Journalist Michael Shellenberger comments on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a letter to Congress this week, revealing that the federal government pressured the social media giant to censor stories related to Covid-19 and the Biden administration during 2020 and 2021 even more than he previously revealed during a 2022 interview with Joe Rogan.
"In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a bit of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree... I believe the government was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it," Zuckerberg wrote
"In a separate situation, the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election," Zuckerberg wroteZuckerberg also wrote. "That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story. We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again -- for instance, we no longer temporarily demote things in the U.S. while waiting for fact-checkers."
MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER: Zuckerberg's letter went further than what he told Joe Rogan in 2022 because he specifically mentioned Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that Hunter Biden worked for. Zuckerberg wrote the FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead-up to the 2020 election. Nobody at the FBI has gone to prison or even been properly investigated for their crimes.
And yet, the evidence shows that the CIA and FBI broke the Wiretap Act and the Hatch Act of 1939, which prohibits federal employees from using their official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the outcome of an election.
First, the FBI violated the Wiretap Act when it misused information it had obtained from spying on Rudy Giuliani. The FBI knew that the New York Post story about the Hunter Biden laptop would be coming out because it was listening to Giuliani's telephone calls.
The Wiretap Act, formally known as Title III of the Omnibus Crime and Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, requires that information obtained through a wiretap can only be used for purposes directly related to the investigation for which the wiretap was authorized misusing or improperly disclosing this information can result in criminal penalties for the individuals involved and the evidence obtained can be excluded from court proceedings. The FBI both misused and improperly disclosed the information.
Second, the FBI spread disinformation, information it knew to be false, in order to interfere in the election. The FBI warned Facebook Twitter and others that forthcoming information about Burisma and Biden was Russian disinformation. The FBI knew that the Hunter Biden laptop wasn't Russian disinformation because it already had the laptop in its possession for 10 months, and was spying on Giuliani.
The FBI knew the laptop was what it appeared to be, something obtained by a computer repair store owner after Hunter Biden brought it in and never came back for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.