Wait, what’s going on, here? Is the embattled FBI finally behaving like America’s premier law enforcement agency — if only momentarily — instead of blatantly flying sycophantic wingman for the Democrat Party? Or is it throwing pre-Elon Musk Twitter under the bus in an effort to protect itself? Perhaps a bit of both.
Either way, this is curious.
During testimony on December 3, FBI supervisory special agent Elvis Chan disputed former Twitter executive Yoel Roth’s claims that the FBI warned the Big Tech company that Russia would likely release Hunter Biden’s emails before the 2020 election, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon, potentially setting up a showdown over the social media company’s censorship of the explosive story.
Roth, who led Twitter’s Site Integrity team until his November resignation, told the Federal Election Commission that the FBI warnings prompted Twitter to censor an Oct. 14, 2020, New York Post article that detailed Biden’s business emails.
Chan said FBI officials did not mention Biden in their weekly meetings with Twitter prior to the election.
I do not remember us specifically saying ‘Hunter Biden’ in any meeting. So this would have been something that [Roth] would have just thought of as a hot-button issue on his own that happened in October.
So there we have it: The FBI says Roth is full of crap. Or did Roth carefully select his words by focusing on Hunter Biden, vs. a belief that a Russian plot was potentially real? Popcorn, anyone?
Whatever the case, according to Roth’s December 17, 2020 version of events in an affidavit to the Federal Election Commission, the FBI’s warnings were a direct factor in Twitter’s decision to censor the story.
I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.
Hmm. One thing is certain: Someone is either lying or “forgetting” how this whole thing went down.
I’d suggest that Yoel Roth is nothing but a slithering snake, but that wouldn’t be professional. Same guy, by the way, who in 2017 expressed contempt for Trump White House officials, deriding them as “ACTUAL NAZIS.” He also lashed out at conservative states after Trump’s 2016 election win, writing that “We fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason.” Class act, huh?
Oh, and Mr. Roth? Twitter 2.0 head honcho Elon Musk released internal emails last week that show Twitter execs censored the Hunter Biden story even though they were uncertain whether the story was based on hacked materials.
Pigs must be flying or Hell freezing over today. Incredulously, I’m gonna go with the FBI’s account. What’s next, Joe Biden admitting he’s simply a useful idiot sock puppet of the radical left?
In other Yoel Roth news, as reported by my colleague Bob Hoge, Roth defended his decision to repeatedly suspend the conservative satire site The Babylon Bee (the best satire site in the known universe, in my not-so-humble opinion) and the popular(also conservative) Libs of Tik Tok Twitter account from the platform during his tenure.
In respect to his censorship of The Bee, Roth — the self-appointed arbiter of all that’s funny and not — said: “Not only is it not funny; it’s dangerous.”
Really? Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden scandal was not only not funny; it was also a blatant attempt to influence the 2020 presidential election.
In other Twitter news, as my colleague Streiff reported, the company’s janitors have now gone on strike.
Yup, Service Employees Internation Union Local 87 in San Francisco on Monday walked off the job. As Streiff notes, generally, a janitors’ union local strike wouldn’t make national news, but this local just so happened to provide cleaning services for Twitter headquarters.
The dust-up began the previous week when 20 cleaning crew members employed by Flagship Maintenance Solutions were told that last Friday would be the last day they were needed by Twitter. Apparently unaware they didn’t work for Twitter, they demanded severance and advance notice of layoffs. Twitter promptly locked them out, canceled the contract with Flagship, and effectually fired the entire crew.
Never a dull moment with Elon at the Twitter helm. Particularly, as he continues to tighten the screws.