OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion
On Tuesday, a prominent Republican revealed GOP lawmakers are planning to send letters to Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, and scores of former U.S. intelligence officials requesting they maintain evidence of their attempts in 2020 to silence or smear legitimate news reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop and commercial activities.
If the Republicans gain control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that the preservation letters will set the stage for Republican subpoenas and the opening of a federal investigation into the issue.
If Republicans do take the House, Issa, who will likely be the chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, will be in charge of overseeing any investigation into alleged efforts to discredit the Hunter Biden story.
Issa stated, “What I can’t live with is the fact that when the New York Post, one of the oldest print newspapers in the country, founded in 1801, comes out with credible evidence, which they can show how they got it, what their sources were — there were no hidden sources on this — they not only got shut down by … Facebook and Twitter, but they got shut down by the New York Times, by public broadcasting, by virtually everyone.
“And they were shut down by having more than 50 of the most informed people in the intelligence world all saying that they knew that this was false information. That is a conspiracy of monumental size.”
As explained by Issa, some of the people involved in this “collusion” were merely passive participants, whereas others directed the effort and knew what they were attempting.
“That is where we’re asking to have the evidence preserved,” he added. “And when we receive the ability to subpoena again … on the anticipation that the House will return to the [GOP] majority, this is an investigation that has to be done, because shutting down the First Amendment is now a pattern of new media. But it’s also becoming a pattern of old media. And there aren’t very many older than the New York Times.”
New York Post researchers retrieved emails from a laptop abandoned at a Delaware repair shop by Hunter Biden in October 2020. A message revealed that he introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a senior executive at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma not long before the vice president told Ukraine to drop its investigation into the firm, which had been dogged by corruption accusations. Furthermore, the executive asked Hunter – who received over $80,00 a month as a member of Burisma’s board – to offer “advice on how you could use your influence” to benefit the company.
The Bidens did not deny the report, they just deflected questions about it. Back then, Politico reported that Biden’s 2020 campaign “would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with [the executive], which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule.”
After the article was published, Facebook’s policy communications director, Andy Stone, stated the company would be “reducing its distribution on our platform.” He also said the report would be fact-checked “to reduce the spread of misinformation.”
Stone previously served on the staff of former Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Commission.
Users were prevented from posting or viewing the story on Twitter after it followed Facebook’s lead. Even the Post’s main Twitter account was locked because of “the lack of authoritative reporting on the origins of the materials included in the article.”
The Times, among other mainstream media outlets, either ignored or cast doubt on the Hunter Biden story.
A public letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials, including former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, slammed the Post’s story as Russian disinformation five days after it appeared. They stated that the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
However, the intelligence professionals didn’t provide any evidence to back their claim, claiming that only the emails on the laptop were suspicious.
Today, the FBI has the laptop in its custody.
Slowly, many media outlets have admitted that the laptop was genuine and not disinformation from Russia. Politico last year reported its materials were authentic. The New York Times last week reported “authenticating” emails from the laptop.
“Who made the decision to shut [the story] down?” inquired Issa. “Who [did] that person talk to? What was in their texts and the like? Because there obviously was — and I hate the use of this word, since it was false when it was first used — but collusion at the highest levels” between MSM, Big Tech, and politicians.
According to many, the initial New York Post article was suppressed as it appeared just before the election and was likely to undermine Joe Biden’s candidacy.
In response to a question about who will receive evidence-preservation letters on Tuesday, Issa mentioned Twitter, Facebook, the New York Times, and all 51 names on the intelligence letter, hinting at the possibility of more.
According to Issa, the Hunter Biden laptop story is an attack on the First Amendment as it is an example of free speech being suppressed.
“The First Amendment is the one that protects our democracy,” he pointed out. “Right now, there is an attack on free speech. Everything else will be washed away in the annals of history if we cannot have … diversity of opinion that used to be common on college campuses and certainly used to be on the pages of the major newspapers, both left and right.”
He noted that the ultimate goal of a potential investigation would be to pass legislation protecting free speech and holding Big Tech accountable for undermining it.
Source: The Republic Brief