely past The Publish’s story.
So, the query is, how did the FBI find out about our story weeks earlier than it was printed, possibly even earlier than we have been instructed concerning the laptop computer by Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer Bob Costello?
Have been they spying on John Paul Mac Isaac, the proprietor of the Delaware Mac restore store the place Hunter had deserted his laptop computer in April 2019? Mac Isaac believed he was underneath surveillance after he first contacted the FBI on October 9, 2019, through his father, to inform them he had the laptop computer and was involved about proof of crimes he believed it contained. The FBI’s response was oddly hostile.
What adopted was a curious go to to his Delaware dwelling by FBI brokers Mike DeMeo and Joshua Wilson of the FBI’s Baltimore workplace a month later, and once more to his retailer on December 9, this time with a subpoena for Hunter’s water-damaged laptop computer and a tough drive clone of its contents which Mac Isaac had made.
The case ID on the receipt the FBI gave him was linked to a money-laundering case out of the Baltimore area workplace. What we didn’t know till after the election was that the US lawyer in Delaware, David Weiss, had been investigating Hunter since 2018 over alleged tax evasion, cash laundering and violations of the International Agent Registration Act (FARA), and the Baltimore FBI workplace supposedly was conducting the related investigation.
Rudy’s position
We don’t know whether or not Mac Isaac was underneath FBI surveillance. However we don’t have to invest about Rudy Giuliani.
We all know the FBI spied on the previous mayor’s cloud for 2 years from Could, 2019, a month after he started working as then president Donald Trump’s private lawyer. A 12 months after raiding Giuliani’s Upper East Side apartment final April, ostensibly over FARA violations, the FBI returned all his gadgets, with out charging him, and instructed the New York Occasions he was now not underneath investigation.
So the FBI had entry to all Giuliani’s emails and iMessages for 2 years. Have been they spying on Giuliani so as to spy on Trump?
Sadly for them, Trump hardly ever writes emails or texts so that they got here up empty there. However it’s doable that they noticed the e-mail to Giuliani from his lawyer Bob Costello at 4.28 p.m. on Aug. 27, 2020, telling him of Mac Isaac’s “superb discovery.”
“I’m arranging to get a whole copy of the exhausting drive because it incorporates a lot of supplies past the Ukraine stuff in keeping with the proprietor . . . The 5 emails he despatched present that Hunter was immediately concerned in orchestrating his father Joe Biden’s intervention to cease the Ukrainian investigation of Burisma,” Costello wrote. “I imagine that we’re on the verge of a sport altering manufacturing of indeniable proof of the corruption we have now lengthy suspected involving the Biden’s and Ukraine — however there’s extra.”
Costello then forwarded Mac Isaac’s unique e mail addressed to Giuliani, which described how Hunter got here into his retailer raveled and reeking of alcohol, and attaching a replica of the work order with Hunter’s signature, the FBI receipt and subpoena.
The FBI had entry to all of it. They’d had the laptop computer for 9 months and so they knew Mac Isaac was authentic.
We all know they appeared on the laptop computer as a result of Mac Isaac obtained a sequence of calls from an agent the day after they seized it, asking how you can plug it in.
‘Similar playbook’
As we all know now from whistleblowers who got here ahead to Sen. Chuck Grassley, the FBI obstructed its personal investigation of the laptop computer.
Timothy Thibault, an FBI assistant particular agent in cost on the Washington area workplace, has been on depart since Grassley began elevating issues about his suppression of unfavorable details about Hunter earlier than the 2020 election.
The whistleblowers additionally told Grassley that the FBI had “developed details about Hunter Biden’s legal monetary and associated exercise . . . verified and verifiable derogatory info” however that was “falsely labeled as disinformation” by FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten in August 2020.
Auten has been recognized because the analyst who didn’t alert his colleagues in 2016 to the “inconsistencies” within the phony Steele file, cooked up by the Clinton marketing campaign to assert Trump was a Russian agent.
The identical playbook was being utilized to the Hunter Biden info.
