Back in August, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made a damning admission while appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast. According to Zuckerberg, prior to the 2020 election, FBI agents had approached Facebook to warn them about an imminent drop of supposed Russian disinformation, clearly pressuring the social media giant to censor the story. Almost immediately after that was done, the Hunter Biden laptop story was published by The New York Post.
From there, the suppression came quickly and broadly. Facebook “throttled” the story to keep it off of people’s feeds while Twitter outright banned the Post and the sharing of the bombshell report. It was an “eye’s wide open” moment, showing just how interconnected partisans within the federal government were to those who control the flow of information. It also possibly affected the outcome of the 2020 election given that Donald Trump lost by just tens of thousands of votes in three states.
Of course, in light of that revelation, the FBI doubled down, defending itself as having done absolutely wrong. Christopher Wray’s outfit always moves to protect the shield and this situation was no different.
Now, per the Free Beacon, the agents who were behind the political weaponization of the national security apparatus have been exposed. Not only their names and positions but also the fact that they were Democrat donors.
Two FBI officials who briefed Facebook ahead of its decision to censor news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop donated to Democrats in 2020, according to court filings and campaign finance records.
Laura Dehmlow, the unit chief for the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, the head of the FBI’s San Francisco cyber division, were “involved” in the communications between the FBI and Facebook that led to the social media giant’s “suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story,” according to a court filing on Thursday. The FBI’s interactions with Facebook have been of interest since Mark Zuckerberg said in August that Facebook blocked access to an October 2020 New York Post article about Biden’s laptop because the FBI had earlier warned the company to be on “high alert” for Russian efforts to release derogatory information about the Bidens before the election.
The amounts donated were small, though when you are dealing with non-wealthy people, the amounts donated to political campaigns are usually small. What this does is give us a window into the political leanings of the two agents who decided to brief Facebook on “Russian disinformation,” knowing that the coming story about Hunter Biden was not that.
Regardless of whether there was a direct request or not to censor the story, the heat Facebook had been feeling from Congress made the intent of the briefing clear. There was never any question these social media sites would move to bend their knee to the FBI’s claim. To not do so would welcome even more threats from Democrat politicians to crack down on the industry.
What I think this really illustrates, though, is that the rot runs deep at the FBI. We aren’t just talking about a few partisans in the upper echelons of leadership. Like every other federal bureaucracy, it appears that the FBI is stacked with leftwing activists, even within the so-called “rank and file.”
What’s the fix? I don’t think there is one unless a Republican gets into the White House who is willing to throw caution to the wind in order to gut these agencies. That’s a tall order, and the full weight of the security state would come down on that person. But it’s the only way forward.