Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Dec 19, 2022 • 50 tweets • 25 min read • Read on X

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1. TWITTER FILES: PART 7

The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop

How the FBI & intelligence community discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020

In Twitter Files #6, we saw the FBI relentlessly seek to exercise influence over Twitter, including over its content, its users, and its data.

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857534737072128?s=20&t=wWOBReiY21kHb8JRq5ng7Q

In Twitter Files #7, we present evidence pointing to an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies, to discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and after it was published.

The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him

On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden's laptop.

nypost.com/2020/10/14/ema…

By Aug 2020, Mac Isaac still had not heard back from the FBI, even though he had discovered evidence of criminal activity. And so he emails Rudy Giuliani, who was under FBI surveillance at the time. In early Oct, Giuliani gives it to @nypost

nypost.com/2020/10/14/ema…

Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.

Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day.

7. At 9:22 pm ET (6:22 PT), FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan sends 10 documents to Twitter’s then-Head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter.

8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate.

9. And yet, within hours, Twitter and other social media companies censor the NY Post article, preventing it from spreading and, more importantly, undermining its credibility in the minds of many Americans.

Why is that? What, exactly, happened?

10. On Dec 2, @mtaibbi described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article.

Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms

https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1598822959866683394?s=20&t=TKRRs0lYQO4Hk57Xhu6C9g

11. First, it's important to understand that Hunter Biden earned *tens of millions* of dollars in contracts with foreign businesses, including ones linked to China's government, for which Hunter offered no real work.
Here's an overview by investigative journalist @peterschweizer

12. And yet, during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian “hack and leak” operation.

This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.

fec.gov/files/legal/mu…

13. They did the same to Facebook, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “The FBI basically came to us [and] was like, ‘Hey... you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in 2016 election. There's about to be some kind of dump similar to that.'"

14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel?

No, they weren't

“Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov.

15. Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity.

E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 “largely inactive” accounts “linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.” They “had little reach & low follower accounts."

16. In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform

"We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim” by @oneunderscore__ @nbc News of foreign-controlled bots.

“Our review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort…”

17. After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter's Roth says, "The article makes a lot of insinuations... but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction).”

18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process.

19. Pressure had been growing:

“We have seen a sustained (If uncoordinated) effort by the IC [intelligence community] to push us to share more info & change our API policies. They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).”

20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting.

“[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).”

21. Despite Twitter’s pushback, the FBI repeatedly requests information from Twitter that Twitter has already made clear it will not share outside of normal legal channels.

22. Then, in July 2020, the FBI’s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections.

23. On August 11, 2020, the FBI's Chan shares information with Twitter's Roth relating to the Russian hacking organization, APT28, through the FBI's secure, one-way communications channel, Teleporter.

24. Recently, Yoel Roth told @karaswisher that he had been primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out.

When it did, Roth said, "It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells."

25. In Aug, 2020, FBI’s Chan asks Twitter: does anyone there have top secret clearance?

When someone mentions Jim Baker, Chan responds, "I don't know how I forgot him" — an odd claim, given Chan's job is to monitor Twitter, not to mention that they worked together at the FBI.

26. Who is Jim Baker? He's former general counsel of the FBI (2014-18) & one of the most powerful men in the U.S. intel community.

Baker has moved in and out of government for 30 years, serving stints at CNN, Bridgewater (a $140 billion asset management firm) and Brookings

27. As general counsel of the FBI, Baker played a central role in making the case internally for an investigation of Donald Trump

wsj.com/articles/fbi-t…

28. Baker wasn't the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter.

Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.

29. As of 2020, there were so many former FBI employees — "Bu alumni" — working at Twitter that they had created their own private Slack channel and a crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals.

30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth.

In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential "Hack-and-Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden

The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it

31. The organizer was Vivian Schiller, the fmr CEO of NPR, fmr head of news at Twitter; fmr Gen. mgr of NY Times; fmr Chief Digital Officer of NBC News

Attendees included Meta/FB's head of security policy and the top nat. sec. reporters for @nytimes @wapo and others

32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.

