Republican ranking members of powerful Senate committees demanded Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turn over any documents detailing the FBI’s interference in the 2020 election.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, issued a letter Monday to Zuckerberg demanding an explanation of his company’s role in suppressing the Hunter Biden story at the behest of the FBI to help Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.
“The American people deserve to know whether the FBI used Facebook as part of their alleged plan to discredit information about Hunter Biden,” said the letter, which was obtained and published by the New York Post. “If so, Congress and the American people require clarity with respect to the extent the FBI communicated with Facebook during the 2020 election about Hunter Biden-related information.”
The senators referred to a recent interview Zuckerberg had with podcast host Joe Rogan as evidence of FBI election interference.
“On the August 25, 2022, episode of the podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, you noted that at some point leading up to the 2020 election the FBI came to Facebook with a warning: ‘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, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot ofRussian 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’,” the letter stated.
“You appeared to indicate that as a result of the FBI’s warning, Facebook eventually tooksteps to censor news articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Specifically, you said that ‘distribution’ of those articles on Facebook was decreased and explained that ‘the ranking an newsfeed was a little bit less. So fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.’ Although you noted that users could still share the articles, you clarified that the number of users who could see it decreased by a ‘meaningful’ amount,” the letter added.
The senators then requested documents showing Meta’s internal communications with government agencies, discussions of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, and all correspondence with the FBI showing its 2020 election interference:
1. All records between and among Facebook, FBI, Department of Justice, and other government agency employees referring or relating to Hunter Biden including, but not limited to, Russian disinformation, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and Senator Johnson’s and Senator Grassley’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings, from July 1, 2020 to July 1, 2021.
2. The names of the Justice Department and FBI officials who communicated with Facebook regarding Russian disinformation during the 2020 election.
3. The names of the Facebook officials who the Justice Department and FBI made contact with during the 2020 election.
4. The dates of when Facebook decreased the distribution of articles relating to Hunter Biden’s laptop
The FBI’s claim to Meta that the Hunter Biden laptop story is Russian disinformation is extremely concerning given the bureau had been in possession of the laptop since 2019.
“Either way, the FBI lied to Facebook and presumptively Twitter and many other media outlets. If the FBI had analyzed the laptop, it knew it was not Russian disinformation; if agents had not yet assessed the material, it had no basis to claim it was Russian disinformation,” wrote the Federalist’s Margot Cleveland.
Meanwhile, the FBI launched into damage control over the weekend, insisting that it “routinely” warns tech companies about “potential threat information.”
This also comes as a lead FBI special agent behind the Mar-a-Lago raid was forced to resign after it was revealed that he was blocking criminal inquiries into Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 election.
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