Baker

The idea popularized in the 2016 election was that Russian disinformation allowed Trump to win the election. This theory was so strong that it resulted in a two year investigation by the FBI. It was used in the 2020 election to help defeat Trump. The story centered around the Hunter Biden laptop which was in the hands of the FBI in December of 2019. This was an offshoot of the Patriot Act which was started after 9-11 to protect the country from future outside invaders but it turned inward and was used to watch for internal terrorist and this morphed into watching radial right wing groups and that moved on to watching conservative groups in general. This laptop investigation took on new significance when a NY Post article was published just weeks before the 2020 election. James Baker was appointed FBI General Counsel in 2014. He left the FBI in 2018 and took a position as Asst. General Counsel for Twitter in the summer of 2020. When the laptop story broke government officials told Twitter it was Russian disinformation that they should carefully investigate before allowing it on their platform. The Twitter legal department felt it was OK to publish but after strong opposition by Baker they decided not to allow the story on their platform.