FBI whistleblower: Agents told not to look at Hunter Biden laptop until after election

WASHINGTON (TND) — There is a new round of questions from GOP lawmakers after whistleblowers from inside the Federal Bureau of Investigation now say the agency waited nearly a year before examining the contents of a laptop purportedly belonging to then-candidate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

That whistleblower allegedly came to the office of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., laying out the accusations.

In an interview Monday, Johnson told Sinclair that it shows the FBI has become weaponized.

"If you turn a blind eye toward one individual with ties to one political party and you aggressively go after others of the opponent party, that’s a real problem. That’s a real danger to our democracy," he said.

"These new allegations provide even more evidence of FBI corruption and renew calls for you to take immediate steps to investigate the FBI’s actions regarding the laptop," Johnson argued in a letter sent to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

He is asking Horowitz to look into accusations that FBI leadership told employees, "you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop," adding, "the FBI is not going to change the outcome of the election again.”

“They definitely had an impact on the 2020 election, downplaying Hunter Biden. We’ve seen polls because the suppression of information, had Americans seen that, Joe Biden would not be president today," Johnson said.

On his social media platform, Truth Social, former President Donald Trump called it “fraud and election interference,” even suggesting the information makes the 2020 election "compromised," calling for a new one.

Some of these concerns were raised after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerbergtold Joe Rogan on his podcast last week, that he was approached by the FBI in 2020.

"The FBI, I think, basically came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, 'hey, just so you know, like, 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.”

Zuckerberg said those warnings led to the social media site significantly limiting the sharing of articles on Hunter Biden’s laptop for about a week. Now, top Republicans are vowing to investigate should they take control in Congress.

"I want you to know that I’m not going to give up on the Hunter Biden investigation till we get to the bottom of it. I’m not going to give up exposing political bias in the FBI," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, at a campaign event Sunday for Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa.

That bias — whether real or perceived — could have a negative impact on Democracy, experts say.

"When platforms are seen, rightly or not, as agents of the state working to circumvent the First Amendment, it can really erode trust, both in the platforms governance and our system of govt writ large," said Will Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute Center for Representative Government. "The immediate legal ramifications are limited. The FBI communicates a warning not a threat or a demand."

In a statement to Sinclair, the FBI said, "the FBI routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats. The FBI has provided companies with foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors. The FBI will continue to work closely with federal, state, local, and private sector partners to keep the public informed of potential threats, but the FBI cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received.”