On Wednesday, the FBI denied the information provided by Michael Shellenberger in the seventh installment of the Twitter Files. The leak concerned the agency's pressure on Twitter to censor The New York Post's October 2020 exclusive on Hunter Biden's laptop. In a press release, the FBI responded to one of the latest revelations from the Twitter Files, claiming that the purpose of this release was to discredit the work they do:
The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.
As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.
The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.
Russian hacking
This statement was in direct response to Shellenberger accusing the federal agency that the information on Hunter Biden's laptop was part of a Russian hack.
Since this exclusive was leaked, The New York Post reported that Twitter's former Chief Trust and Safety officer, Yoel Roth has continued to insist that FBI agents manipulated information to make any document on Hunter's computer look like a "Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation" aimed at vilifying then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Elvis Chan, the FBI's special agent in San Francisco and the Bureau's main liaison to the social network, explained in a separate statement that the warnings were overblown: "Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016."
Media silence
As the FBI responds to the Twitter Files allegations, the lack of reporting from several media outlets is particularly striking. According to Breitbart, neither TVEyes, NSNBC and CNN have mentioned the "Twitter Files" even once in the last two days.
They are not the only media outlets that decided not to publish anything about the relationship between the FBI and Twitter. Breitbart News said Tuesday that newspapers such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, Politico Playbook, Politico Punchbowl News and Los Angeles Times also chose to ignore everything leaked on Monday by Michael Shellenberger.
