USA 2020 Elections: Thread

[grarpamp]

Recording this censorship event here, illustrating need for development
and adoption of more distributed uncensorable platforms,
so that people can freely think, speak, consider, subscribe,
denounce, support, debate, leak, publish, etc... for themselves.



https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smoking-gun-emails-show-hunter-biden-introduced-vp-dad-burisma-executive
https://web.archive.org/web/20201014221628/https://www.zerohedge.com/political/smoking-gun-emails-show-hunter-biden-introduced-vp-dad-burisma-executive

"
Ted Cruz Accuses Twitter Of Meddling In 2020 Election By Censoring
Hunter Biden Exposé
Profile picture for user Tyler Durden
by Tyler Durden
Wed, 10/14/2020 - 16:57

Update (1645ET): As the uproar over Twitter & Facebook's efforts to
suppress Wednesday's New York Post exposè intensifies, Twitter has
(begrudgingly, we imagine) made mention of the scandal in its trending
topics.

Ironically, Streisand Effect is trending nationally - that's a subtle
reference to the principle of how trying to suppress information often
accidentally causes it to spread.

Several slots below that is #HunterBiden.

Quietly backtracking suggests Twitter is beginning to regret its
decision to censor the story.

Meanwhile, as the mainstream media desperately tries to change the subject...

    Billboard outside Des Moines airport where Trump holds Iowa rally
tonight. pic.twitter.com/XHix45wzlw
    — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) October 14, 2020

...Ted Cruz, coming in hot off his performance during the ACB hearings
this week, tweeted a copy of a letter he recently sent to the CEO of
Twitter, Jack Dorsey,

    Facebook official spox (who describes himself as an alum of the
DCCC & former Dem Sen. Barbara Boxer) explains Facebook’s active
censorship of @nypost story alleging corruption by Biden.

    Who could doubt their impartiality? https://t.co/GITjkeEJP4
    — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 14, 2020

    My letter to @jack regarding @Twitter’s censorship of the @nypost.
pic.twitter.com/o3Ebkbqait
    — Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 14, 2020

As Cruz argues in the letter, like myriad other newspaper reports
published during the Trump era (too many to even begin to name here),
the NYPost story was based on "leaked email correspondence". He adds
that the decision to suppress the story was "hypocritical", given the
company has allowed plenty of other less definitively sourced
reporting to spread unchecked.

    Twitter well-knows its incredible ability to influence public
dialogue by promoting some stories while suppressing others, and it
has plainly decided that the American people should not be seeing or
discussing this particular story, which could significantly influence
voters' views of candidate Biden.

Cruz concluded that "this can only be seen as an obvious and
transparent attempt by Twitter to influence the upcoming Presidential
election," and demanded that the social media company turn over
important details to the Subcommittee on the Constitution.

The most important of the four question (the first three mostly cover
the whos, wheres, whens, and hows) is the last one, which asks Twitter
to cite a "neutral principle" which would explain why the reporting on
the Steele dossier was allowed to go unquestioned, but this story,
reported in the country's 4th-highest circulation newspaper, must be
censored because it's "dangerous".

Eric Weinstein seized the opportunity to make a great point.

    I am deliberately posing here with actual “potentially harmful”
objects found in my home. I still have minor in the house.

    Please @jack, let me know if I‘m violating Twitter’s Terms of
Service as understood by your trusted Partners.

    I am so disappointed in you. This is *wrong*. pic.twitter.com/jqIXQtuNvC
    — Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) October 14, 2020

An editor at the Post accused Twitter of waging a "digital civil war"
against conservatives, citing this as the latest evidence.

    This is a Big Tech information coup. This is digital civil war.

    I, an editor at The New York Post, one of the nation’s largest
papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details
corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden.
pic.twitter.com/BKNQmAG19H
    — Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020

By censoring the NYPost story, Twitter and Facebook have effectively
allowed what many would have written off as "just another crazy Hunter
story" to take on a life of its own. Ironically, they've accomplished
what they were purportedly trying to prevent: they've given the story
even more oxygen.

* * *

Update (1455ET): If you thought Twitter's censorship of the NYPost
Hunter Biden exposé couldn't get anymore Orwellian, well, you were
wrong.

As if preventing users from sharing the link wasn't enough, the
platform has now deleted the NYP's initial tweet.

    Twitter deleted @nypost’s tweet about the Hunter Biden bombshell.
This is election interference. We’ve entered the age where we have a
"ministry of truth" run by Democrats and only they decide what’s true.
They demand that you no longer believe your lying eyes & ears.

