Twitter Files 7: From FBI Censorship to Warrantless Searches

After six installments, the Twitter Files have revealed everything from behind-the-scenes bias to the government influencing content decisions. Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger released the seventh edition of the Elon Musk-approved data dump, showing in a 47-tweet thread that there was an organized effort within the intelligence community to push social media platforms to destroy the credibility behind the leaked information regarding Hunter Biden and the so-called Laptop From Hell.

The Twitter Files: Part 7

The story regarding Hunter Biden and his laptop is well known by now. In Dec. 2019, a Delaware computer store owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, contacted the FBI about a laptop Biden had left with him. A few days later, the FBI submitted a subpoena for the computer and took the device. In Aug. 2020, Mac Isaac did not receive any updates from the Bureau, so he reached out to Rudy Giuliani. In October, Giuliani handed the contents over to the New York Post.

Over at Twitter, the situation turns interesting. On Oct. 13, 2020, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan shared ten documents with Yoel Roth, Twitter's then-Head of Site Integrity, through Teleporter, a one-way communications channel from the FBI to Twitter. The next day the bombshell report was published, and the information was accurate. However, Twitter and industry players censored the article and prevented it from being disseminated further as part of efforts to undermine its integrity.

Roth had been pushed by the FBI and other law enforcement entities to dismiss Biden laptop stories as Russian "hack and leak operations." But Twitter executives reported minuscule Russian activity on the website, informing the FBI that it had shut down more than 300 inactive accounts connected to Russian hacking attempts. The FBI had repeatedly inquired with Twitter for any evidence of foreign interference, prompting the website to say, “we haven't yet identified activity that we'd typically refer to you."

Meanwhile, the FBI had regularly submitted requests for information that the company stated that it would not share outside of usual legal avenues. In fact, Roth consistently pushed back against FBI efforts to share information that was not a part of the typical search warrant process. Chan had offered "temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections."

Considering that it was ostensibly a revolving door from the FBI to Twitter, it may have been inevitable for Roth to succumb to the agency’s pressures. Because many former FBI employees had started working at Twitter, there was a private Slack channel for the "Bu alumni" and, according to Shellenberger, a "crib sheet to onboard new FBI arrivals."

Still, Roth had cooperated with Chan to establish an encrypted messaging service to facilitate communication between the FBI and Twitter. They had also agreed to produce a "virtual war room" for the internet industry, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

In September 2020, Laura Dehmlow, the head of the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), and Chan scheduled a classified briefing for then-Deputy General Counsel for Twitter Jim Baker. In response to Roth noting that the New York Post story "isn't clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else, Baker insisted through email and Google Docs that the contents were faked or hacked.

"And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019," explained Shellenberger.

By the end, Twitter executives believed that the affair was a "hack-and-dump story," Shellenberger noted.

“The suggestion from experts - which rings true - is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware," Roth wrote in an email.

Two months after the newspaper published the Hunter Biden story, Baker and other Twitter personnel emailed the FBI and thanked the agency for its work. But the fact that the FBI had paid Twitter more than $3.4 million for its staff time may have influenced Baker's thank you note.

Will Things Change?

With Elon Musk in charge of the social media platform – for now – will things change on the website? Even with the prospect of the billionaire CEO owning Twitter firmly in the background, the FBI did not ease its pressure on the social media giant. In Aug. 2022, Twitter executives were getting ready for a meeting with the FBI to come up with "more FBI EDRs." So, what are EDRs? They are emergency disclosure requests. Or, in other words, warrantless searches.