Ever since Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi released the “Twitter Files,” people have been scrambling to unpack all of the badness contained in the documents and asking what more may still be to come. But some of the key players involved in the censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story have been found to contradict each other in a game of blameshifting that has thus far only muddied the waters further. While it’s obvious that the FBI was involved, the extent to which they directly interfered in the 2020 election remains in dispute. The two key players are former Twitter “Site Integrity” team leader Yoel Roth and FBI special agent Elvis Chan. Roth says that the FBI specifically tipped them off to an upcoming “disinformation” dump involving Hunter Biden, but Chan claims that it didn’t happen that way… sort of. (Free Beacon)

An FBI official’s testimony last week is setting up a potential showdown with Twitter over the social media company’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.

FBI supervisory special agent Elvis Chan disputed former Twitter executive Yoel Roth’s claims that the FBI warned that Russia would likely release Hunter Biden’s emails before the 2020 election. Roth, who led Twitter’s Site Integrity team until he resigned last month, told the Federal Election Commission that the FBI warnings prompted Twitter to censor an Oct. 14, 2020, news article that detailed Biden’s business emails.

But Chan said in a Dec. 3 deposition that FBI officials did not mention Hunter Biden in their weekly meetings with Twitter prior to the election.

The reason that I emphasized the nature of Chan’s denials above is that the claim made about the agent’s denials isn’t exactly accurate. Elvis Chan didn’t say he never mentioned Hunter Biden. He said “I do not remember us specifically saying ‘Hunter Biden’ in any meeting,”

This is an important distinction. We’re used to seeing people suddenly suffering from memory loss when they’re called to provide testimony under oath, and that seems to be what’s going on with Chan. There’s a big difference between stating that the FBI team never mentioned the Hunter Biden story specifically and saying “I do not remember” that happening.

I suppose it’s possible that something slipped his memory over the past two years, but that’s a pretty big detail to forget, isn’t it? Keep in mind that the FBI was in possession of the laptop when all of this was taking place. And the only way they could have known that the Post was about to unleash the story was by searching the emails exchanged between Rudy Giuliani and reporter Miranda Devine. (Which they obtained a warrant to do.) Would Twitter have crushed the story without knowing that the Hunter Biden laptop was involved or at least asking the FBI, ‘Hey! Is this what you were talking about?”

And then there’s the involvement of James Baker who conveniently moved from the FBI to Twitter in the middle of a presidential election year. As the aforementioned Miranda Devine points out yet again, there are a lot more questions for this guy to answer.

First, having been parachuted into Twitter conveniently five months before the 2020 election as deputy general counsel and vice president, Baker played an instrumental role in the censorship of The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020.

Second, Baker was involved in the potential suppression of material that Musk ordered released from Twitter’s files last Friday to reveal who was involved in killing The Post’s story and thus preventing derogatory material about candidate Joe Biden from being disseminated widely. The “most important data was hidden [and] may have been deleted,” Musk says.

We’re really supposed to believe that his hiring was a coincidence? What possible qualifications did an attorney from the FBI have to run a social media platform? And how was it that someone who was directly involved in the story was still not only employed at Twitter last week but somehow involved in “vetting” the Twitter files? Devine reminds us that when Musk asked Baker what he was doing with the files his answer was… “unconvincing.”

This entire affair stinks on ice and we can only hope that some heads will eventually start rolling. Twitter was clearly a willing partner in the censorship and they worked directly with Joe Biden’s campaign staff, continuing that cooperative relationship after Biden took office. But the FBI was clearly involved as well and in a completely inappropriate (and likely illegal) manner.