    Chilling. pic.twitter.com/rl6oPZMv5V
    — Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 14, 2020

We imagine it did so after a flood of hysterical leftists smashed that
"report tweet" button.

Meanwhile, after the Biden campaign neglected to comment on the
veracity of the emails shared in the NYPost expose, the White House
pool reporter reported that the Biden campaign had called a "lid" -
that is, an end to all in-person campaign-related events - before
10am, ensuring the former VP wouldn't have any prolonged in person
contact with reporters on the same day the expose dropped.

As we've explained in the past, a "lid" is essentially permission for
the doting reporters covering Biden's campaign to head home for the
day. His campaign's frequent use of the practice has drawn more
unwanted attention to the cozy relationship between the Biden campaign
and the Washington Press corp.

* * *

Update (1430ET): Twitter is now apparently flagging this morning's NY
Post report as "unsafe" and refusing to allow its users to share it.

    This is what happens when I try to post our story exposing Biden
family graft. pic.twitter.com/7pwxUoNgTX
    — Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) October 14, 2020

    Also pic.twitter.com/hyES7QWwCn
    — 🍂 joe 🍂 (@BarnasJoe) October 14, 2020

This is an escalation from earlier, when Twitter was merely prompting
users to reconsider before sharing.

* * *

Update (1405ET): While left-wing conspiracy theorists try to denounce
the emails published by the NYP as fake, the Trump Campaign has just
pointed out something very interesting in its latest comment on the
issue.

    🚨📩 INBOX —> @TeamTrump statement on Biden response to NY Post Bombshell:

    “The Biden campaign does not dispute the authenticity of the
emails published by the New York Post, which serves to confirm that
they are real,” says @TimMurtaugh pic.twitter.com/2UScI1pQ45
    — Abigail Marone 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) October 14, 2020

This medium post purporting to show that the emails were
"photoshopped" has been making the rounds - unimpeded - on social
media.

* * *

Update (1310ET): In the social media contest to see which platforms
can successfully suppress Wednesday's NYP Hunter Biden scoop, it looks
like Twitter has taken the lead. In addition to scrubbing Hunter's
name from its trending topics, Twitter is hitting users trying to
retweet the story with one of their "are you sure?" prompts.

    Twitter now too pic.twitter.com/TGTve2mXuC
    — Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) October 14, 2020

* * *

Update (1255ET): Hours after the Trump Campaign earlier blasted the
Biden Campaign's "blatant selling of access", team Biden has finally
responded by asserting that the meeting between VP Biden and a top
Burisma executive described in one of the leaked emails detailed below
never took place.

“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no
meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” said
campaign spokesman Andrew Bates in a statement.

    New: Biden campaign responds to NY Post story. “The New York Post
never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this
story...moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from
the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took
place.” pic.twitter.com/yB2N5mvsXb
    — Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) October 14, 2020

The team also claimed that they were never approached by the reporters
who published the story.

To be sure, just because it wasn't on Biden's "official" schedule,
doesn't mean it didn't happen.

    The Biden campaign’s response to the NY Post story is that Biden’s
meeting with the corrupt official of a corrupt Ukrainian gas company
isn’t on Biden’s official schedule. No one was expecting it to be on
his official schedule. https://t.co/Pog0xqtsF5
    — Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) October 14, 2020

The Biden camp also claimed the NY Post did nothing to try and
corroborate the "unverified" emails.

Notably, the NY Post has shared one of the emails in full in a PDF document.

480001185 Email From Vadim Pozharskyi to Devon Archer and Hunter Biden
by Zerohedge on Scribd

Critics are calling for the Post to release metadata from the emails,
or some other clue to verify the messages.

Meanwhile, Trump Campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh makes a good point.

"The real question is, as of course this has been seized by the FBI
since then, why has the FBI been sitting on this?" Murtaugh said,
adding, "I would also further point out that no one seemed to care
when someone committed an obvious federal crime by leaking the
president’s tax documents to the New York Times."

* * *

Update (1150ET): More high-profile conservatives have lashed out at
Facebook for censoring the story about Hunter Biden.

