An inside look at how the FBI and Big Tech worked to suppress a bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story just weeks before the 2020 election. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
Chapter 1: What new details have emerged about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal?
New details have emerged about one of the most egregious and high-profile censorship scandals in modern history, one that potentially altered the outcome of the 2020 election.
Chapter 2: How did the FBI respond to the Hunter Biden laptop story?
Just weeks before the election, the New York Post published a report on the infamous Hunter Biden laptop. But as we've now learned, within hours, the FBI was working to discredit the story and even spin a narrative that the laptop was the product of a Russian disinformation campaign.
In this episode, we sit down with a journalist who was at the post when the laptop story dropped and the cover-up and smear operation against the outlet began. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, April 6th, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
Joining us now to discuss new revelations about the Hunter Biden cover-up scandal is John Levine, formerly with the New York Post and now with the Free Beacon. John, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you for having me.
Look, you were a reporter at the New York Post when that newspaper broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, a major moment. Your outlet was immediately throttled by social media, even kicked off of what was then Twitter, which was really remarkable. Now we're learning from the House Judiciary Committee that the day the New York Post actually first reported on that story,
The FBI told employees, do not discuss the Biden matter and imposed a gag order on an analyst who tried to confirm the story's veracity. This is a new detail we hadn't heard before. What do you know about this?
Well, I will tell you, I just learned what you just said as well about the gag order. And if you believe, Catherine Herridge reported on X that an FBI employee did actually confirm the authenticity of the hard drive in a call that same day before the gag order was instituted.
And we already kind of knew the FBI knew it was real, but the sort of real-time details, like on the very same day they knew it was real, that's new. And it's extra insidious because... If you go back to that time, which is now five years ago, the FBI was running around that same week saying, well, we're looking into this being a Russian information dump.
So on the same week, the same day, they knew it was real. They were counter-programming the narrative, and they did it in this way. You can look up the AP story, FBI reviewing if it's Russian disinformation, person familiar with matter tells AP. And that's how they do stuff. They always do it as person familiar, but it's just them.
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Chapter 3: What was the experience of journalists during the censorship of the Hunter Biden story?
And I've been a journalist long enough to know how that game works. And that's how when you see person familiar, it's usually the person, but they don't want to say it's themselves. And they were actively casting doubt on it when they knew it was real. And it's inescapable now that it was clearly so they could help steer the election towards Joe Biden, which is actually what happened.
Yeah, I mean, look, if you tried to defend the FBI with the DOJ, a lot of times they try to stay out of political matters right before an election. This would be your rationale for saying, well, they might not want to talk about this in public. But that's not actually what happened. We saw a proactive effort to actually discredit this report, correct?
No, I mean, if the FBI had just been like, look, you know, we're looking into this, but we're not going to comment, that would, I mean, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. It was their active effort to not just discredit, but to discredit when they were actually the ones who were speaking the falsehoods. We were trying to tell the truth.
They essentially ran an information operation on the American people. They spread us a bunch of BS because the truth was detrimental to Joe Biden. They didn't want it out.
I'm just curious, a little behind-the-scenes look. What was it like at The Post during this time? This must have been a tumultuous, chaotic moment for you guys. What was it like?
Yeah, I mean, it was a crazy time. And it's almost like lore. It's like canon now. But, you know, this was a weird thing that Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon brought up in October before the election. And it's like, hey, guys, there's a laptop and the son left it at the repair shop. And, oh, the computer repairman's blind. And it's like it was just it was so crazy.
So there was cause for skepticism there. And we spent a lot of time looking at it, and it was very wild stuff on there. But at the end of the day, we verified it. And the laptop is full of numbers. The laptop is full of billionaires, federal judges, everyone in the Biden orbit. And you can call these people up. I myself have many experiences. So there's an email from a very pathetic federal judge.
emailing Hunter, and he's like, hey, hi. It was so great meeting you at that party. Any chance you could put in a word to your dad? Because he's obviously looking at the next rung up. And I called this judge, and federal judges' numbers are the hardest numbers to find. You can never, ever get those. They're very tricky. But I called his number.
He answered and I was like, I'm going to read this email back to you now. And it was just like, I'm not talking to you. Goodbye. And I did this dozens of times to very important people and not a single person ever said I never sent that email. That's not real. That's not everyone's president. Biden's number was in there. It has since been changed. So it was extensively authenticated.
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Chapter 4: How did the Foreign Influence Task Force influence social media censorship?
I mean, it's all part of the deep state web of intelligence. You know, there's like 15 intelligence agencies. They all know each other. They all collude with each other. And what we learned later was that Anthony Blinken, who became later Secretary of State, he was instrumental in organizing this effort among those 51 officials. And some of them have sort of walked it back.
Some of them have never apologized for it. Clapper, to this day, remains the most stubborn. I know that the Post has reached out to him several times, and he'll never back down from it. And I think it's just pride. And obviously, Trump revoked all their security clearances, which is good. I don't see any reason why they're not currently in government anymore. They should have that.
And especially if they're going to use their security clearances and the good names that that gives them to do partisan politics.
Yeah, I want to actually address the issue of good name in a second. First, the media fallout, the media response to the revelations over the last few years, the idea of slow walking, things that we actually knew at the time, so that maybe the impact is lessened over time. You can see this media trick playing out.
Do you feel like there's any sort of come to Jesus moments for any of these outlets in the legacy media?
Really, no. And the problem is all of these people would rather light themselves on fire than admit that the New York Post was right. And they'll burn their institutions to the ground rather than admit that they were wrong and that conservative media had a point about something.
Whoa, whoa, can't say that because, you know, we're running around saying this is fake news, they're disinformation, cheap fakes. Remember cheap fakes?
Oh, yeah. Way back.
Yeah. You can't suddenly be like, oh, actually, the Post was right, and we were the ones lying to you. I mean, come on. They can't. So what you've actually seen is, like, there's been no apology. No institution, no editor-in-chief has ever been like, look, we were wrong. The Post was right. We're sorry. Which is all really anyone has been asking for. So instead, you just see this gradual...
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