Staff Reports
According to Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter's Site Integrity division, the FBI warned the company about a potential "hack and lea" operation involving Hunter Biden. The incident occurred before the platform censored a story about the President.
The Daily Caller reports that in 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies warned Roth about state actors who might try to leak information related to the 2020 presidential election. According to the declaration, which was filed with the FEC, these individuals might try to influence the results of the election by releasing hacked materials.
The FBI was involved https://t.co/pVUAIDvsjm
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) December 5, 2022
According to Roth, the agencies informed him about the potential threats during weekly meetings. These included the FBI, the Office of National Intelligence, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Throughout 2020, the agencies discussed the possibility of a hack-and-leak operation, which Roth was told might involve Hunter Biden.
It's not clear when the meeting between the agencies and Roth took place. On October 14, 2020, Twitter prohibited the sharing of a story about the President. The platform claimed that it violated its "hacked materials" policy.
Details about the meetings with the agencies are similar to what Mark Zuckerberg said in August, when he revealed that Facebook censored a story about Hunter Biden after receiving a request from law enforcement officials.
The New York Post reported that the FBI agent who was overseeing the meetings was Elvis Chan, and he did not recall whether Hunter Biden was brought up during the discussions. However, he was one of the agents who warned Zuckerberg about the possible interference by Russia in the upcoming election.
Many Twitter executives were not sure if the story about Hunter Biden should have been censored as it was in violation of the platform's hacked materials policy.
In response, Roth filed a declaration in support of Twitter, which defended the platform against an FEC complaint from the Tea Party Patriots. The group had accused the platform of suppressing the story on behalf of Joe Biden's campaign.
