“An FBI agent testified to Republican attorneys general this week that the FBI held weekly meetings with Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley ahead of the 2020 presidential election to discuss ‘disinformation’ on social media and ask about efforts to censor that information,” Fox News reports.
Lawyers from the offices of Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana deposed FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan as part of their lawsuit against the Biden Administration.
Chan was questioned under oath by court order about his alleged “critical role” in “coordinating with social-media platforms relating to censorship and suppression of speech on their platforms.”
FBI met weekly with Big Tech ahead of the 2020 election, agent testifies https://t.co/PmSsY0WI7O
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) December 2, 2022
“In our deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan on Tuesday, we found that the FBI plays a big role in working with social media companies to censor speech – from weekly meetings with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election to asks for account takedowns,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt tweeted.
🚨BREAKING: In our deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan on Tuesday, we found that the FBI plays a big role in working with social media companies to censor speech – from weekly meetings with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election to asks for account takedowns.
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) December 2, 2022
Those meetings were initially quarterly, then monthly, then weekly heading into the 2020 election.
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) December 2, 2022
On many occasions, the platforms took down the accounts flagged by the FBI.
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) December 2, 2022
Cont. from Fox News:
During the deposition, Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office.
Those meetings were initially quarterly, then monthly, then weekly heading into the presidential election between former President Donald Trump and now President Biden. According to a source, Chan testified that in those multiple, separate meetings, the FBI warned the social media companies that there could be potentially Russian “hack and dump” or “hack and leak” operations.
In their complaint, the GOP AGs noted an Aug. 26 podcast episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” in which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that “the FBI basically came to us” and told Facebook to be “on high alert” relating to “a lot of Russian propaganda.” Zuckerberg added that the FBI said “there’s about to be some kind of dump… that’s similar to that, so just be vigilant.”
As noted in the complaint, Zuckerberg stated, “If the FBI… if they come to us and tell us we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.” Zuckerberg said he could not recall if the FBI specifically flagged the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation, but said that the story “basically fit the pattern” that the FBI had identified.
“On information and belief, the FBI’s reference to a ‘dump’ of information was a specific reference to the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was already in the FBI’s possession,” the complaint said.
According to the complaint, pursuant to a third-party subpoena, Meta identified the FBI’s Foreign Interference Task Force and Chan as involved in the communications between the FBI and Meta that led to Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
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