Twitter, Facebook and the FBI: was the story suppressed?

On 14 October 2020 Twitter barred users from posting links to the Post’s story, citing its hacked-materials policy, and locked the Post’s own account. Facebook said it was reducing the story’s distribution until fact-checkers reviewed it. [1][2]

At a February 2023 House hearing, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety Yoel Roth and other ex-executives acknowledged the decision was a mistake while defending the reasoning they had at the time. In August 2024 Mark Zuckerberg wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI had warned Facebook about a potential Russian disinformation operation involving the Bidens, that “it’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation,” and that “in retrospect, we shouldn’t have demoted the story.” [1][2]

Through 2020 the FBI told tech companies to expect foreign “hack-and-leak” operations before the election. By then it had possessed the laptop for ten months. [1][2]

In April 2025 Senators Grassley and Johnson released FBI chat messages from October 2020 that, in their words, showed officials “actively shutting down discussion of the laptop’s credibility before the 2020 presidential election.” In August 2026 Grassley said FBI records about Operation Round River, a task force that gathered allegations about the Bidens, had been “misclassified” and hidden from Congress. Those are senators’ characterizations; the FBI has not published a full account. [2][3][4]