James Lynch writes for National Review Online about the FBI’s role in covering up a Biden administration scandal.
The FBI silenced an employee who tried to tell Twitter the Hunter Biden laptop story was real on the day it came out, newly released chat logs show.
On October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post first reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the FBI told employees “do not discuss [the] Biden matter” and imposed a “gag order” on an analyst who tried to confirm the story’s veracity to Twitter during a meeting, according to chat logs released by the House Judiciary Committee.
An FBI official with the bureau’s foreign influence task force, Laura Dehmlow, previously testified that an analyst on a call with Twitter confirmed the laptop was real, before an attorney for the FBI told the social media platform it would not comment further.
The chat logs show FBI personnel deliberating on how to handle the laptop situation. One FBI official instructed the rest to “not discuss the Biden matter” and subsequent messages reiterated that order. After the meeting, the FBI placed a “gag order” on the analyst, who was “admonished” by FBI staff for speaking up during the meeting. An FBI staffer lamented that the analyst “wont [sic] shut up” as instructed, the chat logs show.
The FBI declined to comment.
The FBI verified the Hunter Biden laptop in late 2019 by cross-referencing the device’s serial number to Biden’s iCloud storage, FBI special agent Erica Jensen testified at the younger Biden’s gun trial last year. Federal agents obtained data from the device after they received a search warrant during the ongoing criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley recounted the same verification process when he came forward to Congress in spring 2023 with allegations of misconduct by IRS and DOJ officials throughout the long-running tax investigation.
