What you need to know about Hunter Biden's laptop scandal in Elon Musk's Twitter Files

The massive coverup right before Donald Trump was up for reelection

Many of us were in a chat (below) for the big Friday night drop of what Elon Musk calls the Twitter Files – the internal documents about how the company covered up legitimate reporting about alleged illegal activity on Hunter Biden’s laptop right before the 2000 election.

Now we are waiting for what Musk calls part 2. He said it may take a few more days. Let’s discuss what we know so far.

Joe Biden is accused of helping his son (and vice versa) but the information is believed by many to have been squashed to prevent Donald Trump from being re-elected.

The Twitter Files

Musk did not – as almost every reporter, including me, expected – release publicly the internal Twitter information. 

Instead, he filtered it by giving portions to former liberal reporter, Matt Taibbi. You can read Taibbi’s post to his Substack subscribers here in which he apologizes for not giving it to them first, which seems to indicate he made a deal with Musk to release some of the information on Twitter.

(I thought the responses from Taibbi’s paid subscribers in the comments were wonderfully supportive of his independent journalism.)

US President Joe Biden waves with his son Hunter Biden in Nantucket, Massachusetts, on November 25, 2022. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Taibbi’s thread is more than 36 tweets, which is easiest to read unrolled here. 

Hacking excuse

The most important document released shows Twitter employees knowingly and wrongly used their “hacking” policy to keep users from seeing the New York Post’s exclusive story on Oct. 14, 2020.

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

21. Strom’s note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed for violation of the company’s “hacked materials” policy: https://t.co/EdTa2xbXn1

The newspaper got Hunter’s emails from his laptop, which was left with a repair shop owner in 2019 who could not get him to retrieve it, so turned it over to the FBI. The store owner also made a copy of the hard drive, which former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani gave to the newspaper.

So Twitter’s reason for banning the tweets about the laptop and links to the story was false. As I tweeted:

Emily Miller @emilymiller

@mtaibbi It’s not hacking when the computer is unlocked and in your possession. That’s reading.

The emails show Hunter introduced his father, who was vice president at the time, to a top executive at the Ukrainian energy firm Bruism. The emails contradict Joe repeatedly saying on the campaign trail that he had nothing to do with his son’s overseas dealings.

When the Post published the emails, Twitter went to extremes to hide the information from voters, like this:

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.

Twitter and MSM coverup

Remember, the Twitter coverup came at the same time other bigger social media sites (like Facebook) and almost all mainstream media outlets (which claimed it was “Russian disinformation”) refused to cover the story of possible corruption by Joe Biden. The most egregious has been CBS News, which only acknowledged the existence of the laptop emails to its viewers last month.

Taibbi said the Twitter files show the decision to censor the scandal was made by top executives with “Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.” Gadde is the executive who Musk fired as soon as he took over the company.

The email show the Twitter execs were aware of how badly their censorship was playing out in the public. Trenton Kennedy, from the communications department, seems to be a lone voice of internal debate:

Matt Taibbi @mtaibbi

25.You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:

Emily Miller @emilymiller

@mtaibbi Trenton Kennedy seems to be the only smart Twitter employee. Where is he now ?

(I looked him up and Kennedy is at this company now.)

FBI lawyer at Twitter

The most egregious move was Twitter hired FBI General Counsel Jim Baker —who oversaw the alleged “Russian collusion” investiation into Trump — and let him decide on the Biden laptop policy.

Baker told Twitter employees to keep using the false “hacking” excuse even though he knew that:

there are others [facts] indicating the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

Former FBI top lawyer James Baker just admitted involvement in FISA Warrant and further admitted there were IRREGULARITIES in the way the Russia probe was handled. They relied heavily on the unverified Trump “Dossier” paid for by the DNC & Clinton Campaign, & funded through a...

Musk could hand off more files any time. This was his last tweet about it 11:00 p.m. ET on Saturday:

Elon Musk @elonmusk

Looks like we will need another day or so

Journalism and censorship

I am glad to see the truth is finally being uncovered at Twitter, thanks to Musk. I’d like to see Meta release the files on what they did via Facebook and Instagram to censor the same story.

Heck, I’d like to see what all of them have been doing behind the scenes on COVID “misinformation” for the past two years.