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Floor Speech
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Last Friday, Elon Musk released documents and very good information relating to Twitter's interference in the 2020 Presidential election by censoring the New York Post Hunter Biden reporting. Just yesterday, Musk reportedly fired Twitter's general counsel, Jim Baker, for his involvement in the censorship scandal. Baker, you might remember, was general counsel at the FBI and was involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
You can't make up these stories.
Musk also released information that showed that the Biden campaign was involved in the censorship efforts. The information shows that Twitter employees knew--actually knew--that they had no legitimate basis to censor the Hunter Biden reporting but proceeded to do it anyway. Twitter also removed links and blocked the reporting from being shared by direct messaging on its platform. Folks that fought the good fight against Twitter's extraordinary censorship were also locked out of their accounts.
These documents that Musk made public made very clear that Twitter was effectively an arm of the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign. Twitter essentially gave the Biden campaign a massive in-kind campaign contribution.
What Twitter and other big tech companies did in 2020 with respect to censorship was as much an outrage then as it is today. Simply put, what they did is expected of communist China, not the United States of America.
Reports also indicate that the FBI warned Twitter during weekly meetings before the 2020 election that hack-and-leak operations involving Hunter Biden material were likely to occur in October of 2020. Well, the FBI had the Hunter Biden laptop since December of 2019, almost a year before the election.
Information on it has been verified by liberal news outlets. It took a long time for those liberal news outlets to admit that this wasn't Russian disinformation.
So, then, I ask this question: Did the FBI do the same or did they fail to do their due diligence?
I find the FBI's action in advance of the 2020 election to be more than suspicious. It is too bad that just now, 2 years later, we get this information from a person that bought Twitter and wants the public to know what actually went on.
Now, some of you remember that Senator Johnson and I released our first report on the Biden family connections to communist China on September 23, 6 weeks before the 2020 election. And you know, if you remember, at that time it was swept up into the Hunter Biden censorship fiasco not long after. So, too, was our second report, which we released on November 18, 2020.
But we were more than just censored. Before we even made the first report public, the liberal media and even some of our Democratic colleagues tried to smear us with false claims that our work was connected to you know what--Russian disinformation. My Senate colleagues went into full Joe Biden protection mode.
So here we have four elements to this fact pattern that ought to shake up every Member of the U.S. Senate and shake them up to their very core. No. 1, the FBI got their hands on Twitter via these weekly briefings--the weekly briefings that I have already expressed existed-- and planted seeds regarding future hacked material relating to Hunter Biden. No. 2, the FBI improperly labeled information it possessed on Hunter Biden as you know what--disinformation. No. 3, the FBI provided an unnecessary August 2020 briefing to me and Senator Johnson that was used by some Democrats and by the liberal media to try to undermine our investigation that started well before the 2020 election. No. 4, the liberal media repeatedly and falsely labeled my and Senator Johnson's investigation as you know what--Russia disinformation.
Now, all of that happened in the runup to the 2020 Presidential election.
In the long run, these false allegations and bad faith efforts against me and Senator Johnson didn't work, as everybody knows now but didn't know at the time.
For example, in this Congress, Senator Johnson and I gave floor speeches on these dates in 2022: March 28, March 29, and April 5. Through those speeches, we introduced bank records connecting Hunter and James Biden to the Chinese communist regime. We sent hundreds of pages of bank records to U.S. Attorney Weiss on October 26 of this year, showing those very same connections--the same connections that Johnson and I made in our 2020 report. These are authentic bank records. They aren't Russian disinformation.
President Biden still owes the American people answers about his connections to Hunter and James Biden's business deals and arrangements. He owes the American people an explanation as to how much he knew about their businesses and personal relationships with communist China.
On October 13 of this year, I wrote to the FBI telling them that I know it possesses documents that indicate Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden's business arrangements and may have been involved in some.
In conclusion, since Senator Johnson and I began our Biden investigation August 2019--now, remember, 14 months before the 2020 election--now, after all that, our work has been substantiated. Big Tech censorship may have succeeded in the short term; however, the truth eventually sees the light of day. And I thank the new Twitter owner for his transparency. Accountability should follow.
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