Two Fox News contributors sparred Wednesday over the FBI’s communication with former Twitter executives on alleged “hack-and-leak” operations to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
The segment touched on Twitter CEO Elon Musk firing former FBI lawyer James Baker for allegedly holding up documents connected to the lead up of Twitter’s suppression of the story Sunday. A signed declaration revealed that the FBI held weekly meetings with Twitter executives where they warned of potential threats to election security prior to the 2020 election.
“The Five” co-host Jessica Tarlov argued there is no evidence that federal law enforcement interfered in Twitter’s decision to suppress reports on the Hunter Biden laptop story, which ultimately led the platform to lock the accounts of the New York Post and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in October 2020.
When Tarlov argued that Taibbi did not release details on the government’s alleged suppression of free speech, contributor Mark Thiessen argued she is downplaying the issue at hand.
“That’s kind of a dodge,” he said.
“What? The phrase is in the Constitution,” Tarlov interjected. “It’s not just a phrase.”
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“Jessie, look, you’re hanging everything on the argument of the First Amendment. This is a scandal, this is the FBI and 51 former Intelligence officials … a collusion of these national security officials, the FBI going to Twitter to get them to suppress a news story that was negative about Hunter Biden. It doesn’t matter whether it was a First Amendment violation or not, it was fake news, it was a disgrace that this happened, and the entire media establishment went along with it and didn’t question it and went with this whole narrative.”
“I have been for an investigation from the get-go,” Tarlov said. “But let’s remember that this was the shadiest of chain of custody and our own newsroom here at Fox News turned down the story.” (RELATED: Rep. Jim Jordan Calls For Investigation Into FBI’s Alleged Role In Hunter Biden Laptop Story Suppression)
“The FBI had the laptop by then,” he pushed back.
Thiessen then pushed back against Tarlov’s claims that the public was only briefly interested in the suppression report at the time, arguing that there is more information on the matter than the FBI’s Russian collusion investigation.