Top Trump Spy Says Only One Reason an Intelligence Official Would Have Met With Twitter Before 2020 Election

While the allegations and counter-allegations over whether FBI officials met with Twitter on a regular basis to suppress stories on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal prior to the 2020 presidential election might not be worthy of a Tom Clancy spy novel, the conflicting accounts do make for a pretty good plot.

As reports broke that Twitter 1.0 officials did suppress the Biden scandal, the left-leaning social media company insisted that they only responded to FBI “requests,” allegedly based on beliefs that the laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation plot, vs. making suppression decisions internally.

Just one problem.

As I reported on December 8, FBI supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan during December 3 testimony disputed former Twitter executive Yoel Roth’s claims that the FBI warned the Big Tech company that Russia would likely release Hunter Biden’s emails before the 2020 election, potentially setting up a showdown over the social media company’s censorship of the explosive story. That showdown is on.

So the question again begs to be asked: Who’s lying? The former Twitter regime? The FBI? Or both?

Just one more problem.

John Ratcliffe, former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) under then-President Donald Trump, said on Sunday that no one in the U.S. intelligence community had the authorization to claim the Hunter Biden laptop story was part of a Russian disinformation plot.

In addition, Ratcliffe said there was only one reason a member of his office — or presumably, any official(s) from any U.S. intelligence agencies — would have met or even been in contact with Twitter in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Ratcliffe told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo that such a meeting would have needed approval from Trump’s National Security Council and would have been part of a “coordinated process” to provide election security briefings to groups of private companies, and state election officials.

Bartiromo began the segment by reminding viewers that it was Ratcliffe who first broke the story more than two years ago:

In October 2020, you broke the story on my morning show … that in fact, the Hunter Biden laptop was not Russian disinformation. This was one only a day or so after the ’51 spies that lied’ said the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.

After Bartiromo played a clip from Ratcliffe’s October 2020 appearance, the former DNI head reiterated it was clear at the time that no such Russian plot existed.

As you saw in that clip, I was very clear on that position about the Biden laptop not being Russian disinformation, but it’s important for the viewers to understand that when I said that, I was … stating the official position of the intelligence community.

That position has never been changed, even to this day — because of course that laptop was not Russian disinformation. That remained to be clear.

Clear or not, when has the Democrat Party — make that the whole of the left — ever let truth, facts, history, or logic get in the way of their various politically expedient narratives?

.@JohnRatcliffe response to the Twitter file release from @mtaibbi.@JohnRatcliffe tells @MariaBartiromo the only reason the DNI would be meeting with twitter. pic.twitter.com/F3PP5ksLPl

— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) December 11, 2022

Ratcliffe continued, moving to the Twitter Files:

With regard to the Twitter Files, and I saw this reference to meetings — and with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — let me be equally clear: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would’ve only been authorized to participate in [a] Trump National Security Council approved and coordinated process for election security briefings to groups of private companies, so it would include companies like Twitter, but many other companies — YouTube, Microsoft, as well as state election officials — to talk about threats.

None of those meetings … would’ve had anything to do with content moderation, much less with anything, specifically, about the Biden laptop as Russian disinformation.

So yeah, someone’s lying and someone’s not.

The acid test here, as is always the case with claims and counterclaims, is who has the most to gain by lying — or telling the truth — and who has the most to lose? I’m no supersleuth, but the answer seems to clear to me: Twitter 1.0, hands down.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean there were no FBI rogue operators involved, but clearly, there was no action taken through proper channels or sanctioned by the DNI to put a thumb on the scale of the 2020 presidential election in favor of Biden over Trump.

That is unless less John Ratcliffe was lying, which seems highly unlikely given not only that he worked for Trump, but in October 2020, he stated categorically that there was no Russian disinformation linked to the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Finally, I’ll leave you with this quote from Stuart Chase: