Testimony from key FBI and Big Tech personnel and subpoenaed nonpublic internal documents and communications obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show that in the months before the election, the FBI provided social media companies with specific warnings, including:
- WHO: Russia. The FBI repeatedly warned Big Tech of a potential influence operation by Russian actors targeting the 2020 election.
- WHAT: A hack-and-leak operation. The FBI repeatedly warned Big Tech that the Russian influence operation would likely take the form of a hack and leak, similar to the leak of Democratic National Committee emails in 2016.
- WHEN: Late September or October 2020. The FBI repeatedly warned Big Tech that this hack-and-leak operation would come right before the election, either as “an October surprise” or “as soon as the first Presidential debate on September 29th.”
- WHY: To reveal “evidence” regarding “links between the Biden family and Ukraine,” including “Burisma.” The FBI warned Big Tech that the Russian hack-and-leak operation would likely involve “real or manufactured evidence concerning links between the Biden family and Ukraine, including the oil company Burisma.” Internal Microsoft notes state that a “week” before the New York Post story broke on October 14, the “FBI tipped [Big Tech] off” that “this Burisma story was likely to emerge.”
In response, some platforms adopted new content moderation policies specifically designed to address hacked materials. Then, when the New York Post reported on Biden family influence peddling the morning of October 14, 2020, Big Tech did exactly what it had been primed to do.
The social media companies obediently treated the article as a potential Russian hack-and-leak operation and applied their content moderation policies to censor it, prevent it from spreading, and hide it from the American people. As a consequence, millions of Americans cast their presidential vote unaware of serious, credible allegations of misconduct levied against one of the two candidates. This censorship served to benefit one candidate over the other and wrongfully affected the 2020 election.
Today, these companies and their executives belatedly admit that their censorship was wrong. Although the FBI conditioned Big Tech to believe any allegations about Hunter Biden were Russian disinformation, the social media companies are far from blameless. Internal messages obtained by the Committee and Select Subcommittee show that senior executives at the social media platforms knew the dangerous consequences of their censorship decisions, but recognized that their decision to censor the true story would affect the way a potential incoming Biden-Harris Administration viewed them “more than anything else.”
Read the full interim staff report here.
Read the full interim staff report and appendix here.
