Michael Shellenberger, one of the three journalists trusted by Elon Musk to tell the story of the censorious internal workings of Twitter, called on Wednesday for a thorough investigation of the FBI.
Such a probe by Congress and a special prosecutor,” said Shellenberger, author of the latest chapter of the “Twitter Files,” is the only way Americans will know how much the FBI influenced the 2020 election by guiding Twitter’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
The writer unreeled his explanation in a lengthy Twitter thread.
He pointed to three “key facts” from his latest dive into Twitter’s internal records.
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First, the FBI seized Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019 and knew its contents were not hacked. Secondly, the FBI, however, perpetually told Twitter staff during 2020 that a “hack-and-leak” involving Hunter would happen in October 2020.
Finally, the FBI was “spying” on Rudy Giuliani when he gave the laptop to the New York Post, which published its blockbuster story about the laptop and its revelation about Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s shady overseas business ventures.
That story, released just three weeks before Election Day, was snuffed by Twitter and other social media outlets, labeled by pro-Democratic sources as a Russian misinformation campaign.
Shellenberger noted that it “appears” current and former FBI agents at the time “worked together to cover up evidence of criminal activity on Hunter Biden’s laptop, perhaps with political motivations, and interfered in an election.”
That alone should trigger a special prosecutor and a congressional investigation, he added.
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What made the incident more politically malicious, Shellenberger wrote, was that the FBI was “grossly exaggerating Russian influence, even though they knew the source of the Hunter Biden info was a computer repairman in Delaware.”
“We don’t know if the FBI agents who warned Twitter of (the) ‘hack-and-leak’ operation involving Hunter Biden knew that a) FBI had Biden’s laptop, or b) Giuliani was giving it to NY Post. But they didn’t need to know that. They could have simply been following orders,” Shellenberger wrote.
But the evidence indicates that an investigation is a no-brainer.
“Perhaps the FBI agents who hyped a Russian hack-and-dump involving Hunter Biden didn’t know about the laptop or the surveillance of Giuliani. Perhaps (the) FBI found no criminal activity by Hunter Biden. If so, great!” Shellenberger wrote. “But then we need to clear the FBI’s name through an investigation.”
On the other hand, he added, “if FBI agents had, in fact, been engaged in a (sic) influence operation aimed at influencing the election, through the manipulation of mainstream reporters and senior execs. at Twitter & Facebook, we need to root them out, reckon with the implications, & de-politicize the FBI.”
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“If the above is true, then this is, by far, the worst scandal in the history of the FBI.”
Shellenberger concluded, “We simply can’t let our highest law enforcement organization interfere in an election in the ways that FBI agents appear to have done.”
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