They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence].

33. Then, on Sept 15, 2020 the FBI’s Laura Dehmlow, who heads up the Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, request to give a classified briefing for Jim Baker, without any other Twitter staff, such as Yoel Roth, present.

34. On Oct 14, shortly after @nypost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, “it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else," but adds, “this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.”

35. In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15.

36. And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019.

37. As for the FBI, it likely would have taken a few *hours* for it to confirm that the laptop had belonged to Hunter Biden. Indeed, it only took a few days for journalist @peterschweizer to prove it.

38. By 10 am, Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story

“The suggestion from experts - which rings true - is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware”

39. At 3:38 pm that same day, October 14, Baker arranges a phone conversation with Matthew J. Perry in the Office of the General Counsel of the FBI

40. The influence operation persuaded Twitter execs that the Hunter Biden laptop did *not* come from a whistleblower.

One linked to a Hill article, based on a WaPo article, from Oct 15, which falsely suggested that Giuliani’s leak of the laptop had something to do with Russia.

41. There is evidence that FBI agents have warned elected officials of foreign influence with the primary goal of leaking the information to the news media. This is a political dirty trick used to create the perception of impropriety.

42. In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of “Russian interference” into their investigation of Hunter Biden.

The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.

grassley.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…

43. “The unnecessary FBI briefing provided the Democrats and liberal media the vehicle to spread their false narrative that our work advanced Russian disinformation.”

44. Notably, then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker was investigated *twice,* in 2017 and 2019, for leaking information to the news media.

“You’re saying he’s under criminal investigation? That’s why you’re not letting him answer?” Meadows asked.

“Yes”

politico.com/story/2019/01/…

45. In the end, the FBI's influence campaign aimed at executives at news media, Twitter, & other social media companies worked: they censored & discredited the Hunter Biden laptop story.

By Dec. 2020, Baker and his colleagues even sent a note of thanks to the FBI for its work.

46. The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.

“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” reports an associate of Jim Baker in early 2021.

47. And the pressure from the FBI on social media platforms continues

In Aug 2022, Twitter execs prepared for a meeting with the FBI, whose goal was “to convince us to produce on more FBI EDRs"

EDRs are an “emergency disclosure request,” a warrantless search.

In response to the Twitter Files revelation of high-level FBI agents at Twitter, @Jim_Jordan said, “I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People.”

nypost.com/2022/12/17/twi…

Anyone who reads the Twitter Files, regardless of their political orientation, should share those concerns.

/END

Correction: This event occurred on June 25, 2020, not in September.

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More from @shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Apr 1

One FBI employee involved in the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop was Bradley Benavides (ctr-intel div). Weeks earlier he played key role in an apparent FBI scheme to smear @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley — who were investigating Hunter — as tools of Putin. Sinister.

According to @SenRonJohnson & @ChuckGrassley , Benavides and a colleague on August 6, 2020 provided "an unnecessary briefing on behalf of the FBI and Intelligence Community on matters purportedly related to the senators’ investigation into Hunter Biden."

ronjohnson.senate.gov/2022/8/sens-jo…

Why would Benavides & FBI give an unnecessary briefing? Probably so they could then leak information about the briefing to The Washington Post.

Keep in mind this was 2.5 months before NY Post story.

This appears to be a key part of the FBI's disinformation operation.

Read 17 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Apr 1

The FBI said it didn't interfere in the 2020 election, but it did. It tricked Twitter & Facebook into censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story. Now, newly released chat messages show the FBI issued a "gag order" after an employee accidentally confirmed the laptop's authenticity.

This is a CatherineHerridgeReports @C__Herridge / Public Investigation

In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it.

“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed door transcribed interview.

“I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”

For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees.

The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.

The FBI provided the chat messages to congressional investigators with heavy redactions.

Some of the redactions on the chats are marked “OGC AGC,” which appears to mean that they were made by the FBI’s Office of General Counsel and Associate General Counsel.

An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).”
In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity.

Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?”

Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted.

To which Chan responds, “oh crap” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here”.

In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “Anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?” Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.” “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division.

Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.”
We asked for a response from the bureau and the FBI employees identified in the chat messages. An FBI spokesman declined to comment.

According to the IRS whistleblowers, DOJ prosecutors blocked standard investigative protocols that might have led to Joe Biden ahead of the presidential campaign.

“There were a lot of overt investigative steps that we were not allowed to take because we had an upcoming election,” said Joseph Ziegler, the IRS case agent on the Hunter Biden probe.. “And it related to the president's son. So not even the candidate.”

The FBI chat is cryptic and the heavy redactions make it difficult to discern context. For example, an employee says to Chan that “[redacted] has a gag order from [redacted]... got checked by [redacted] had to backtrack - sorry!”
Another cryptic exchange came from Laura Dehmlow, the FBI employee who told House investigators that an FBI employee had accidentally confirmed that the laptop was real. “WTF(redacted) No COMMENT.”

An employee whose name is also withheld wrote, “nope, just a domestic hit job, yay” to which Dehmlow responded, “Yup.”

The exchange may be referring to the FBI’s knowledge that the laptop was authentic and not a foreign “hack and leak” or “Russian information operation,” as 51 former senior intelligence officials alleged at the time.

The IRS whistleblowers said there was no basis for the statement from the former intelligence officials....
Please subscribe now to support Public's award-winning reporting and to read the rest of this article!

x.com/shellenberger/…

The Twitter Files revealed that the FBI ran a sophisticated info operation aimed at convincing journalists and social media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop, which it had possessed since 2019, was the result of a Russian "hack and leak" operation.

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1604871630613753856

Read 5 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 31

The Right is a threat to democracy, the media says. But it isn’t. It’s winning elections and respecting constituitons. It’s the Left that is undermining democracy. It tried to jail Trump, is about to jail Bolsonaro, and just sentenced Le Pen to prison. This is a five alarm fire.

And when the Left can’t incarcerate a presidential candidate, it simply prevents them from running, for no good reason, and in flagrant violation of the law, as the totalitarian creeps just did in Romania.

The reason the court convicted @MLP_officielis because she is 10 points ahead of her nearest rival in the presidential race.

Read 6 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 20

Free Speech Diplomacy, R.I.P.

March 3, 2025 - March 19, 2025

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1896566526544900438

Was fun while it lasted!

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1902573198052356320

“We must stop censorship and suppression of information.” @SecRubio 💯🎯

I miss that guy

https://twitter.com/undersecpd/status/1895547201842979152

Read 10 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 18

Every single Trump advisor, including and especially @StephenM, knows perfectly well that what they did is unconstitutional.

https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1901741630618489054

It's up to the courts not the Administration to determine whether it is non-justiciable. The administration must comply with the order until a higher court reverses it or sets it aside. That's how our system works.

If the Trump administration continues with these obviously unconstitutional actions, then it will lose the legitimacy, public support, and power it needs to pursue free speech diplomacy, which would be a very disappointing outcome @SecRubio @marcorubio

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1901054032787239016

Read 6 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Mar 17

There's no proof of major waste, fraud, or abuse in govt spending, say the media. But there is. And now Public has obtained invoices revealing that a major contractor overcharged the Ed. Dept, paid its CEO $2M/year, and promoted debunked research as student performance declined.

US Education Department Contractor Overcharged Taxpayers While Spending Millions On Executive Salaries

As student math and reading scores declined, the American Institute of Research charged 50% in indirect costs and paid its CEO over $2 million

by @galexybrane and @shellenberger

Over the last few weeks, the media and Democrats have been lambasting President Donald Trump for cutting the Department of Education’s research budget. In particular, the media criticized the Trump administration for cutting a contractor’s research into support services for students with disabilities who are nearing graduation.

But it’s not clear that the research was necessary or successful, and there is already both state and federal funding aimed at helping students with disabilities to develop life skills and plans for the future.

And now Public has obtained invoices showing that the Department’s contractor for the research in question, American Institute for Research (AIR), had significantly overcharged the Department in so-called indirect costs.

