“Fox & Friends” co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade got into a tense exchange Tuesday over the FBI’s suspected involvement in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
A recent New York Post report suggested that the FBI warned Twitter executives of a “hack-and-leak” by “state actors” involving the story on the younger Biden’s laptop, leading the platform to suspend the sharing of the report. Doocy cited Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi’s report, which appeared to debunk federal law enforcement’s involvement in suppressing the laptop report on Twitter.
“Wait a second, how can that be the case? Is the FBI the government? Do the FBI get the laptop?” Kilmeade pushed back. “Did they go ahead and brief these major social media companies about not doing certain things and suppressing certain things?”
“In the run up to the election, we heard and we talked about from this couch, warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and federal law enforcement, given what happened in 2016, they might try it again. We heard that. But Matt Taibbi, who has seen everything, said ‘federal law enforcement [is] not involved in Twitter and the laptop story,’ period.”
Kilmeade argued that Twitter CEO Elon Musk agrees that Twitter took part in election meddling, and added that the FBI also warned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of supposed “Russian disinformation.” (RELATED: Jean-Pierre Says Musk ‘Haphazardly’ Released ‘Twitter Files’ As A ‘Distraction’)
“The FBI did it, so that’s a ridiculous thing to say,” Kilmeade said. “Unless they walked in and said shut down Twitter, we’re taking it over. If that’s what Matt Taibbi’s looking for, he’s never gonna find it.”
“What Zuckerberg said is that there was a general warning and that’s what [New York Post reporter] Miranda Devine wrote about,” Doocy said. “What I know for a fact is what Matt Taibbi said.”
Doocy was referencing Zuckerberg’s interview with Joe Rogan, in which he said that the FBI warned him of “Russian propaganda” before the election.
A recently released signed declaration by Twitter’s former head of Site Integrity, Yoel Roth, was filed with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in December 2020. During weekly meetings, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security warned him of potential threats to election security.
On October 14, 2020, Twitter prohibited the sharing of any report in connection to Biden’s laptop as it violated its “hacked materials” policy. The platform locked the accounts of the New York Post and then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
The New York Times and Washington Post recently confirmed the authenticity of the laptop story after the corporate media consistently denied the reports, over one year after the Daily Caller News Foundation. The younger Biden allegedly abandoned the computer in a Delaware repair shop in 2019 which reportedly contained emails detailing his foreign business dealings with Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, and the state-owned Chinese energy company CEFC China Energy Co., from which he received $4.8 million in wire transfer payments from its founder, Ye Jianming.
Musk has repeatedly condemned Twitter’s suppression of the story and released the “Twitter Files” alongside Taibbi Friday to disclose information regarding the previous executives’ suppression of the report.