The FBI silenced an employee who tried to tell Twitter the Hunter Biden laptop story was real on the day it came out, newly released chat logs show.
On October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post first reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the FBI told employees “do not discuss [the] Biden matter” and imposed a “gag order” on an analyst who tried to confirm the story’s veracity to Twitter during a meeting, according to chat logs released by the House Judiciary Committee.
An FBI official with the bureau’s foreign influence task force, Laura Dehmlow, previously testified that an analyst on a call with Twitter confirmed the laptop was real, before an attorney for the FBI told the social media platform it would not comment further.
The chat logs show FBI personnel deliberating on how to handle the laptop situation. One FBI official instructed the rest to “not discuss the Biden matter” and subsequent messages reiterated that order. After the meeting, the FBI placed a “gag order” on the analyst, who was “admonished” by FBI staff for speaking up during the meeting. An FBI staffer lamented that the analyst “wont [sic] shut up” as instructed, the chat logs show.
The FBI declined to comment.
The FBI verified the Hunter Biden laptop in late 2019 by cross-referencing the device’s serial number to Biden’s iCloud storage, FBI special agent Erica Jensen testified at the younger Biden’s gun trial last year. Federal agents obtained data from the device after they received a search warrant during the ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley recounted the same verification process when he came forward to Congress in spring 2023 with allegations of misconduct by IRS and DOJ officials throughout the long-running tax investigation.
Independent journalists Catherine Herridge and Michael Shellenberger first reported on the chat logs. Herridge has alleged she was prevented from reporting on the Biden laptop ahead of the 2020 election during her time at CBS News.
Twitter and Facebook both censored the Hunter Biden laptop story after the FBI and other government agencies spent almost a year preparing the platforms to suppress what would become the Hunter Biden laptop story. Attorney General Pam Bondi shuttered the foreign influence task force shortly after her confirmation after it played a leading role in pressuring social media companies to censor speech.
House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and Weaponization subcommittee have investigated the throttling of the Hunter Biden laptop story and other political speech online. Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) is a steadfast crusader against social media platforms working with the federal government to squash certain viewpoints.
Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted the platform was wrong to suppress the New York Post’s reporting on the Biden laptop and criticized the Biden administration for later pressuring the platform into censoring certain viewpoints related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Twitter, now X, is owned by Elon Musk, who released the “Twitter Files” after purchasing the platform in late 2022. Those documents showed the inner workings of how Twitter executives decided to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and systematically reduce the reach of conservative users on the platform.
Then-President Joe Biden pardoned his son in December before his sentencing dates for federal gun and tax crimes. Hunter Biden was convicted in Delaware last June on the gun charges and pleaded guilty in California to the tax charges in September.
Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and the IRS whistleblower allegations formed the basis of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. The high-profile investigation found over $27 million of payments from foreign sources to Hunter Biden and his associates during and after Joe Biden’s vice presidency. The impeachment probe also detailed how Joe Biden met with his son’s business partners and talked to them on speakerphone roughly 20 times.
The Trump administration recently promoted Shapley and IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, who came forward alongside Shapley, to senior adviser positions after the pair faced retaliation inside the IRS. In addition, President Trump has granted clemency two of Biden’s business partners, Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, both of whom testified during the impeachment inquiry.