Facebook expected to win favor with a potential Biden White House by censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, according to a new report from Congress.
For months before the 2020 election, the FBI had warned social media companies like Facebook to expect Russian propaganda targeting the Biden family.
The FBI's "pre-bunking" influenced Big Tech companies to censor the New York Post's legitimate reporting about Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings, according to a report from the House Judiciary's Committee on the Weaponization of Government.
Starting in early 2020, the FBI held over 30 meetings to warn social media companies about a foreign influence operation targeting Hunter Biden and his ties to the Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings.
Internal communications show that Facebook believed the Post's October 2020 reporting fulfilled the FBI's "exact" warnings about "content expected for a hack and leak."
“Right on schedule,” one Facebook employee wrote on October 14, 2020.
"Is this the Oct surprise everyone was waiting for?” wrote another.
Facebook’s then-vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg wrote that the company's response to the Post's reporting would impact Facebook's relationship with a hypothetical Biden administration.
“Obviously, our calls on this could colour [sic] the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else…” Clegg wrote to vice president of global public policy Joel Kaplan.
Around the same time, dozens of intelligence agents signed a misleading letter suggesting Hunter Biden's laptop was "Russian disinformation." Then-candidate Joe Biden cited the letter to dismiss the Post's reporting as bogus during a presidential debate with Donald Trump.
The FBI had in fact obtained the laptop's hard drive in late 2019 from a Delaware computer repair man.
After the 2020 election, Biden's laptop was gradually acknowledged as authentic by the legacy media. The Justice Department used the device as evidence in Hunter Biden's trial on felony gun charges in June.
In a rare mea culpa, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg issued a public apology this year for censoring content about COVID-19 to please the Biden White House. Zuckerberg also acknowledged the Hunter Biden laptop story was "not Russian disinformation and in retrospect, we should not have demoted the story."
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
