FBI’s Response to the Twitter Files Does Not Dispute Any Factual Allegation, But Slanders Any American Discussing These Facts and Faulting Their Eager Involvement in Censorship As “Conspiracy Theorists”

By Ace

And as we know, “conspiracy theorists” are eligible to be deplatformed, so Christopher Wray is gearing up for his next round of bannings.
 
Michael Shellenberger:

The FBI yesterday responded to the evidence I unearthed in Twitter Files Part 7 suggesting that the FBI may have covered up the Hunter Biden laptop and waged a disinformation campaign aimed at persuading news organizations, social media platforms Twitter and Facebook, and voters that the Hunter Biden laptop was a product of a Russian “hack and leak” operation.”The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” said the FBI. “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

The FBI has “traditionally” engaged in censorship operations with Big Tech?

Could it be that the FBI is eager to debate “theories” because it wants to avoid the facts? Consider three key ones:* The FBI took Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019 and always knew it was real and didn’t come from hacking.
 
* The FBI spent most of 2020 telling Twitter’s senior executives that a “hack-and-leak” involving Hunter Biden would occur in October 2020.
 
* The FBI was spying on Rudy Giuliani when he gave a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive to The New York Post.
 
It’s true that we don’t know if the FBI agents who warned Twitter of a “hack-and-leak” operation involving Hunter Biden also knew that a) the FBI had Biden’s laptop and b) Giuliani was giving it to The New York Post. But they didn’t need to know that. They could have simply been following orders from higher-level executives.
 
Moreover, it was precisely the job of those higher-level executives at FBI to know of all FBI operations, including the investigation of the Hunter Biden laptop, the surveillance of Giuliani, and the warnings to Twitter and Facebook executives of a hack-and-leak operation. And that fact alone is enough for Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel, and for Congress to investigate.

I’m going to demand to know who wrote this defamatory statement — and who approved it.
 
Shellenberger further wrote:

Michael Shellenberger
@ShellenbergerMD
 
At this point, members of Congress should be extremely concerned that FBI is engaged in a cover-up. There needs to be an aggressive investigation of the apparent politicization of the FBI by Congress, and perhaps even a Special Counsel in the DoJ to investigate what happened.
 
“One way we could get the FBI in front of the committee is to say, ‘We’re not giving you a penny until you all explain to us what this task force was and why you told Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story when you knew darn well it was true'” @RepJamesComer
 
“Congress never authorized FBI to do this. Gov’t has no business censoring speech whether it’s liberal speech or conservative speech. They have no business doing it. This is another act by the deep state out of control.” @JamesComer
 
The Twitter Files have confirmed the widespread suspicion that the FBI has behaved inappropriately in its relationship to social media companies. Now, Congress needs to find out if it also behaved illegally.

Via streiff, this from J. Michael Waller:
 

 
That is a critical, critical point: It is not using the tools it has available for going after criminal activity, because it has none. It is using instead a suite of tools it has for harassing people for legal activity it merely disapproves of and wants to frighten them into stopping.

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