FBI lashes out at Twittergate 'conspiracy theorists'

Anyone who believes the FBI quashed the Hunter Biden laptop story is a 'conspiracy theorist' according to the Bureau.

The outburst comes despite newly released documents that detail how agents met with Twitter executives immediately prior to the company's decision to censor the story.

The Bureau is now insisting that it was simply doing its job — but still will not disclose what was said during private meetings between agents and executives at the social media platform.

An agency spokesperson said: 'It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.'

Jim Baker, a former FBI lawyer who later started working at Twitter, is said to have 'coerced' the platform's content moderator to flag up any stories about Hunter Biden's laptop

Journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed in a series of tweets on Monday how Jim Baker, a former attorney for the Bureau who at that point was working as a lawyer for Twitter, met secretly with one of his former colleagues at the FBI.

At the same time, senior content moderators at the company were meeting weekly with agents to discuss potential threats to the election by foreign entities.

In the aftermath, internal emails show, Baker seemed to coerce Twitter's chief content moderator to flag any stories about the revelations from Hunter Biden's lost laptop as 'misinformation' that came from a 'foreign hack' — even though they proved to be true.

In a statement to the New York Post Wednesday, an agency spokesperson said: 'The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.

'As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.

'The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,' the spokesperson continued. 

The FBI now insists that it was just doing its job in holding these meetings with Twitter, and slammed anyone who questioned the Bureau's actions as 'conspiracy theorists' 

'It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.'

But the newly released documents show a different story.

They detail how the FBI had compensated Twitter to the tune of $3.5million in an apparent scheme to get the company to do its bidding.

One staffer's email to Baker and chief legal counsel Sean Edgett said the money was used for 'law-enforcement related projects.'

Baker later even sent a letter thanking the FBI for its help in suppressing the story.

Just hours after the story about Hunter Biden's lapto was published, it was labeled as coming from a hacked source on Twitter. Pictured is one of the many lurid photos from the laptop

DailyMail.com was able to authenticate the contents of the laptop back in 2019

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger laid bare how closely Twitter executives were working with the FBI before the 2020 election

The latest installment of the so-called Twitter Files also showed that, prior to the Hunter Biden story being published, Baker had a private meeting with FBI officials to discuss a potential Russian disinformation campaign ahead of the election.

Twitter's then 'trust and safety' chief, Yoel Roth, expressed doubts about suppressing the story but ultimately agreed that it seemed to be a 'subtle leak operation'

Then, just hours after publication, Baker sent a message to Twitter's censorship team, saying that even though they did not have all the facts, it had all the earmarks of being one of the 'hack-and-leak' stories they were warned about and should be suppressed.

Yoel Roth, head of the company's trust and safety team, replied that he did not think the story violated Twitter's policies but said: 'This feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.'

In the aftermath, Roth gave sworn testimony to the Federal Elections Commission that he felt compelled to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and label it as coming from 'hacked materials' based on information FBI agents had given him at weekly meetings. 

'I was told... 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,' he added, as Twitter tried to defend itself against a complaint by the Tea Party Patriots Foundation that its censorship was an 'in-kind' campaign contribution to then-candidate Joe Biden.

Elvis Chan, a supervisory special agent who met directly with Twitter executives prior to the election, denied in a deposition that the agents ever mentioned the Hunter Biden story directly at its weekly meetings with social media officials

But Elvis Chan, a supervisory special agent for the Bureau who had direct communication with Twitter executives in the lead-up to the 2020 election — including Jim Baker — has since denied that the agents ever mentioned the Hunter Biden story.

Under questioning by Solicitor General John Sauer late last month, Chan said he 'would interpret' what Roth said in his sworn testimony 'differently.'

He insisted he had never discussed Hunter Biden's laptop as being subject to a 'hack-and-leak operation' at weekly meetings with content moderation officials at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Reddit, and even LinkedIn. 

'In my estimation, we never discussed Hunter Biden specifically with Twitter,' he said. 'And so the way I read that is that there are hack-and-leak operations, and then at the time, I believe he flagged one of the potential current events that were happening ahead of the elections.' 

Chan then explained that because he does not actually remember discussing the Hunter Biden laptop 'we didn't discuss it.

'So this would have been something that he would have just thought of as a hot-button issue on his own.'

Chan testified as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration, accusing the now president of organizing meetings in San Francisco for as many as seven DC-based FBI agents in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election.

Those FBI agents would then meet with Big Tech officials to remove 'disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content on social media platforms... under the guise of combating misinformation,' the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri claim.

The FBI is now planning to hold similar meetings ahead of the 2024 election, Chan revealed, and this time will include representatives from Apple and the Wikimedia Foundation.