Twitter Files 7 shows FBI pressured top execs to 'discredit' Hunter Biden laptop story

Michael Shellenberger, an independent journalist, who mostly focuses on stories related to environmental activism, has released the 7th part of the Twitter files. His reporting suggests that the FBI was in touch with Twitter before and after US President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden laptop story was published by the New York Post. Email conversations shared by Shellnberger show that the FBI prepared Twitter to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story as a Russian disinformation campaign. The focus of his story is how the intelligence community began discrediting stories releated to Hunter Biden, even before the New York Post story was published. 

Elvis Chan, a FBI agent, emailed Twitter's head of security at that time, Yoel Roth, a 10 page document. It is not clear what was mentioned in those documents and it is not clear either on what basis the FBI concluded that the Hunter Biden laptop story was a part of Russian disinformation campaign. Elvis Chan admitted in a sworn testimony last month that the FBI did not have any information about a Russian disinformation campaign. 

The crux of the Twitter files 

The release of different parts of Twitter files has been criticised by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. In a newsletter, Dorsey wrote that Twitter does not have anything to hide and that Musk should release all the documents in one go. The documents posted by Shellenberger reveal that the FBI was asking Twitter for examples of foreign meddling in the elections. "At this state, my team’s findings have largely been that US-based trolling groups are behind some of the on-platform violative activity and misleading information we’ve seen. We haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context.)" read the reply from Twitter, which was written by Yoel Roth. The crux of the Twitter files is the question that is it okay for intelligence agencies to be in communication with Twitter and tell Twitter what stories they should suppress. The underlying assumption is that if Twitter did not suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, the result of the 2020 elections might have been different.