FBI official tied to Hunter Biden censorship warned media must be ‘held accountable’
One of the FBI agents who briefed Facebook before the social network restricted The Post’s expose on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020 declared in a meeting with Twitter and Homeland Security officials earlier this year that media needs to be “held accountable” for spreading so-called “disinformation” according to a report.
Laura Dehmlow, the section chief of the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force who was involved in discussions between the FBI and Facebook, warned in the March meeting that subversive content online could erode public support for the government, The Intercept reported on Monday.
Dehmlow emphasized in the meeting attended by executives from Twitter and JPMorgan Chase that “we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable,” the report said.
The gathering was part of a discussion involving the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security, and addressing how the FBI could combat false information from foreign entities.
In the talks with Facebook prior to the suppression of The Post’s reporting, Dehmlow was accompanied by Elvis Chan, an FBI agent in the San Francisco field office.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, admitted in an interview in August that the company suppressed the Hunter Biden story after the FBI issued a vague warning about possible “Russian propaganda” in the 2020 presidential election.
“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,’” Zuckerberg said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast,
The billionaire tech titan said the FBI advised: “‘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 that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”
In response to that warning, Facebook restricted sharing of The Post’s story about the first son’s shady business dealings in Ukraine and China while his father, Joe Biden, was serving as the vice president in the Obama administration.
The Post’s story was based on information found on a laptop that Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019.
After The Post published its exclusive report on Hunter Biden, 51 former US intelligence officials — including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and one-time CIA Directors Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta and John Brennan — signed a letter that said the disclosure “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Twitter followed Facebook in censoring the report, an action both Zuckerberg and then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey later said they regretted.
Since then, the New York Times and the Washington Post have confirmed the authenticity of messages found on Hunter Biden’s laptop and reported on by The Post.
The Intercept report also revealed that government and law enforcement officials are using a special portal to flag content on Facebook or Instagram that they want suppressed
The setup allows officials with .gov or law enforcement email addresses to request censorship in the name of fighting “disinformation.”
The link was reportedly created by Facebook for the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies.
The news of the link comes after the Biden administration paused and then scrapped the Disinformation Governance Board earlier this year after it was likened by Republicans, libertarians and even some liberals to the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s classic novel “1984.”
The Intercept report said DHS is expanding its measures to combat disinformation that began in 2016 to counter Russian propaganda in the presidential election and continued into 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the coming years, DHS said it intends to focus on fighting “inaccurate information” on a number of subjects, including the “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of US support to Ukraine,” The Intercept reported, citing a draft copy of a DHS review.
The report said DHS’ efforts to target speech it deems dangerous are happening quietly behind the scenes as it meets with tech platforms to influence online communications.
The talks range from the scope of government intervention to the nuts and bolts of procedures for requests to remove false or misleading information.
“Platforms have got to get comfortable with gov’t. It’s really interesting how hesitant they remain,” Microsoft executive Matt Masterson, a former DHS official, texted Jen Easterly, a DHS director, in February, the report said.
DHS, Facebook did not respond to requests from The Intercept for comment.
The FBI declined to comment.