House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Monday accused the FBI of lying about a meeting with Facebook employees regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election.
The “FBI LIED ABOUT MEETING WITH BIG TECH REGARDING NY POST’S HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY,” Jordan wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
On November 29, 2022, FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan was deposed as part of the State of Missouri, Schmitt et al. v. Biden, et al lawsuit.
As revealed in Elvis Chan’s deposition, the FBI played a major role in working with Big Tech companies to censor speech. Actions ranged from weekly meetings with social media companies to demanding takedowns of specific accounts and facilitating suppression of certain stories. Chan observed that the platforms became far more aggressive in removing misinformation during the 2020 election cycle than in previous election cycles, and they have remained so.
The Ohio Republican said Internal Facebook documents indicate that Chan made false statements in his testimony regarding “the FBI’s role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
Chan and Foreign Influence Task Force Section Chief Laura Dehmlow met with representatives from Facebook on Oct. 14, 2020, the same day the New York Post published its bombshell story on the Hunter Biden laptop. Dehmlow and other members of the FBI task force spoke with Twitter employees by phone the same day.
When asked during that call whether the laptop was authentic, according to Dehmlow’s deposition, ”one of the FBI folks who was on the call did confirm that, ‘yes, it was,’ before another participant jumped in and said, ‘no further comment.’”
After that, the FBI was careful to say “no comment” when asked if the laptop was authentic even though the Bureau had possessed the laptop since 2019 and knew it was authentic.
“They refused to admit it wasn’t Russian disinfo so the story would get suppressed—hiding the truth from voters,” noted Rep. Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.).
The FBI had for months been warning social media companies behind the scenes of a possible Russian “hack and dump” operation involving Hunter Biden, although, according to Dehmlow, it was fairly common knowledge within the FBI that the laptop was real.
During his deposition, Chan was asked if he had taken part in other meetings with Facebook other than the Oct. 14 meeting, and he responded that he was confident that he had not been “a party to” any other meetings with social media companies regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Chan was then asked if the FBI had any meetings with companies, other than the Facebook meeting, about the Hunter Biden story?
Chan responds that he is “confident” that he was not part of any meetings with Big Tech about Hunter Biden. pic.twitter.com/yMKnExtKMm
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 7, 2023
When asked again whether he was aware of any other communications between anyone at Facebook and anyone at the FBI related to the Hunter Biden’s laptop, Chan replied “no.”
“COMPLETELY FALSE,” Jordan wrote on Twitter. The chairman shared a recently obtained internal Facebook document showing that Chan took part in a follow-up call on October 15, 2020—the very next day. Chan said during the call that there wasn’t currently evidence proving “a foreign connection or direction” to the laptop leak. Of course, the FBI knew by this point that there was no foreign connection—Russian or otherwise— to the laptop.
COMPLETELY FALSE.
The Committee has recently obtained an internal Facebook document PROVING that Agent Chan had a secret “follow up” call with Facebook about the Hunter Biden laptop story on October 15, just one day after the @nypost story and the first Facebook meeting! pic.twitter.com/fPkUQzDIy4
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 7, 2023
Jordan said Chan made another inconsistent statement when he claimed that he’d had “no internal knowledge” of the FBI’s investigation, when according to a Facebook employee, the agent had indicated that he was “up to speed of the current state of the matter within the FBI.”
But the Facebook employee, an ex-FBI agent, wrote—the day after the story broke—that “Chan advised that he was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI.”
Chan also told FB that “there was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection…of the leaks.” pic.twitter.com/LTJ28OhFwy
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 7, 2023
“Is there any wonder why the Biden DOJ has so far stonewalled the Committee’s efforts to interview Agent Chan?” Jordan wrote. “Our investigation remains ongoing and we will continue to update the public with our findings as we prepare and consider legislation to fight the censorship-industrial complex and protect the First Amendment.”