A lawsuit from the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) produced documents Wednesday showing the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) worked to discredit the New York Post’s reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop.
AFL shared images from the documents Wednesday on X, including an internal CISA email thread from Oct. 14, 2020, when the New York Post first reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop contents and social media platforms censored the story. (RELATED: FBI Knew New York Post’s Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Real Ahead Of 2020 Election, FBI Form Shows)
/1🚨EXPLOSIVE DOCS — new docs obtained from our lawsuit against DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) indicate the federal gov’t immediately participated in an effort to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story the same day of the @nypost’s reporting: pic.twitter.com/L9bcuWbu5z
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) October 25, 2023
CISA officials appeared to schedule a meeting Oct. 14 surrounding the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s relationship with Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.
Hunter Biden was paid more than $80,000 per month as a Burisma board member despite having no experience in the energy sector or Ukrainian affairs, according to bank records released in August by the House Oversight Committee.
His father attended a dinner with a Burisma executive in spring 2015 and spoke with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associate on roughly 20 occasions, the younger Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, testified to the Oversight Committee in July. Archer also said the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma from scrutiny and kept the firm in business.
EXPLOSIVE: Government censors at CISA linked the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story to a “QAnon Conspiracy Theory” and a “convoluted web of falsehoods” about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election, a lawsuit by @America1stLegal reveals @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/oG84UX589M
— James Lynch (@jameslynch32) October 25, 2023
In addition, a CISA official appeared to link the New York Post’s Hunter Biden’s laptop coverage to a “QAnon Conspiracy Theory” and a barrage of supposedly false information being spread about Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 election, an Oct. 22, 2020, document shows.
“Driving the news: Recent reports about what was purported to be Hunter Biden’s computer hard drive have sparked renewed activity from Q, with more concrete ideas to latch onto,” a CISA document shared by America First Legal reads. “On the day the New York Post reported on the alleged hard drive, Q posted 16 times, per GroupSense.”
The CISA employee also linked the Hunter Biden laptop story to “the Pizzagate conspiracy theory” and a “convoluted web of falsehoods being spread to undermine Joe Biden,” AFL found. The organization obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records related to the government’s attempt to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.
CISA’s apparent pressure on social media platforms to censor speech online is part of the landmark Missouri vs. Biden First Amendment lawsuit to be heard by the Supreme Court. At the same time, the Supreme Court paused an injunction from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals preventing the Biden administration from coercing social media companies into censoring speech online.
The Fifth Circuit expanded its injunction in October to include CISA after its initial injunction in the case did not include the agency. CISA has utilized a process called “switchboarding” to allow state and local election officials to flag purported misinformation and have it removed by social media platforms, according to a report by the House Judiciary Committee. (RELATED: Federal Judge’s Ruling Is Nothing Short Of Devastating For Dems’ Censorship Regime, Experts Say)
AFL filed a separate FOIA request for documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and later revealed that then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office exchanged nearly 20,000 emails with Hunter Biden’s investment firm and almost 5,000 emails with Hunter Biden himself.
Likewise, AFL filed a complaint Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) demanding an investigation into the Biden campaign’s work on the discredited letter by 51 former intelligence officials who cast doubt on the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop contents.
The Daily Caller News Foundation, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other media outlets have verified the laptop’s contents. Former Hunter Biden business associate Tony Bobulinski told the FBI the laptop contents were real ahead of the 2020 presidential election, according to an FBI FD-302 form summarizing his interview with the Bureau.
The FBI had verified the laptop in November 2019 as part of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes and firearms possession, IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified to the House Ways and Means Committee in May.
Hunter Biden is suing the IRS for what his legal team argues are illegal disclosures by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler. He is simultaneously suing Delaware computer repairman John Mac Isaac, former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler for disseminating the laptop contents.
The Biden family and its business associates brought in more than $24 million from Ukraine, Russia, China, Romania and Kazakhstan from 2014-19, according to a House memo produced ahead of the first impeachment inquiry hearing into President Biden.
“CISA does not and has never censored speech or facilitated censorship. Every day, the men and women of CISA execute the agency’s mission of reducing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy,” CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller.
“In response to concerns from election officials of all parties regarding foreign influence operations and disinformation that may impact the security of election infrastructure, CISA mitigates the risk of disinformation by sharing information on election literacy and election security with the public and by amplifying the trusted voices of election officials across the nation.”