Ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, members of the FBI allegedly briefed U.S. senators that a foreign government was planning to release misinformation about a member of Joe Biden’s family, according to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).
On Thursday, Lee posted on Twitter that the FBI held a classified briefing with senators in September 2020 in which they “warned us about misinformation—possibly driven by a foreign government—that was about to come forward about ‘a member the Biden family.'” Lee said he and other senators were advised that “we should neither believe nor share any such news.”
This brings to mind a September 2020 classified briefing to senators, when the FBI warned us about misinformation—possibly driven by a foreign government—that was about to come forward about “a member the Biden family.” They said we should neither believe nor share any such news. https://t.co/0hJrj90H9L
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) January 20, 2023
Lee raised the allegation in reaction to comments FBI Director Christopher Wray made at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Thursday. Wray described to the WEF how “the level of collaboration between the private sector and the government, especially the FBI has made significant strides.”
Alleged FBI Senate Briefing Came Before Hunter Biden Laptop Story
The September 2020 briefing Lee described would have come just weeks before the New York Post ran a series of articles about a laptop Joe Biden’s son Hunter allegedly abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop.
The New York Post articles detailed various communications found on the laptop appearing to pertain to Hunter Biden’s business deals. The New York Post reported that emails found on the laptop dating back to March or April of 2015 indicated that Hunter introduced his father, who was the vice president at the time, to one of his business partners in the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma. Those allegations arose after Biden had said earlier on in the 2020 campaign cycle that “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”
Burisma had been a subject of particular controversy in President Donald Trump’s 2019 impeachment case after he spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about Joe Biden’s alleged involvement in the firing of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was allegedly investigating Burisma.
After the New York Post published its initial reporting on the laptop, Twitter locked the New York Post out of its account until it deleted six tweets about the story. Twitter said the New York Post’s reporting violated the platform’s “hacked materials” policy. Facebook also suppressed the New York Post’s reporting on the story by adjusting its algorithms to limit how often links to the reporting would appear on their platform.
The Biden campaign denied the allegations raised in the New York Post stories that Joe Biden met with his son’s Burisma business partner.
“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” the Biden campaign said at the time.
Joe Biden himself referred to the New York Post articles as “another smear campaign.”
FBI Primed Twitter, Facebook to Distrust Info About Hunter Biden
Lee’s comments about the FBI warning lawmakers to disbelieve and avoid sharing “misinformation” about members of the Biden family come as new Twitter owner Elon Musk has released internal Twitter communications suggesting the FBI had conditioned Twitter in advance to distrust troves of documents like the kind the New York Post reported on in its Hunter Biden laptop articles.
In December 2022, journalist Michael Shellenberger published an installment of the “Twitter Files,” an ongoing series of disclosures about the social media platform’s handling of various content moderation issues, many of which resulted in the suppression of conservative political figures and stories on the website.
Shellenberger noted that the owner of the Delaware computer repair shop, John Paul Mac Isaac, had provided the FBI with the abandoned laptop in December 2019. Shellenberger also wrote about how FBI officials communicated and warned Twitter executives throughout 2020 that state actors would attempt “hack-and-leak operations” likely in October 2020 and potentially targeting Hunter Biden specifically.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also described, prior to Facebook’s decision to suppress the New York Post’s reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop, FBI officials warning the company about hack and leak operations.
NTD News has reached out to Lee’s office about the alleged classified briefings, but it did not respond before publication.
The FBI told NTD News it has “no comment” on the matter.