USA 2024 Elections Thread

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'Russian Disinformation' Narrative On Hunter Biden Laptop Story Proved
False By Twitter Files, Trump DNI Says

https://www.theepochtimes.com/russian-disinformation-narrative-on-hunter-biden-laptop-story-proved-false-by-twitter-files-trump-dni-says_4917223.html

https://twitter.com/JohnRatcliffe/status/1601394397241036803
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1601381605733707776
https://nypost.com/2021/10/12/one-year-later-the-posts-hunter-biden-reporting-is-vindicated-but-still-buried/
https://twitter.com/CNNSitRoom/status/1317245084639891457

The recently publicized internal Twitter communications have proven
false the claim that the story around Hunter Biden’s laptop was a part
of Russia’s disinformation campaign, former director of national
intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe said Friday.

“What I said as the DNI in October 2020 was proven true,” Ratcliffe
wrote on Twitter. “The IC had zero intelligence supporting a false
narrative that the Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Nobody in
the IC had authority to say otherwise.”
The Twitter headquarters signage on 10th Street in San Francisco on
Nov. 4, 2022. (David Odisho/Getty Images)

Ratcliffe, who served as the nation’s top intelligence official and
the principal intelligence adviser to President Donald Trump from 2020
to 2021, shared part of independent journalist Matt Taibbi’s post
series, known as “Twitter Files.”

In the multi-post thread, Taibbi used screenshots of email exchanges
between company executives to illustrate Twitter’s biased content
moderation decisions, including the suppression of the New York Post’s
report of the link then-presidential candidate Joe Biden allegedly had
with dubious foreign business dealings based on emails retrieved from
a laptop once belonged to his son, Hunter.

Twitter’s initial response to the story is to limit its reach,
claiming at that time that this was based on the platform’s “Hacked
Material Policy” that prohibited users from posting “content obtained
through hacking.”

One of those screenshots, according to Taibbi, shows that Yoel Roth,
Twitter’s moderation and safety leader until his recent resignation,
had been having a “weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI” regarding issues with
“election security” in the wake of the laptop story.

“Hacked Materials exploded. We blocked the NYP story, then we
unblocked it (but said the opposite), then said we unblocked it… and
now we’re in a messy situation where our policy is in shambles, comms
is angry, reporters think we’re idiots, and we’re refactoring an
exceedingly complex policy 18 days out from the election,” wrote one
executive who is purportedly Roth.

“Weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI re: election security,” the message
continued. “The meeting happened about 15 minutes after the
aforementioned Hacked Materials implosion; the government declined to
share anything useful when asked.”

Roth’s weekly meetings with law enforcement and intelligence officials
may have involved separate meetings, where not all of them showed up,
Taibbi reported.

“I have to miss the FBI and DHS meetings today, unfortunately,” Roth
wrote to a Twitter staffer, indicating that officials of the two
agencies weren’t scheduled to meet with him together at once.

None of these messages mentioned anything about Russia, although at
that time many commentators, media outlets, and Democrat
leaders—notably House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
(D-Calif.), claimed that the controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s
laptop was a Russian disinformation plot.

“We know this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,” Schiff
told CNN in October 2020, claiming that it was in Moscow’s interest to
keep Trump in the White House. “Clearly, the origins of this whole
smear are from the Kremlin, and the president is only happy to have
Kremlin help in trying to amplify it.”

Such assertion had prompted Ratcliffe to speak out, accusing the
Democrats of trying to “politicize the intelligence.”

“The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no
intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence
with Adam Schiff, or any member of Congress,” Ratcliffe said in an
interview with Fox Business following Schiff’s comments.

“It’s funny that some of the people who complain the most about
intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing the
intelligence,” he added. “Unfortunately, it is Adam Schiff who said
the intelligence community believes the Hunter Biden laptop and emails
on it are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”