Facebook executives planned to censor the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop to gain favor with what they expected to be an incoming Biden-Harris administration, a House Judiciary report revealed.
The FBI first tipped off Big Tech prior to The Post’s reports in Oct. 2020 that Russian agents were “preparing a strikingly similar document dump,” The Post first reported, citing the House document. The new congressional investigation by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government showed screenshots of communications from Facebook and Microsoft.
#REPORT: How the FBI “Prebunked” a True Story About the Biden Family’s Corruption in Advance of the 2020 Election
Read how the FBI and Big Tech worked to suppress allegations about the Biden family’s influence peddling in advance of the 2020 election: https://t.co/IE4GeiXs99 pic.twitter.com/IwHBvk1b4q
— Weaponization Committee (@Weaponization) October 30, 2024
One unnamed Microsoft employee wrote on Oct. 14, 2020 (the day The Post published the first expose on Hunter Biden’s foreign ties) that the “FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge,” according to the report.
“Obviously, our calls on this [New York Post story] could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything else,” a WhatsApp message from Facebook’s then-Vice President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, stated that same day, the report said. Clegg is currently President of Global Affairs for Meta, according to his LinkedIn page.
Internal communications from Facebook demonstrated how employees dismissed the outlet’s reporting because the content was “expected for hack and leak,” according to the report.
“Right on schedule,” another Facebook employee agreed, the investigation found.
HOW THE FBI “PREBUNKED” A TRUE STORY ABOUT THE BIDEN FAMILY’S CORRUPTION BEFORE THE 2020 ELECTION
The FBI knew Hunter Biden’s laptop was real & worked for MONTHS to prime Big Tech to censor the @nypost story.
Here’s how the FBI “prebunked” the biggest story of the election.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 30, 2024
“[Facebook employee] is not in touch with the FBI on this. I’ll connect with Maryland and [Facebook employee] will raise at the [FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force] meeting today,” another employee wrote, the report read.
Some documents included in the report implied that “key employees” within the companies knew their censorship would influence the 2020 election.
“But, when we get halted up to the hill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. Government] to plan for it,” a screenshot of a July 15, 2020 internal Facebook message showed.
Screenshot of Facebook communications from House Judiciary report.
The report asserts that the FBI met with tech companies at least 30 times during 2020 to discuss a possible “hack and leak.”
“Even after meeting with the FBI, social media platforms—particularly Facebook— doubled down on their decision to censor the New York Post story about Biden family influence peddling,” the report said. (RELATED: Missouri Launches Investigation Into Google For Allegedly Censoring Right-Wing Speech)
The Caller reached out to Meta and but has not heard back at the time of publication. The FBI declined to comment.
Not all Facebook employees agreed with the decision to censor the content, according to the report’s findings. Joel Kaplan, then the company’s Vice President of Global Policy, was skeptical, according to a screenshot. “Years of stories about the adult family members of Presidents would suggest that that content is newsworthy,” the screenshot read.
Five days after the Post’s story was published, 51 former officials in the intelligence community falsely labeled the story “Russian disinformation.”
Right on cue, just five days after the @nypost story was published, 51 former intelligence community members, organized by @SecBlinken and the Biden campaign, lied to the American people, incorrectly calling the story Russian disinformation.https://t.co/pWpQd8rkZ5
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) October 30, 2024
“This was just the beginning of Big Tech’s censorship at the Biden-Harris Administration’s behest,” Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said in a post online. “A few months later, Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon began caving to the Biden-Harris White House’s pressure to censor American speech, including true information and jokes.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation first confirmed in October 2020 that The Post’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop was authentic. The DCNF verified that an email sent to Hunter Biden from an advisor to Burisma’s board of directors detailing an introduction to then-Vice President Joe Biden in 2015 was credible.