Baier on Wray Denying FBI Social Media Censorship: 'Twitter Files Suggest Something Different'

BAIER: “Let’s start with the laptop. The FBI has had access to this laptop for more than three years. Why is this investigation on the Hunter Biden laptop taking so long?”
WRAY: “Well, the investigation is being led, as you may know, by a U.S. attorney appointed in the last administration out of Delaware. And the FBI is actively supporting and working with that U.S. attorney on that investigation.”
BAIER: “But the whistleblowers are telling these lawmakers that there was an internal effort to shut down the investigation from the beginning. Have you found that?”
WRAY: “I have not found anything like that.”
BAIER: “Alright. So let’s talk about the FBI and what you told Big Tech, or some agents did, about the authenticity and providence of Hunter Biden’s laptop. What about that, from an FBI perspective?”
WRAY: “The FBI does not and is not in the business of functioning as the truth police.”
BAIER: “Understood.”
WRAY: “We don’t tell social media companies to censor anything.”
BAIER: “Well, the Twitter files suggest something different. I mean, there was an FBI request, numerous times. Taibbi puts it out, FBI San Francisco requested to ban certain accounts. Twitter personnel in this case went on to look for reasons to suspend all four accounts that the FBI wanted to ban or suspend. Is it appropriate to flag social media accounts for — on Twitter or elsewhere, due to politics or government policies when it comes to Covid? Is it appropriate in any way? You’re saying it doesn’t happen but there is evidence that it had.”
WRAY: “We don’t tell social media companies to ban accounts.”
BAIER: “But you suggest?”
WRAY: “What we do is tell social media companies about information that we have about foreign disinformation campaigns by foreign actors, by foreign intelligence services, and those companies then make decisions about what, if anything, they want to do about it.”