The FBI worked with the intelligence community to pressure Twitter and other social media and news media to censor the New York Post's revelations of Joe Biden's knowledge of his family's influence-peddling operation while lacking any evidence of a purported Russian "disinformation" operation.

Factual information about the foreign business dealings was discredited by the FBI and the IC both after and before the Post's blockbuster Oct. 14, 2020, story, according to the seventh Twitter Files release, reported by journalist Michael Shellenberger on Monday.

Significantly, in July 2020, the FBI's Elvis Chan – assistant special agent in charge at the office in San Francisco, where Twitter is headquartered – arranged for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives to enable the FBI to share information about "threats" to the upcoming elections.

Further, the latest release of internal communications revealed, the FBI paid Twitter at least $3.4 million for its work.

Shellenberger recalled that Twitter Files No. 6, released Friday, showed the FBI had a system in place in which it had "constant and pervasive" contact with Twitter executives, acting as if it were a "subsidiary" of the social-media giant.

The seventh release recounts the FBI's involvement with the laptop, beginning in December 2019, when Delaware computer store owner John Paul Mac Isaac contacted the bureau after discovering evidence of criminal activity on Hunter Biden's abandoned machine. The FBI took the computer and launched an investigation. But by August, Mac Issac had not heard back from the FBI, and he emailed Rudy Giuliani, President Trump's personal lawyer at the time, who was under FBI surveillance. In early October, Giuliani gave the contents of the hard drive to the Post.