    This is straight-up election interference by @Facebook, being
announced by their comms person who touts in his bio numerous past
jobs with Dems. Big Tech is openly trying to rig this election for
Biden & should be held accountable immediately. @FCC @senjudiciary
@SenateCommerce https://t.co/NO2eG6D6K0
    — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 14, 2020

    Holy bleeping bleep. Facebook explicitly admitting it is
protecting Biden -- and interfering in the presidential election -- by
censoring media outlets and limiting discussion of today's breaking
news about Biden's engagement with Burisma. https://t.co/nF07qqyc5J
    — Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020

    Facebook is openly admitting its interference in a U.S.
presidential election by blatantly censoring media outlets that print
negative facts about their preferred presidential candidate, Joe
Biden. Terrifying. https://t.co/nF07qqyc5J
    — Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020

    The most Pravda-like thing is that the immediate pushback by
Biden's many allies in Big Media and Big Tech serve as confirmation of
the story and how damaging it is to the Biden campaign. If it weren't
true, they'd just say that, rather than censor its distribution.
    — Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020

Of course, Facebook isn't alone: Twitter is also keeping the story out
of its trending topics menu.

    Twitter clearly also part of Big Tech's presidential election
interference and their censorship of the negative facts surrounding
Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. https://t.co/2bGKIEv5K5
    — Mollie (@MZHemingway) October 14, 2020

We're also seeing an avalanche of memes.

    I had to... pic.twitter.com/lueR5wIm9X
    — M3thods (@M2Madness) October 14, 2020

While the hard drive has been turned over to the FBI, the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmed it's
working with the computer repairman who initially discovered the hard
drive to "verify" the documents. The repairman initially contacted the
committee back in September, one day after it released the report on
conflicts related to Hunter, per the NY Post.

Some other revelations have been publicized from the email cache: In a
follow-up piece, the NY Post revealed that Blue Star Strategies,
identified by the NY Post as a "Democratic" PR firm, leaked the
minutes of an administration conference call to Burisma executive
Vadym Pozharskyi along with Hunter Biden and his former business
partner Devon Archer.

* * *

Update (1145ET): Rumor has it that one of the lewd videos mentioned
earlier features Hunter Biden smoking crack and having sexual
relations with an unidentified woman.

    11. Allegedly, the laptop Hunter "forgot" to pick up also contains
a 12 minute video of him smoking crack and having sex with an
unidentified woman.
    — Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) October 14, 2020

Truly legendary.

* * *

Update (1115ET): In a surprising move to censor a mainstream media
outlet known for leaning conservative, Facebook's platform managers
have decided to actively suppress distribution of the latest Hunter
Biden expose.

    While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want
be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook's
third-party fact checking partners. In the meantime, we are reducing
its distribution on our platform.
    — Andy Stone (@andymstone) October 14, 2020

The Trump Campaign accused Stone and the company of actively
interfering in the election.

    This is a Facebook employee.

    Facebook is actively interfering in the election.

    Facebook is rigging the election for Joe Biden.
https://t.co/mXGi2ay8J7 pic.twitter.com/PjtZaVPQ16
    — Trump War Room - Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) October 14, 2020

Republicans and conservatives across Twitter and elsewhere also
expressed their dismay at the decision.

While CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook has some
obligation to censor or root out "misinformation", this story isn't
what that is. Keep in mind, Facebook censored ZERO stories about the
Russia investigation and its origins, even as some key elements of the
NYT's early reporting were found to be false.

    Facebook, as a matter of policy, is now censoring stories
detailing documented corruption by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden.

    At no point did Facebook ever seek to throttle the reach of any
Russian-disinformation-fueled stories falsely alleging collusion.
https://t.co/N8ktaqCn2J
    — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 14, 2020

    Twitter is censoring the president and shadow-banning
conservatives, Facebook is blocking negative stories about Joe Biden
and his crackhead son, and Google is kow-towing to communist China, in
case you were wondering whether Big Tech is conspiring to steal the
2020 election.
    — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 14, 2020

To be sure, mainstream media are abiding with a near-blackout, just as
we had anticipated.

    Any time legacy media drops a supposed "bombshell" on Trump, it
immediately hits the front pages.

    Still waiting on NYT, WaPo, and CNN however to write anything on
the @nypost's actual bombshell on Joe Biden lying about what he knew
of his son's overseas business interests. pic.twitter.com/amcilH0cv0
    — Tristan Justice (@JusticeTristan) October 14, 2020

It's like veteran political journalist Matt Taibbi (hardly a
conservative) has argued: best-case, enforcing "misinformation" is a
laborious game of whack-a-mole. But right now, it's just simply
opening the companies to accusations of bias because that's what they
are showing.

* * *

Update (1006ET): Due to the gravity of its claims, the NY Post's
Hunter Biden scoop has overshadowed the third day of ACB's
confirmation hearings to become the major political story of the day.

So far, the MSM's most cogent objection is: 'if all of this is real,
then why wasn't it in the Senate report? And how long has Giuliani had
a copy of the hard drive?'

