FBI-Election-Interference-Report-FINAL--10-30-24-.pdf
FBI-Election-Interference-Report-FINAL--10-30-24-.pdf
- The FBI warned Big Tech companies about a potential 'hack-and-leak' operation involving Hunter Biden and Burisma before the 2020 election.
- Major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter, censored the New York Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptop, limiting its reach.
- Internal documents show that the FBI knew about the laptop's authenticity prior to the story's publication but did not disclose this to Big Tech companies.
- Big Tech companies considered their relationship with a potential Biden administration when deciding whether to censor the story.
- There are concerns have been raised about free speech and government influence over social media platforms due to the incident.
FBI-Election-Interference-Report-FINAL--10-30-24-.pdf
@powderhownd14923 months ago

ELECTION INTERFERENCE: HOW THE FBI 'PREBUNKED' A TRUE STORY ABOUT THE BIDEN FAMILY'S CORRUPTION IN ADVANCE OF THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
Interim Staff Report of the
Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government
U.S. House of Representatives

October 30 , 2024
- · WHO: Russia. The FBI repeatedly warned Big Tech of a potential influence operation by Russian actors targeting the 2020 election. 21
- · WHAT: A hack-and-leak operation. The FBI repeatedly warned Big Tech that the Russian influence operation would likely take the form of a hack and leak, similar to the leak of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016. 22
- · WHEN: Late September or October 2020. The FBI repeatedly warned Big Tech that this hack-and-leak operation would come right before the election, either as 'an October surprise' 23 or 'as soon as the first Presidential debate on September 29th.' 24
- · WHY: To reveal 'evidence' regarding 'links between the Biden family and Ukraine,' including 'Burisma.' The FBI warned Big Tech that the Russian hack-and-leak operation would likely involve 'real or manufactured evidence concerning links between the Biden family and Ukraine, including the oil company Burisma.' 25 Internal Microsoft notes state that a 'week' before the New York Post story broke on October 14, the 'FBI tipped [Big Tech] off' that 'this Burisma story was likely to emerge.' 26
- -Oct. 14, 2020, internal Microsoft notes on meeting between U.S. government and Big Tech
- · 8:37 AM ET: 'About what we expected in the hack/leak department [â¦] it's pretty much exactly what we pregamed.' 30
- · 8:42 AM ET: 'It looks like exactly the hack/leak scenario we'd expected.' 31
- · 9:06 AM ET: 'Can we check with FBI Delaware if they have anything [on] this [â¦] Article claims that FBI has had the HDD [hard drive] since December.' 32
- · 9:09 AM ET: 'Exact content expected for hack and leak.' 33
- · 9:10 AM ET: 'Right on schedule.' 34
- · 9:14 AM ET: '[Facebook employee] is not in touch with the FBI on this. I'll connect with Maryland and [Facebook employee] will raise at the [FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force] meeting today.' 35
- · 9:33 AM ET: 'FYI. Our legal team is reaching out to FBI on this.' 36
- · 10:40 AM ET: 'We're enqueuing the content with demotion and doing outreach to 3PFCs [third-party factcheckers]. No updated info from FBI, no outreach from the Biden campaign.' 37
- · 10:55 AM ET: 'is this the Oct surprise everyone was waiting for?' 38
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
'But, when we get hauled up to [Capitol] hill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [U.S. Government] to plan for it.'
-July 15, 2020, 3:17 p.m. ET, internal Facebook message during Facebook's meeting with the FBI and other agencies. 1
At 5:00 a.m. ET, on Wednesday, October 14, 2020, less than three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published a potentially election-altering news story about a years-long influence peddling scheme carried out by the family of the Democratic nominee for president, former Vice President Joe Biden. 2 The Post article detailed how Hunter Biden leveraged his famous last name to provide foreign officials with access to his father in exchange for the Biden family's significant financial gain. 3 This information was recovered from the hard drive of a laptop attributed to Hunter Biden, and the article included pictures of a signed federal subpoena, demonstrating that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had seized that hard drive. 4 Neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden presidential campaign denied the allegations or the provenance of the laptop; indeed, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) has since authenticated the laptop as evidence in federal court. 5
Soon after the Post article was published, however, something strange happened. Almost immediately, major social media platforms, including Twitter and Facebook-the modern-day digital town square-censored the true story about Biden family influence peddling. As a consequence, millions of Americans cast their presidential vote unaware of serious, credible allegations of misconduct levied against one of the two candidates. This censorship served to benefit one candidate over the other and wrongfully affected the 2020 election. 6 Today, these companies and their executives belatedly admit that their censorship was wrong. 7
Why were the social media companies so ready to censor a true story about Hunter Biden featured in a prominent American newspaper? Because the FBI had primed them for it. For nearly a year, the FBI had been conditioning social media companies to expect a 'hack-andleak' operation from Russia involving Hunter Biden. In more than thirty meetings across eight
months, the FBI led Big Tech to believe that the allegations in the Post story were Russian disinformation, even though the FBI had authenticated Hunter Biden's laptop nearly a year prior. 8
Beginning in early 2020, the FBI embarked on a concerted campaign to preemptively debunk-or 'prebunk'-allegations about the Biden family's influence peddling. Federal agencies repeatedly warned social media platforms about a pre-election Russian influence operation relating to Hunter Biden and the Ukrainian company Burisma. 9 In many of these meetings between federal agencies and Big Tech, the FBI raised the topic of potential 'hack-andleak' operations amid conversations about 'election security' and potential foreign influence operations. 10 In response, some platforms even adopted new content moderation policies specifically designed to address hacked materials. 11
Then, when the Post reported on Biden family influence peddling the morning of October 14, 2020, Big Tech did exactly what it had been primed to do. The social media companies obediently treated the article as a potential Russian hack-and-leak operation and applied their content moderation policies to censor it, prevent it from spreading, and hide it from the American people. 12
Of course, as was obvious then and as is widely acknowledged now, 13 the laptop was real and its contents were authentic. It was not Russian disinformation. The FBI knew this, too-it had been in possession of Hunter Biden's laptop since late 2019 and used it in one or more ongoing investigations in 2020. 14 Indeed, in June 2024, the Justice Department used content from the laptop as evidence against Hunter Biden in his trial for felony gun crimes. 15 And yet, the FBI not only primed the social media companies to distrust allegations about Biden family influence peddling in advance, it misled social media companies about the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop after the Post story broke. 16
The FBI's duplicity notwithstanding, Big Tech companies bear blame as well. Contemporaneous documents from the relevant period show that social media companies
10
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recognized and received information that the Biden family influence peddling allegations were likely not Russian disinformation; 17 nonetheless senior leadership at these companies decided to take steps to hide this true content highly relevant to the upcoming presidential election because they knew a failure to censor the story could affect how a potential incoming Biden-Harris Administration would treat them. 18

