FBI confirms to Twitter Hunter Biden laptop’s authenticity | World news

The House Judiciary Committee released a deposition Wednesday that revealed the FBI confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s computer the same day The New York Post revealed its contents linking President Biden to his son’s foreign business dealings.

The Post published the first article in its explosive series in October.

Biden has previously denied having any involvement in his son’s overseas business ventures.

According to the affidavit, Laura Dehmlow, the director of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, testified that she participated in a call with Twitter that day, where an FBI official confirmed that the laptop was real.

“Someone from Twitter seriously asked if the laptop was real. And one of the FBI people on the call confirmed, ‘yes, it is,’ before another participant jumped in and said, ‘no further comment,'” Dehmlow said in a closed-door filing Monday.

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The FBI’s confirmation of the laptop was not made public before the 2020 election, as the US president and dozens of former intelligence officials falsely said the documents were part of a Russian fraud campaign.

The post was released during a hearing on social media censorship featuring journalist Emma-Jo Morris, who wrote the first laptop stories as deputy political editor at The Post. It revealed how Joe Biden – referred to as “the big man” – was set to receive a 10% share of the profits from the deal between Hunter and James Biden and CEFC China Energy, a company linked to the Chinese government.

Twitter banned users from sharing links to the New York Post’s original article for two days, citing its hacked apps policy, although there was no evidence that the app had been hacked and the outlet explained how it got the laptop from a Delaware reformer who legally took possession of it after Hunter abandoned it.

The New York Post also published an FBI form showing that the office received the laptop in December 2019, but there was still doubt about its legitimacy until long after the election, mainly because of a letter from 51 former intelligence agency directors that cast doubt on the documents.

It wasn’t until March 2022 that the Washington Post and New York Times confirmed the contents of the laptop, more than 17 months after the Post’s original reports and more than 16 months after Joe Biden narrowly won the 2020 election.

Twitter lifted the ban on sharing links to The Post’s original article around 10 p.m. on October 15, 2020, but continued to block the Post from its accounts for another two weeks for refusing to delete the original links to the story.

In the final presidential debate on October 22, 2020, more than a week after The Post broke the story, Biden said the laptop was a “Russian plant,” citing a letter from former intelligence officials.

The letter was signed by five former CIA directors or acting directors and several of their former deputies. Recent evidence suggests that Antony Blinken, who supported the Biden campaign, supported former CIA director Michael Morell to write the letter.

Blinken later became secretary of state under Biden.

“No one is denying that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place,” Morris said at Wednesday’s hearing.

“This massive censorship conspiracy is not because the information reported is false. It is because it is true. And it is a threat to the power plants in this country. “

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The FBI’s certification of the laptop’s authenticity was not made public until recently, although it has been known since November 2019.

The FBI matched the laptop’s device number to Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID in November 2019, after learning that a repair shop had the laptop and might have evidence of a crime, according to IRS oversight agent Gary Shapley, who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on May 26.

Shapley, who investigated Hunter Biden’s tax fraud for three years, said a federal computer expert also determined that “he did not manipulate in any way.” His testimony was made public on June 22.

The FBI did not comment on why it did not share the laptop’s credentials with the public or with Twitter, which banned The Post from reporting on the laptop for two days in October 2020.

Musk, who became Twitter CEO with a mission to restore free speech, tweeted “Wow” on Thursday after the record was released.