The FBI warned Facebook of an imminent “dump” of “Russian propaganda” shortly before the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story broke, according to Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg revealed the bombshell news on his first appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, which was published today, revealing the FBI’s interference in the 2020 election.
“The FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump of — that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.'”
Shortly afterwards, the New York Post published its first article about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell.” The story was immediately shut down by Twitter, while Facebook reduced its distribution — meaning it appeared on fewer people’s newsfeeds to a “meaningful” degree, according to Zuckerberg.
“We just kind of thought, Hey look, if the FBI, which, you know, I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it’s a very professional law enforcement,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “They come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something. Then I wanna take that seriously.”
While Zuckerberg said the FBI did not specifically identify the Hunter Biden story as the “Russian propaganda” in question, “it basically fit the pattern.”
Zuckerberg’s bombshell allegation comes in the same week that a whistleblower revealed the FBI forbade its agents from investigating the Hunter Biden laptop until after the 2020 election.
Pressed by Rogan, Zuckerberg admitted that the story ended up being factual.
“Yeah. I mean, it sucks. I mean, it turned out after the fact, I mean the fact-checkers looked into it, no one was able to say it was false, right. So basically it had this period where it was getting less distribution.”
Most of the corporate press ignored the Hunter Biden story, with CNN taking nearly a year and a half to admit the “laptop from hell” is legitimate. A Project Veritas leak shortly after the November 2020 election revealed that former CNN president Jeff Zucker dismissed the laptop as a “Breitbart rabbit hole,” burying the story at the network.