OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
House Minority Leader and California Rep. Kevin McCarthy is furious and he has put the Democrats on notice after an appearance by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast.
Rogan and Zuckerberg were talking about how and why Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story and the Facebook CEO said that the FBI warned him, not in relation particularly to the laptop story but in general, that foreign actors would be attempting to influence the decision and to be wary of such possible stories.
“Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,'” the Facebook CEO said on Thursday.
“We just kind of thought hey look, if the FBI, which I still view is a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement- they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something then I want to take that seriously,” he said.
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation. pic.twitter.com/llTA7IqGa1
— Minds💡 (@minds) August 25, 2022
Zuckerberg explained that the FBI did not expressly tell Facebook to censor or limit distribution of the Hunter Bidens tory, but the company thought it “fit the pattern” of potential propaganda to limit its distribution for 5 – 7 days but it was still allowed to be shared.
This was in contrast to Twitter which did not allow the story to be shared.
But McCarthy took this admission by Zuckerberg as FBI collusion and he warned Democrats that they would pay for it.
“The FBI colluded with Big Tech to silence news stories weeks before the 2020 election in an attempt to control your access to information. Democrats in Congress have been intentionally ignoring the facts. When Republicans are back in charge, we will hold all of them accountable,” he said.
The FBI colluded with Big Tech to silence news stories weeks before the 2020 election in an attempt to control your access to information.
Democrats in Congress have been intentionally ignoring the facts. When Republicans are back in charge, we will hold all of them accountable. https://t.co/kUc8J9OAvq
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 26, 2022
An undetermined number of FBI whistleblowers have made some alarming allegations against senior leaders in the bureau, a GOP senator is claiming.
According to Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, several whistleblowers have told him that FBI brass forbade rank-and-file agents from investigating Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election allegedly because they did not want to influence the outcome against then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The Daily Wire notes: “Revelations from the abandoned laptop, which were also squelched by social media companies and liberal news outlets, paint the president’s son as a drug-addled, venal degenerate and raise troubling questions about President Joe Biden’s own role in his son’s corrupt dealings.”
After hearing the allegations, Johnson sent a letter to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz asking him to investigate.
“After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, ‘you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,’” Johnson wrote.
“In October 2020, I called on the FBI to explain what actions it took after receiving the laptop. The FBI failed to respond to my questions and I led the call for you to examine whether the FBI took appropriate and necessary investigative steps after receiving Hunter Biden’s laptop. Four months later, in February 2021, you informed me that your office would not take any actions that could interfere with an ongoing investigation,” Johnson’s letter continued.
“Since then, whistleblowers have come forward to Congress alleging that FBI officials intentionally undermined efforts to investigate Hunter Biden,” he added.
The senator went on to quote FBI management as allegedly telling agents, “You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,” while promising that the agency would not meddle in the election, which the New York Post reported was “a reference to the FBI reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server days before the 2016 election.”
John Paul Mac Isaac was right. The FBI warned agents not to touch Hunter Biden’s laptop after he gave it to them in Dec. 2019. That was why he felt compelled to go public 9 months later. FBI whistleblowers spilling more dirt to @SenRonJohnson https://t.co/PIlThWB68F
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) August 25, 2022
But that said, the FBI took possession of the laptop nearly a year before, in December 2019, previous reports have noted.