The invoice is from November 18, 2024, and shows AIR billing the Department $411,961.35 for the month of October 2024. Of that money, $214,952.74 was in “total indirects.” AIR charged an additional $26,950.74 as a 7% fee.

The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $10,957,275.73, of which $4,993,376.12 was total indirects and $716,831.18 was total additional fees.

A second invoice is from January 15, 2025, and shows AIR billing the Department $60,913.72 for the month of December 2024. Of that money, $29,685.23 was in total indirects. AIR charged an additional $3,985.01 as a 7% fee.

The invoice shows that the cumulative amount that AIR had billed the Department of Education was $11,076,493.79, of which $5,028,446.77 was total indirects and $724,630.48 was total additional fees.

In response to questions from Public, an AIR spokesperson said, “AIR’s indirect rates are similar to those of other social and behavioral research organizations and we have always abided by our approved rates. For government contractors, indirect costs include such costs as information technology, data security, and compliance and reporting.”

However, 50% in indirect fees is widely considered excessive. The National Institutes of Health recently required that its contractors lower indirect costs to 15% to reduce widespread overcharging.

Indeed, when asked about the invoice, a spokesperson for the Department of Education condemned the high fees. “Contracts with indirect rates over 50% take gross advantage of taxpayer dollars, perverting the reason the contracts exist — our students,” said Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann. “Incoming leadership will no longer allow these unacceptable terms.”

According to AIR’s IRS 990 form, the total compensation of AIR’s chief executive, David Myers, in the most recent year available, 2023, was $2,241,374.

“At the end of 2023, David Myers finished a 14-year tenure as AIR’s President and Chief Executive Officer,” said the AIR spokesperson. “His compensation for his final year included a retention payment. The salary for our current President and CEO is lower and in line with what other non-profit organizations of our size and type pay their chief executives.”

However, AIR’s tax forms showed that Myers earned $2,294,637 in 2022 and $1,145,400 in 2021.

Jessica Heppen is the current president and CEO. In 2023, she earned $685,060 as president. Neither Heppen nor Myers responded to Public’s request for comment.

AIR’s 990 form shows other high salaries for staff and fees for board members. AIR’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, earned $931,610 in 2023, and its CFO earned $1,145,400 in 2022. A member of the AIR Board, Robert Boruch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, received $80,250 in 2023 for just 2 hours of work per week, which is $772 per hour.

While nonprofit board members typically donate their time, 14 of AIR’s board members received hundreds of dollars per hour for their service. None responded to requests by Public for comment.

AIR’s fees should be considered in the broader context of declining student performance and AIR’s role to provide research that improves student performance.

Today, only 31% of fourth graders and only 30% of eighth graders are reading at or above proficiency levels, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In eighth grade reading, 33% of students scored “below basic,” the highest percentage recorded in the NAEP’s history.

Congress established the Education Department in 1979 “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Student performance has declined across the board over the last 10 years. While Covid school closures significantly worsened them, math and reading scores declined for fourth- and eighth-graders nationwide from 2014 to 2024.

AIR appears to be partly responsible. It gave a favorable evaluation to Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study curriculum, which used elements of the now-debunked “whole language” approach to reading instead of systematic phonics instruction.

Under the whole language approach, teachers taught children to memorize whole words and use guessing strategies instead of sounding out individual sounds in unfamiliar words.

The failure of the whole language approach was precisely why the Department of Education hires groups like AIR. The goal of research is to discover which teaching methods work and which don’t before schools adopt them. That didn’t happen. In fact, the opposite did. The result was a whole generation of children robbed of fundamental literacy.

“It is absolutely inaccurate to say we ‘gave a favorable evaluation’ to Units of Study,” said AIR.

But the evaluation was clearly positive. Implementation of the curriculum, AIR’s report stated, “is associated with improvements in ELA [English Language Arts] achievement starting in the second year of implementation, and in schools that opt to continue with the approach long term, the magnitude of the effects grow larger over time.”

And even AIR noted, in its email to Public, “We found no positive effect in the first year of implementation, then saw positive effects in subsequent years for some schools.”

Other Department contractors had much lower indirect rates. Why was AIR able to charge so much?

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