The release of chat logs by the House Judiciary Committee has unveiled a significant incident involving the FBI and the Hunter Biden laptop story, which emerged just before the 2020 presidential election.
On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published a report on the laptop, but the FBI swiftly moved to silence any internal acknowledgment of the story's authenticity. Employees were instructed not to discuss the "Biden matter," and an analyst who had confirmed the story's validity to Twitter, now known as X, was subjected to a "gag order" by a senior FBI lawyer.
According to The Post Millennial, the analyst faced reprimand from FBI staff, who expressed frustration in internal communications, noting that "he wont (sic) shut up." This incident highlights the tension within the agency as it grappled with the implications of the laptop story. Laura Dehmlow, an official from the FBI's foreign influence task force, provided testimony in a closed-door deposition in 2023. She revealed that during a call with Twitter, an analyst confirmed the laptop's authenticity, only to be interrupted by an FBI attorney who insisted on withholding further information about "the laptop's provenance."
Dehmlow's testimony further disclosed that "somebody from Twitter essentially asked whether the laptop was real," to which an FBI participant confirmed, "yes, it was," before another participant interjected with "no further comment." This internal deliberation over the laptop's authenticity and the agency's communication strategy with social media companies was documented in a report by Chair Jim Jordan. The report also noted that the FBI had been aware of the laptop's authenticity since November 2019.
In response to the controversy surrounding the laptop, President Donald Trump took decisive action against former intelligence officials who had previously dismissed the laptop as Russian disinformation. He revoked their security clearances and barred them from accessing secure facilities.
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