Thank You Elon's Twitter Files. Perhaps Tesla is a waste, but not The First Amendment's Support by Musk.

By James Freeman

Dec. 5, 2022 5:24 pm ET

96

https://images.wsj.net/im-679281/?width=620&size=1.5 620w, https://images.wsj.net/im-679281/?width> Joe Biden during the presidential debate with President Donald Trump at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee on October 22, 2020.Photo: jim bourg/Reuters

There’s so much recent news about all the people who embraced a political falsehood in 2020 that sometimes it’s hard to remember the deceptive statements by the person at the very center of the story.

Perhaps some media folk can claim now that they were duped into suppressing the New York Post’s 2020 reporting about Biden family enrichment schemes. But let’s not forget the leader of the dupers, who can make no such excuses.

Watch for President Trump to go after former Vice President Joe Biden`s son, Hunter Biden, and unverified emails about his business dealings, a story that many intelligence experts say has all the hallmarks for a foreign interference campaign.

The experts were full of it. But on that night in 2020, NBC’s Chuck Todd did his part for the team by casting what we now know to be a legitimate concern as some sort of weird fascination:

Well this is Donald Trump`s last chance to change the trajectory of this race... The question is will he change his behavior from the first debate. The first debate did real damage to his campaign. He has to have a good debate performance tonight. I don`t know if he can. If he`s obsessed with Hunter Biden, I don`t know if you can have a good debate performance if he does that.

Despite the Toddian warning, Mr. Trump went ahead and raised the issue and Mr. Biden responded. Here’s the ensuing exchange, according to the Commission on Presidential Debates transcript:

BIDEN: Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four– five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.

TRUMP: You mean, the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? You gotta be–

BIDEN: That’s exactly what — That’s exactly what–

TRUMP: Is this where you’re going? This is where he’s going. The laptop is Russia, Russia, Russia?

To her credit debate moderator Kristen Welker of NBC ended up abandoning the team’s message discipline and committing a Beltway faux pas by asking:

Vice President Biden, there have been questions about the work your son has done in China, and for a Ukrainian energy company when you were Vice President. In retrospect, was anything about those relationships inappropriate or unethical?

“Nothing was unethical,” claimed Mr. Biden. He then proceeded to claim that only Donald Trump made money in China, saying:

My son has not made money in terms of this thing about — what are you talking about — China. I have not had it. The only guy that made money from China is this guy. He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.

Republican Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have since published business and financial records showing millions of dollars flowing from Chinese companies and affiliates to Biden-related entities.

On that night in 2020 Joe Biden also addressed the lucrative relationship his son had with a Ukrainian natural gas company despite having no background in Ukraine or natural gas:

Everybody investigated that, no one said anything he did was wrong in Ukraine.

Considering Mr. Biden’s peddling of the bogus claim that the laptop material was nothing but garbage from Russia, cultural critic Noam Dworman observes:

He figuratively wagged his finger at the camera and said, “I never had sex with that woman.” That kind of deception used to matter to the press. It doesn’t anymore.

Another thing that used to matter to the press is the First Amendment, which is supposed to prevent the government from dictating to Americans what can and cannot be published. Republican Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana have been suing the federal government for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor speech. Mr. Schmitt said in a series of tweets on Friday:

In MO and LA’s 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.

Chan, the FBI’s [Foreign Influence Task Force] and senior [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] officials had meetings with social media companies in the lead-up to the 2020 election, in which Chan personally told the social media companies that there could potentially be a Russian “hack and leak” operation shortly before the election.

Those meetings were initially quarterly, then monthly, then weekly heading into the 2020 election.

Chan stated that the FBI regularly sent social media companies lists of URLs and social media accounts that should be taken down because they were disinformation from “malign foreign influence operations.” The FBI then inquired whether the platforms have taken down the content.

Of course the bureau’s activity was not limited to Twitter. Brianna Herlihy reports for Fox News:

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.

“The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities,” the FBI said in a statement. “It is not based on the content of any particular message or narrative. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

Is there any controversial material that an unreformed FBI couldn’t vaguely claim is being promoted by “foreign malign influence actors”?

Speaking of needed changes at the FBI, Mr. Biden’s 2020 deceptions suggest that reform will have to come from Congress, and perhaps with a veto-proof majority.