New emails obtained by a law group allege the top cybersecurity defense agency in the U.S. immediately worked to discredit the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story on the same day the New York Post published the article.
America First Legal, a non-profit law group led by former senior members of the Trump administration, said on social media Wednesday that two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) linked Biden’s laptop story to the likes of “QAnon” and the 2016 “Pizzagate” child-sex trafficking theory.
In the heavily redacted documents, a CISA analyst on the Countering Foreign Influence Task Force flagged “colleagues” in an email with an Axios report titled “QAnon Conspiracy Theory Explodes Ahead of the Election.”
The report ties the conspiracy theories to “[r]ecent reports about what was purported to be Hunter Biden’s computer hard drive,” sparking “renewed activity from Q” with a least 16 new “Q drops” the same day of the Post article, according to the unearthed emails.
The legal group said, at best, the DHS sub-agency may have been “in the dark” about Biden’s laptop despite the FBI confirming its authenticity in November 2019.
“CISA still reported the story as a QAnon and Pizzagate child-sex trafficking conspiracy theory on Oct 22, 2020,” the legal group said on X.
CISA Executive Director Brandon Wales told The Daily Wire in a statement the cybersecurity defense agency “does not and has never censored speech or facilitated censorship.”
“Every day, the men and women of CISA execute the agency’s mission of reducing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy,” Wales said. “In response to concerns from election officials of all parties regarding foreign influence operations and disinformation that may impact the security of election infrastructure, CISA mitigates the risk of disinformation by sharing information on election literacy and election security with the public and by amplifying the trusted voices of election officials across the nation.”
/1🚨EXPLOSIVE DOCS — new docs obtained from our lawsuit against DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) indicate the federal gov’t immediately participated in an effort to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story the same day of the @nypost’s reporting: pic.twitter.com/L9bcuWbu5z
— America First Legal (@America1stLegal) October 25, 2023
Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals expanded a previous injunction to include CISA, which ruled that the agency “likely violated the First Amendment” for allegedly lobbying Silicon Valley companies to censor online content involving elections.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP
“CISA was the ‘primary facilitator’ of the FBI’s interactions with the social-media platforms and worked in close coordination with the FBI to push the platforms to change their moderation policies to cover ‘hack-and-leak’ content,” the court ruled, according to the legal group.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, one of the Republican attorneys general who brought the case, called CISA the “nerve center” in censoring speech online.
“CISA is the ‘nerve center’ of the vast censorship enterprise, the very entity that worked with the FBI to silence the Hunter Biden laptop story,” Bailey said on social media on October 3.
But the conservative legal group said the latest documents on Wednesday alleging CISA participated in downplaying the Biden laptop story come as part of a broader effort from various alphabet agencies’ Orwellian attempt to stop disfavored ideas before they spread.
The group filed a complaint at the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, seeking an immediate investigation into the Democratic National Committee and President Joe Biden’s campaigns, including Biden For President, the Biden Victory Fund, and the Biden Action Fund over alleged attempts to whitewash the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The legal group alleged that the Biden committees failed to disclose the campaign’s role in coordinating a letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials that suggested the Biden laptop story could be part of a Russian disinformation operation just weeks before the 2020 election. The letter also came days before CISA allegedly became involved in the censorship.
“In 2016, high ranking federal intelligence officials interfered in a Presidential election, lying about Russia collusion in a failed effort to elect Hilary Clinton,” Reed D. Rubinstein, senior counselor and director of oversight and investigations for the legal group, said in a news release. “In 2020, many of these same officials again interfered in a Presidential election, lying about Hunter Biden.”
“The Federal Election Commission’s charge includes election integrity — Americans have the right to know who is coordinating with federal candidates,” Rubenstein added. “But this right is only as effective as the agency that enforces it. The FEC must act here.”
Representatives for the DNC and Biden’s campaign have not yet issued a response.