Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has submitted document preservation notices to twelve individuals from the intelligence community, White House, Facebook, and Twitter — as Republicans in Congress are gearing up to take back majorities and investigate election interference with regard to the suppression of the “Laptop From Hell” series in October 2020.
Rep. Issa is demanding former DNI boss James Clapper, former CIA boss Micheal Hayden, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, former CIA head John Brennan, former top CIA aide Nick Shapiro, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Communications Director Andy Stone, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal all preserve documents relating to their involvement in suppressing the New York Post’s bombshell exposé on the Hunter Biden laptop in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, according to letters obtained exclusively by Breitbart News.
The news comes as Breitbart News exclusively reported Wednesday that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced House Republicans had sent dozens of preservation notices across the federal government to agencies and departments throughout Biden administration, ordering them to preserve documents in anticipation of eventual subpoenas from House Republicans after the 2022 midterm elections.
The letters from Issa to the various characters begin similarly, demanding the recipient “immediately initiate document preservation for all materials relating to questions, inquiry, conversation, strategy, and response, from 2020 to current, to the media reporting of the Hunter Biden laptop and/or its contents that first appeared in the New York Post on October 14, 2020.”
Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, R, and his son Hunter Biden, L, in the village of Sojevo, Kosovo, on Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
The notices state the recipient should “[construe the request] as an instruction to preserve all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that is or may be potentially responsible to this congressional inquiry,” including electronic messages, text messages, or communications on encrypted software sent from official or personal devices.
Issa adds in his letters that the information will be “essential for Congress to conduct a comprehensive fact-finding investigation into the actions by technology companies, media organizations, and political allies to suppress information and prevent public awareness of matters involving the Biden Family.”
Rep. Issa told Breitbart News in a statement that he is putting those who participated in the effort to suppress the laptop from hell “on notice” and that he will be taking up the role of a watchdog when Republicans take a majority in the House in November.
“Big Tech, the mainstream media and the Democrats’ deep state intelligence community want to either rewrite the history of their collusion – or erase it entirely. We’re not going to let them do that,” Issa said in a statement to Breitbart News.
“These letters are putting everyone on notice: real accountability is going to happen. And we won’t rest until the full truth is known.”
The letters come as Republicans anticipate taking back power in Congress, and in the wake of the New York Times becoming just the latest legacy outlet to admit that the Laptop and reporting on its contents were authentic and accurate — despite broad, unsubstantiated, and false claims at the time that the report was “Russian disinformation.”
When the original Post stories were reported in October 2020, the security state, the media, Big Tech, and the Democratic Party worked in machine-like coordination to suppress the information.
Big Tech immediately shut down the ability to share the Post link to the story and suspended accounts attempting to do so — claiming to be curbing “misinformation.”
Five days after the first story was published, Politico obtained and reported on a letter signed by “more than 50 former senior intelligence officials” claiming the Post’s reporting “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” despite zero evidence for the claim, which, evidently, was false.
Now-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki immediately amplified the narrative set by the former spies, tweeting out the Politico story that same day.
Then, when former-President Trump confronted then-candidate Joe Biden about the contents of the report days later at the presidential debate, Biden claimed, “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plant. … Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.”
Following the election in November of 2020, McLaughlin & Associates released a poll showing that 36% of Biden voters were not aware of the Laptop exposé and that “13% of those said they would not have voted for Biden had they known.”
“Such a shift away from Biden would have meant President Trump would have won the election with 289 electoral votes,” the pollsters concluded.
Emma-Jo Morris is the Politics Editor at Breitbart News. Email her at ejmorris@breitbart.com or follow her on Twitter.