The Facebook Files: FBI Lies, Hunter Biden Story Dies – OpEd
By Andrew Moran
FBI special agent Elvis Chan. You may have heard the name. He was all over the Twitter Files, serving as the primary channel between the agency and Big Tech. In the fourth edition of the Facebook Files, documents further reveal the cozy relationship whereby the federal government sought to control the narrative with the assistance of Silicon Valley.
From the CDC to the Biden White House, the files showed that top US officials have been pulling the strings behind the social media news cycle. Now, as part of the ongoing House Judiciary Committee inquiry into online censorship, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has released internal documents suggesting Chan uttered false statements in testimony about the bureau’s role in suppressing the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story. October 14, 2020, was a crucial day in the latest receipts.
The Facebook Files – Part Four
Oct. 14 was the day the newspaper published its consequential story on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell.” But it was also a day when Chan was sitting in a meeting between the FBI and Facebook, which took place immediately after the agency enjoyed a powwow with Twitter, now known as X.
Chan testified about the meeting before a Louisiana judge during court proceedings for a lawsuit brought by Republican state attorneys general, who accused officials of colluding with social media companies to censor the American people. During a Nov. 22 deposition, the cybersecurity agent repeatedly expressed his confidence that he was not part of any meeting with Big Tech regarding President Joe Biden’s son. Chan also denied being “aware of any communications between anyone at Facebook and anyone at the FBI related to the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
Jordan says this testimony was “completely false,” noting that “the Committee has recently obtained an internal Facebook document PROVING that Agent Chan had a secret ‘follow up’ call with Facebook about the Hunter Biden laptop story on October 15, just one day after the @nypost story and the first Facebook meeting!” The committee chairman added that Chan made other “inconsistent statements,” including a claim that he had “no internal knowledge of [the FBI’s] investigation” regarding the laptop.
Chan, however, did say one thing the Ohio congressman agreed with: “There was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection … of the leaks.”
As Liberty Nation reported, Chan had maintained a close relationship with Twitter, especially with Yoel Roth, who served as head of site integrity. The two had exchanged more than 150 emails in a two-year period, while Chan shared ten documents with Roth over the one-way communications channel Teleporter. The FBI agent also invited Other Government Organization (OGA) personnel to Twitter meetings. So, based on the latest documents involving the social networks and FBI, Chan maintained an instrumental role in the censorship crusade.
‘No Comment’ on Laptop
In addition to Chan, there is another name that needs to be remembered: Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the Foreign Influence Task Force.
Facebook inquired of Dehmlow whether the laptop was genuine. Her response? “No comment,” despite the FBI having the computer in its possession and realizing it was authentic. In testimony before the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, she revealed that the FBI deliberately withheld imperative information from the social media companies about Hunter’s laptop on the day the bombshell was published.
Dehmlow told lawmakers the FBI initiated emergency internal deliberations to determine how to answer the question. The order moving forward was to say “no comment” every time the query was posed. So, when Chan, Dehmlow, and other FBI officials were asked whether the laptop was real, the official response was “no comment.”
“Did Dehmlow know that the FBI had the laptop and it was real? Yes. Did other key members of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force know? Yes,” Rep. Jordan posted on X. “The FBI knew the laptop was real and yet decided it would say ‘no comment.’”
How many Facebook Files will there be? Rep. Jordan regularly ends his threads with the phrase “to be continued.” But while these revelations are informative and entertaining, a crowd of X users wondered the same thing: Now what? In other words, it is remarkable that Facebook and the FBI are being exposed, but will US officials do anything to hold anyone accountable? Many are skeptical, but at least the files allow the public to take a peek behind the curtain and have their suspicions confirmed.