    Things that are sketchy in NYP story on Hunter Biden - why wasn’t
this in Ron Johnson report if it’s been in possession for awhile? When
did Giuliani acquire it? Giuliani has been everywhere on the but this
has been kicking around since late last year and unreleased till now?
    — Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) October 14, 2020

One respondent joked.

And while the NY Post published numerous photos from the hard-drive
ranging from the banal to the bizarre, photos of Hunter Biden with a
crack/meth pipe in his mouth have gone viral on social media.

    What a legend pic.twitter.com/rlZcb2qZiz
    — Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) October 14, 2020

* * *

Update (0900ET): The White House is celebrating the Wednesday morning
NY Post bombshell...

    🚨🚨 BOMBSHELL 🚨 🚨

    Hunter introduced Joe Biden to a top executive at the Ukrainian
energy firm he received $50K/month from!

    BIDEN: “I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone
else anything having to do with their businesses. Period.”@JoeBiden
LIED. PERIOD‼️ pic.twitter.com/zDy75fxauq
    — Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) October 14, 2020

...while the MSM is trying to make it all go away.

    The 'smoking gun' email in the NY Post story — even if it is
authentic, given the massive red flags — doesn't actually say what the
story says it does.

    Also, recall: https://t.co/qPVwoX4g1f
    — Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 14, 2020

That's hardly a surprise.

* * *

MSM organizations may have largely ignored findings from a Senate
Intel Committee report, released last month, which claimed that some
of Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine raised "counterintelligence
and extortion" concerns. On the day that report dropped, Rep Adam
Schiff brushed it aside, accusing his GOP colleagues in the Senate of
"promoting the same Russian disinformation", per the New York Post.

Well, we'd be interested to hear what Schiff & Company have to say about this.

In a shocking report based on documents collected by the FBI - but
which haven't been previously disclosed in the press - the New York
Post reveals that Hunter Biden introduced his father - then the Vice
President of the United States - to a top executive at Burisma, the
shady Ukrainian energy firm where Biden once served as a board member.

Emails contained in the report shed new light on Biden's claims that
he successfully forced former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to
fire a public prosecutor named Viktor Shokin. Biden bragged about
leveraging $1 billion in US aid to force Poroshenko to fire Shokin,
who was opposed by both the US and the EU. However, Shokin was
reportedly working on an investigation into the management and
executive board of Burisma, a group that included Hunter Biden, and
his former business partner Devon Archer, whose conviction on
securities fraud charges in the US was recently reinstated.

The emails offer evidence that Hunter Biden did in fact introduce his
father to a top executive at Burisma less than a year before the vice
president moved to oust Shokin, thereby quashing an investigation into
the firm. The meeting is referenced in emails between Vadym
Pozharskyi, an advisor to the board of Burisma, who sent Biden an
email on April 17, 2015 thanking him for the introduction.

Another email also shows Pozharskyi, believed to be the No. 3 exec at
Burisma, asking Biden about how the political scion could "use your
influence" to help Burisma.

All of this would seem to undermine Biden's claim that he has "never
spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings", which also
included extensive dealings in China.

Another email dated on May 12, 2014, shortly after Hunter joined the
board, shows Pozharskyi attempting to pressure Biden to use his
"political leverage" to help the company. The message included the
subject line "urgent issue" and also references an attempted
"shakedown" by Ukrainian prosecutors under Poroshenko. According to
Pozharskyi, prosecutors in the country had approached a man referred
to as "NZ", who was identified by the Post as Burisma founder Mykola
Zlochevsky, who went by the Americanized name "Nicholas".

When "NZ" rebuffed their threats, they proceeded with "concrete
actions" including "one or more pretrial proceedings," Pozharskyi
wrote.

“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to
convey a message / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be
politically motivated actions,” he added.

The timing of the email is also notable: It was sent just as Burisma
was announcing Biden's decision to join the executive board.

It's merely the latest piece of evidence suggesting that the company
brought Biden on to manage its "legal affairs" because it likely
believed his pull with the US would protect Burisma from these types
of prosecutorial "shakedowns".

In addition to the emails, the drive contained photos, some of which
were shared with the Post. They spanned from family snaps of Hunter
with his father and his kids, to selfies of Biden smoking cigarettes
in a variety of unusual poses.

According to the Post, the images and correspondence were taken from
the hard drive of a laptop that was dropped off at a repair shop in
Delaware, and never retrieved. After seeing what was on the hard
drive, the owner of the shop copied it, and turned it over to a lawyer
connected with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani reportedly
turned it over to the NY Post over the weekend.

We imagine the MSM will cover up this report, as is standard practice
for any concerning information involving Hunter Biden's foreign
business dealings.
"