The FBI’s already-damaged reputation took two more hits this week.
Facebook chieftain Mark Zuckerberg confessed to podcaster Joe Rogan that the FBI warned the social-media behemoth that Russia was spreading disinformation to affect the 2020 presidential election. Facebook accepted the false claim, and limited the reach of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Meanwhile, in a letter to Michael Horowitz, inspector general of the Justice Department, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) revealed that whistleblowers have accused the bureau of purposely deep-sixing the laptop probe — again, just before the 2020 presidential election.
Taken together, the new revelations mean the FBI didn’t just involve Facebook in a conspiracy to protect the Biden presidential campaign from the negative publicity surrounding the president’s son. Agents inside the bureau worked to squash an official investigation for the same reason.
Biden’s campaign had to be protected from the Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell.”
Facebook Interference
It’s one thing for the leftist media to cover for Biden. Everyone expects it. No one was surprised when the media falsely claimed the laptop story was “Russian disinformation” and refused to cover it. No one was surprised that top execs at CNN were caught on tape in a discussion about spiking the story. Nor was anyone surprised that the media buried the Biden-Burisma and Biden-Beijing scandals.
The FBI, though, is another matter. It, too, purposely tamped down the laptop revelations, which showed that Hunter Biden is a sex and crack addict who cavorts with prostitutes and is careless with guns.
That’s where Rogan comes in. On his Joe Rogan Experience podcast, he asked Zuckerberg about the laptop story and how Facebook handled it. To his credit, Zuckerberg confessed: Just as the laptop story exploded, the FBI “warned” Facebook that Russia might be trying to influence the election with “disinformation.”
Noting that Facebook didn’t completely squash the story like leftist Twitter, Zuckerberg said the bureau “came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump … that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”
Facebook complied, Zuckerberg said:
I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being … determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it, so you could still share it, you could still consume it.…
Basically the ranking and news feed was a little bit less, so fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.
When Rogan asked “by what percentage,” Zuckerberg said he didn’t know, but “it’s meaningful.”
Zuckerberg said he didn’t remember if the FBI mentioned the laptop story, but that the story “basically fit the pattern.”
GOP Senator Josh Hawley put the Zuckerberg’s admission this way:
So the FBI preemptively warned Facebook off Hunter Biden laptop reporting. This same agency effectively laundered Russian disinfo in the 2016 election in the form of Steele dossier. And later lied to a court to get wiretaps
Johnson Letter
Johnson’s letter reiterates charges from Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa in his letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI chief Christopher Wray. In July, Grassley wrote that whistleblowers reported “a scheme in place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation.”
Since then, more bureau employees have come forward.
“My office heard from individuals with knowledge of the FBI’s apparent corruption,” Johnson wrote:
After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, “you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop” and that the FBI is “not going to change the outcome of the election again.” Further, these whistleblowers allege that the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election — potentially a year after the FBI obtained the laptop in December 2019.
If Johnson’s allegations are true, they mean FBI agents conspired to interfere with the 2020 presidential election, just as they conspired in 2016 to defeat then candidate Donald Trump with the Clinton-conceived Russia Collusion Hoax.
And even after Trump won, FBI officials discussed a coup using the 25th Amendment to falsely claim Trump was incapable of fulfilling his duties.
H/T: Ace of Spades, PJMedia, Fox News