Facebook—not the FBI—is to blame for blocking the Hunter Biden laptop story

Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

As the Mar-a-Lago raid clearly demonstrated, the Biden administration has militarized the FBI to go after Joe Biden’s political opponents.

“The FBI is now an organization solely focused on destroying the domestic enemies of the Democratic Party,” said radio host Jesse Kelly. But is the FBI responsible for suppressing the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop two weeks before the 2020 election?

Based on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent confession, the majority of the media say yes—the FBI did it. A closer examination of Zuckerberg’s comments suggests that the correct answer is no. Zuckerberg himself bears the responsibility.

Weeks before the 2020 election, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies decided to kill the October 14, 2020, New York Post article that confirmed the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and exposed Joe Biden’s corrupt activities in Ukraine. According to a new poll by Technometrica, nearly four out of five Americans believe that truthful media coverage of the laptop story would have prevented Joe Biden from becoming president.

During a well-publicized interview on the Joe Rogan podcast last week, Mark Zuckerberg insinuated that Facebook quashed the laptop story on orders from the FBI. Zuckerberg said his company decided to block the New York Post article after warnings from the FBI to be “vigilant” of Russian propaganda about the 2016 election.

“The background here,” said Zuckerberg, “is that the FBI came to us—some folks on our team—and was like ‘hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian 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’. We just kind of thought, hey, look, if the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, is very professional law enforcement, if they come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something then I’m going to take that seriously,” Zuckerberg said.

When Rogan asked if the FBI “specifically” told Facebook to “be on guard about that story,” Zuckerberg said the FBI did not warn Facebook about the Post article in particular. “No, I don’t remember if it was that specifically,” he said, “but it basically fit the pattern.”

So what exactly did Zuckerberg say? He said that “the FBI came to us.” He did not say who in the FBI approached Facebook, nor did he reveal the names of “some folks on our team.” This is the kind of vague source attribution typically used by the media to blanket the airwaves with fake news stories. Based on Zuckerberg’s ambiguous language, my conclusion is that he is attempting to blame the FBI for his own decision to censor one of the most important news stories of the presidential election.

Zuckerberg allegedly spent $400 million dollars supporting Democratic candidates in 2020. His donations, according to Hans von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission member, constituted “a carefully orchestrated attempt to convert official government election offices into get-out-the-vote operations for one political party and to insert political operatives into election offices in order to influence and manipulate the outcome of the election.” As a result, legislation to prohibit outside funding of elections has been introduced in 17 states. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that a recent election reform law he signed has “banned Zuckerbucks” in the Sunshine State.

Taking into consideration Zuckerberg’s overtly political activities in support of the Democratic Party, he ought to be accepting responsibility for censorship that arguably played a crucial role in the election of an American president. He prefers to blame the FBI instead.

Zuckerberg’s disingenuous behavior does not absolve the FBI or the Biden administration from attempting to control the media. Nor does it exonerate the FBI for lying about alleged Russian influence in U.S. elections. What it does is call to attention the need to limit social media’s ability to influence American voters. Granting that much power to a handful of left-wing billionaires can have tragic consequences for the republic.

Ed Brodow is a conservative political commentator and author of nine books including his new #1 Amazon Best Seller, AMERICA ON ITS KNEES: The Cost of Replacing Trump with Biden. His website is www.edbrodowpolitics.com.

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