“So now it turns out, definitively, that the FBI buried the HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP story BEFORE THE ELECTION, knowing that if they hadn’t, ‘Trump would have easily won the 2020 presidential election,’” the former president said Monday. Post Truth Social. “This is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE on a scale never before seen in our country. SOLUTION: Declare the rightful winner or, at the very least, declare the 2020 Election irretrievably compromised and hold a new election, immediately!” On Thursday, Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan on his podcast that the FBI warned Facebook before the 2020 election not to spread alleged Russian disinformation in connection with a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It led to a “substantial” reduction in stories appearing in users’ news feeds during the final week of the election campaign, according to Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg’s comments aren’t entirely new, but they shed more light on what he testified on Oct. 28, 2020, before the Senate Commerce Committee. Zuckerberg testified that the FBI instructed Facebook to be “on high alert and sensitivity…if a trove of documents emerges, that we should look at it with suspicion, that it might be part of a foreign manipulation attempt.” Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin made new allegations about Hunter Biden, saying he “can’t trust the FBI to handle Hunter Biden’s laptop” because of new whistleblower information he allegedly received. Information from an alleged whistleblower claimed FBI officials would not look at the contents of the laptop while inside a computer store in Wilmington, Delaware, Johnson wrote in an Aug. 24 letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Johnson also claimed that FBI officials admitted they were “not going to change the outcome of the election again,” referring to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her highly publicized emails before the 2016 election. Former President Donald Trump is seen speaking during the America’s First Agenda Summit at the Marriott Marquis Hotel on July 26 in Washington, D.C. Trump has publicly called for a “new election” because he says the FBI did not properly investigate the content Hunter’s. Biden’s laptop and report ahead of the 2020 election. Drew Angerer/Getty Images Johnson first asked Zuckerberg about the laptop at the aforementioned Senate hearing, asking the CEO if the FBI had been contacted about the Hunter Biden story. Zuckerberg said the FBI did not report “this story specifically” and said Facebook “does not censor content.” “We flagged it for our fact checkers to review, and pending that review, we temporarily limited its distribution to make sure it didn’t spread wildly while it was being reviewed,” Zuckerberg said. “But it’s not up to us to determine whether it’s Russian interference, or whether it’s true. We rely on FBI intelligence and fact-checking to do that.” Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa joined Johnson in calls for federal transparency, with a joint letter from the two requesting a transcribed interview with agency officials. “FBI officials have initiated a plan to downgrade derogatory information about Hunter Biden to end investigative activity related to his possible criminal exposure as ‘misinformation,’” their letter states. Dave Arnold, a Meta spokesman, referred Newsweek to a series of tweets responding to Zuckerberg’s criticism — which said in part that Facebook “lifted the demotion” of the story after seven days when it was not rated false by independent reviewers. . Conservative outrage over the alleged cover-up of Hunter Biden’s story has grown in conjunction with the initial search warrant executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, as well as the Aug. 26 unsealing of an affidavit that revealed Trump possessed over 180 classified documents. Trump has consistently denied losing the 2020 election and is now referring to media reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop as a way to avenge his loss. His former allies, including former vice president Mike Pence, have said the election is about “the future.” Conservative Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham said “maybe it’s time to turn the page if we can find someone who has all of Trump’s policies, who isn’t Trump.” Newsweek has reached out to Trump for further comment.