'Obviously, our calls on this could colour the way an incoming Biden administration views us more than almost anything elseâ¦'
-Oct. 14, 2020, internal messages between Facebook's then-Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg to Vice President of Global Public Policy Joel Kaplan about Facebook's censorship of the New York Post article
The Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have been conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor lawful speech. 19 Through a series of reports, the Committee and Select Subcommittee have revealed how the Executive Branch worked with social media companies, 'disinformation' pseudoscientists, and others to censor Americans' online speech. 20
This interim report focuses on the coordination between the FBI and Big Tech to
suppress allegations about Biden family influence peddling in advance of the 2020 election. Testimony from key FBI and Big Tech personnel and subpoenaed nonpublic internal documents and communications obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show that in the months before the election, the FBI provided social media companies with specific warnings:

Threat Assessment: We have recently received indications from USG partners that hacklleak operation conducted by Russian actors , likely involving real or manufactured evidence concerning links between the an inoculating Facebook's proactive stance even if no such leak materializes they

'USG partners . . . believe there is a risk of a hack/leak operation . . . likely involving . . . evidence concerning links between the Biden family and Ukraine, including the oil company Burisma.' -Sept. 21, 2020 internal Facebook email to senior Facebook executives


'FBI tipped us all off last week that this Burisma story was likely to emerge'
As documents produced to the Committee and the Select Subcommittee show, the U.S. government-particularly the FBI, while in possession of Hunter Biden's laptop-provided detailed warnings of an anticipated future Russian influence operation that directly mirrored the contents of the laptop. 27 Documents and testimony also reveal that FBI personnel who were part of the FBI task force providing these warnings knew that the laptop was real prior to the release of the New York Post story. 28 Armed with evidence of Biden family corruption, the FBI worked for months to ensure that when this evidence emerged in the public sphere, Big Tech would be ready to downplay and censor it.
Big Tech's immediate reactions to the October 14 Post story confirm how the companies were primed by the FBI's months-long prebunking efforts. For example, internal Facebook communications show that the company almost immediately deemed the story to be a 'hack/leak' of the sort Facebook was 'expect[ing].' 29 On the morning of October 14, Facebook employees exchanged candid communications about the story, including:

'It looks like exactly the hack/leak scenario we'd expected' -Oct. 14, 2020, internal messages among Facebook personnel
Other documents suggest that key employees within the social media companies understood how their censorship would influence the election. Before the story broke, Facebook personnel understood that their response to an alleged hack and leak could sway the presidential election: in a July 2020 internal exchange, a member of Facebook's Trust and Safety team said that 'when we get hauled up to the hill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with [the U.S. Government] to plan for it.' 39 Nothing had
changed by the time the story broke on October 14: the Head of Electoral and Emerging Risk for Facebook's Trust and Safety reacted by noting that it was only '482 hours to first polls close.' 40

'But, when we get hauled up to the hill to testify on why we influenced the 2020 elections we can say we have been meeting for YEARS with USG [the U.S. Government] to plan for it.' -July 15, 2020, internal messages among Facebook personnel
The FBI has defended its actions as information exchange with private-sector partners to prevent amorphous 'foreign malign influence' operations. 41 But if the FBI's intent was truly to help social media companies combat actual foreign influence operations, the FBI should have shared the single most important fact: the influence-peddling allegations in the Post story were based off of real, credible information, including information in the FBI's possession. The FBI failed to do so. While the FBI eventually conceded that it had no indication that the allegations in the Post story were Russian disinformation-only after an FBI agent mistakenly revealed to Twitter that the laptop was 'real'-the FBI still withheld the fact that it had seized and authenticated Hunter Biden's laptop months prior. 42
As a result, Twitter and Facebook continued to censor the most significant news story of the election cycle, limiting the reach of allegations of Biden family corruption and ultimately benefitting the Biden-Harris campaign. 43 Twitter suppressed the Post story by removing links to