Republican Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray to admit the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop are real during a Tuesday hearing.
Fifty-one former intelligence officials falsely labeled the laptop’s contents as a “Russian information operation” in a letter published by Politico, but the contents were later confirmed authentic by the Daily Caller News Foundation, The Washington Post and The New York Times. Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, Twitter suppressed the New York Post and former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for posting about the laptop and its contents. (RELATED: Twitter Locks Kayleigh McEnany’s Personal Account, Trump Campaign Says)
“Why didn’t the FBI just say ‘hey, the laptop’s real’? Why didn’t you just tell everybody the laptop’s real? We’re not vouching for what’s on it, but it’s real. This isn’t a fiction,” the senator said.
“Well, as you might imagine, the FBI cannot, especially in a time like that, be talking about an ongoing investigation,” Wray answered. “Second, I would tell you, at least my understanding is that both the FBI folks involved in the conversations and the Twitter folks involved the conversations both say that the FBI did not direct Twitter to suppress—”
“But others were, in government,” Kennedy interrupted.
“Well, again, I can’t speak to others in government, that’s part of the point that I was trying to make,” Wray said.
“Yes, but you’re the FBI. You’re not part of the White House and part of Homeland Security. You’re not supposed to be political. You see all this controversy going on, why didn’t the FBI say, ‘time out, folks, we’re not getting in the middle of this, but the laptop’s real’?” the senator asked.
Wray repeated the agency had to be mindful about publicly commenting on an ongoing investigation during an election season.
An FBI FD-302 form summarizing an interview with Hunter Biden’s former business associate Tony Bobulinski shows he told the FBI he knew the contents found in the New York Post’s reporting were real. The FBI interviewed Bobulinski on October 23, 2020, after the Post’s story contained emails from the Hunter Biden laptop archive Bobulinski was copied on.
The New York Post reported on emails relating to Biden’s business dealings with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Twitter and Facebook censored this story, with Twitter citing its “hacked materials” policy to justify its suppression. Former Twitter executives later expressed regret for placing the New York Post’s story in its policy, which was designed to prevent the distribution of contents obtained through hacking.
The next day, the outlet reported on an email sent by Biden’s former business partner James Gilliar in an Oct. 14 piece, who asked about holding 10% of a potential equity stake for “the big guy,” which reportedly referred to now-President Joe Biden.
IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley testified the FBI verified the authenticity of the laptop archive in November 2019. The president’s son’s attorneys appeared to admit the contents were real in a February letter to the DOJ demanding an investigation into Delaware repairman John Mac Isaac, who turned over the laptop’s hard drive to authorities after the computer had been abandoned at his repair shop.
A lawsuit from the America First Legal Foundation (AFL) shared documents in October 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 Biden’s abandoned laptop.