From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

Two independent journalists found that the FBI could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe. Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.

In a shocking report published on X, independent journalists Catherine Herridge and Michael Shellenberger revealed that an FBI agent accidentally confirmed to Twitter (now known as “X”) that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real less than three weeks before the 2020 election.

“For the first time, and with a change of administration, the FBI has now turned over to GOP House investigators the internal chat messages that show Bureau leadership actively silenced its employees,” Herridge and Shellenberger wrote on X.

“The FBI, which had a special task force to counter foreign election interference, could have set the record straight by confirming the laptop was real and the subject of an ongoing criminal probe,” the journalists explained. “Instead, FBI leadership allowed the false narrative about the laptop to gain momentum.”

“In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it,” Shellenberger wrote.

“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real,’” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed-door transcribed interview,” according to Herridge and Shellenberger. “I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”

They recounted this exchange:

An individual whose name is blacked out, tells Elvis M. Chan, the San Francisco-based FBI special agent tasked with interacting with social media companies, there was a “gag order” on discussion of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In a separate exchange, Chan is told “official response no commen(t).”

In the chat, the FBI officials showed awareness that the laptop may have contained evidence of criminal activity.

Asked Chan, “actually what kind of case is the laptop thing? corruption? campaign financing?”

Another FBI employee responds, “CLOSE HOLD —” after which the response is redacted.

To which Chan responds, “oh crap,” appearing to underscore the serious nature of the probe, which included felony tax charges. Chan adds, “ok. It ends here.”

In the same conversation, Chan is asked if “anyone discussing that NYPost article on the Biden’s?”  Chan responds, “yes we are. c d confirmed an active investigation. No further comment.”  “C D” is likely shorthand for the FBI’s Criminal Division.

Said another FBI employee, whose name was redacted by the Bureau, “please do not discuss biden matter.”

It’s now common knowledge that national security agencies — including the FBI and CIA, Big Tech, and much of corporate media — colluded in suppressing truth and manufacturing lies in order to drag their preferred candidate, Joe Biden, across the finish line in the 2020 presidential election.

Incriminating evidence discovered on the laptop that Hunter Biden had long ago abandoned at a computer repair shop — reported on in two devastating pieces by the New York Post at the time — was ignored by mainstream media, fraudulently dismissed by former national intelligence officials, and essentially made inaccessible to the public by Big Tech social media sites Twitter and Facebook.

The computer contained emails showing that then-Vice President Biden had come under the influence of bad actors in Ukraine and Communist China and had used his powerful position in the Obama administration to pressure government Ukrainian officials into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the energy firm, Burisma, which was paying the younger Biden $50,000 per month to sit on its board of directors.