Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Johnson, R-Wis., are calling on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to turn over communications between government agencies and Facebook employees regarding Hunter Biden after Zuckerberg admitted that his company censored news articles about the president’s son after the FBI reached out.
In a letter to Zuckerberg sent Monday, the senators said the CEO’s recent revelation that the FBI told Facebook employees to be on “high alert” for Russian propaganda before the 2020 election raised new questions after a whistleblower previously alleged that the FBI worked to downplay stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“The American people deserve to know whether the FBI used Facebook as part of their alleged plan to discredit information about Hunter Biden,” said the letter, obtained and published by the New York Post. “If so, Congress and the American people require clarity with respect to the extent the FBI communicated with Facebook during the 2020 election about Hunter Biden-related information.”
Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan on an August 25 podcast that ahead of the 2020 election the FBI told Facebook to watch out for possible Russian propaganda, advising them to “be vigilant” because something was about to come out. As a result, Zuckerberg admitted, Facebook limited the visibility of articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“Although you noted that users could still share the articles, you clarified that the number of users who could see it decreased by a ‘meaningful’ amount,” the letter said, referencing the interview with Rogan.
In light of Zuckerberg opening up about this, the senators are demanding that he turn over records of communications between Facebook, and the FBI, Justice Department, and any other government agencies having to do with Hunter Biden and “Russian disinformation, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and Senator Johnson’s and Senator Grassley’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.”
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The senators are specifically seeking records from the time period of July 1, 2020, to July 1, 2021.
In addition to communications, Grassley and Johnson also demanded the names of Facebook and government employees involved and the dates when Facebook decreased the distribution of articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The letter comes as Fox News learns that FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault retired over the weekend. Thibault was named by Grassley in a July 18 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray about a whistleblower’s allegations of bias in the handling of an investigation into the laptop.
