DAILY MAIL - MELISSA KOENIG FOR DAILYMAIL.COM - DEC 21, 2022
Investigation reveals extent of FBI's tentacles in Silicon Valley
Chan insists Biden story was never mentioned in meetings about security threats
His statement contradicts Yoel Roth's claims about 'hack-and-leak' operations
Roth stated that the agents were so specific it led him to censor the laptop story
Chan also revealed plans to hold more meetings with Big Tech ahead of 2024
READ MORE: Twittergate explained – the key revelations so far
Controversial FBI agent Elvis Chan has denied he warned Twitter's then-security chief about a supposed Russian operation to hack and leak false information on Hunter Biden.
Yoel Roth had claimed in a sworn declaration to the Federal Election Committee in December 2020 that he felt compelled to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story and label it as coming from 'hacked materials' based on information FBI agents had given him at weekly meetings.
But Chan, a supervisory special agent for the Bureau, insisted in a deposition in November that none of the agents specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden story as one of the possible 'hack-and-leak' operations.
He testified as part of a lawsuit against the Biden administration, accusing the now president of organizing meetings in San Francisco for as many as seven DC-based FBI agents in the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Those FBI agents would then meet with Big Tech officials to remove 'disfavored speakers, viewpoints and content on social media platforms... under the guise of combating misinformation,' the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri claim.
In his declaration, Roth claimed: 'I was told... that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter.
'I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden,' he added, as Twitter tried to defend itself against a complaint by the Tea Party Patriots Foundation that its censorship was an 'in-kind' campaign contribution to then candidate Joe Biden.
Under questioning by Solicitor General John Sauer late last month, Chan said he 'would interpret' what Roth said in his sworn testimony 'differently.'
He insisted he had never discussed Hunter Biden's laptop as being subject to a 'hack-and-leak operation' at weekly meetings with content moderation officials at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, Reddit and even LinkedIn.
'In my estimation, we never discussed Hunter Biden specifically with Twitter,' he said. 'And so the way I read that is that there are hack-and-leak operations, and then at the time, I believe he flagged one of the potential current events that were happening ahead of the elections.'
Chan then explained that because he does not actually remember discussing the Hunter Biden laptop 'we didn't discuss it.
'So this would have been something that he would have just thought of as a hot-button issue on his own.'