What is pre-bunking?
Almost a year before the New York Post reported on the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop, the FBI had the laptop in its custody.
During that time, FBI, DHS and DNI officials were meeting with Twitter executives warning them that there would be “hack-and-leak” operations conducted by foreign governments immediately prior to the 2020 election.
When the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in the weeks before the 2020 election, Twitter banned the content claiming it was the result of hacking, even though there was zero evidence to substantiate that claim.
Staffers in Twitter questioned whether they could justify that moderation decision, but Twitter Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, said they should ban the information out of caution. Jim Baker was previously the General Counsel for the FBI, and during his tenure, he helped the FBI lie on FISA applications to justify spying on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and staff.
So the intelligence community (IC) pre-bunked the Hunter laptop story by circulating the lie to Facebook and Twitter, that foreign governments would be releasing hacked information, when those same intelligence agencies knew the New York post was working on the laptop story.
With this strategy the IC avoided the appearance of directly calling to censor the story, instead using inside information to manipulate big tech players into erroneously believing the story must have been the result of hacking. And of course, big tech moderation execs, supported by former intel community officials working inside of these companies, were willing to follow that reasoning without asking questions.