FBI Official That Suppressed Hunter Biden Laptop Story Is Still Involved in “Disinfo” Role

An FBI official tied to Facebook’s decision to suppress news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive just before the 2020 presidential election is still giving briefings about foreign influence threats to social media companies.

Facebook and Twitter both restricted access to the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop stories just weeks ahead of the 2020 election after receiving Russia-related briefings from the bureau.

Laura Dehmlow, the section chief for the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, was named earlier this month by Republican attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana as having been involved in the briefing of Facebook ahead of its decision to tamp down on the Hunter Biden laptop story, and newly revealed documents show the FBI official is still involved in briefing private companies — including Twitter — on foreign influence challenges.

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Dehmlow was the main briefer at a Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Cybersecurity Advisory Committee meeting on March 1 with the “Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee,” records obtained by the Intercept show. Notes from it show “the purpose of the … meeting was was to receive a briefing” from Dehmlow “regarding the FBI’s roles and responsibilities in combating foreign influence.”

The briefing was attended by senior executives from Twitter as well as from JPMorgan Chase, the University of Washington, Illinois Emergency Management Agency, and Department of Homeland Security elements.

“Ms. Dehmlow was asked to provide her thoughts or to define a goal for approaching MDM [misinformation and disinformation] and she mentioned ‘resiliency.’ She stated we need a media infrastructure that is held accountable; we need to educate the populace; and that today, critical thinking seems to be a problem,” the leaked notes state.

Court filings from early October by the GOP attorneys general note that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has “identified” the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force “as supervised by Dehmlow” as well as San Francisco FBI supervisory special agent Elvis Chan “as involved in the communications between the FBI and Meta that led to Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray established the Foreign Influence Task Force in 2017 to “identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. James Comer, the top Republican on House Oversight, sent a late August letter to Facebook demanding access to all communications between the company and the FBI as well as between anyone at the Biden campaign or the Democratic National Committee and anyone at Facebook related to the Hunter Biden laptop stories.

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Comer also asked Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, to hand over similar information. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent their own letter to Zuckerberg in late August.

Zuckerberg had told the Senate in October 2020 that “we relied heavily on the FBI’s intelligence and alerts to us both through their public testimony and private briefings.”