Rep. Dan Goldman schooled on censorship of Hunter Biden laptop report

A witness in a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Thursday gave Manhattan and Brooklyn Rep. Dan Goldman a lesson Thursday about the government’s efforts to suppress The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop — saying the Democrat was promoting a “conspiracy theory” that its hard drive had been “manipulated.”

“You’ve talked about the Hunter Biden laptop, and how the FBI knew it existed,” Goldman told Substack and “Twitter Files” journalist Michael Shellenberger during a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing.

“You are aware, of course, that the laptop, so to speak, … that was published in the New York Post, was actually a hard drive that the New York Post admitted here was not authenticated as real,” Goldman audaciously — and incorrectly — claimed.

“It was not the laptop the FBI had. You’re aware of that right?” Goldman asked.

“It was the same contents,” Shellenberger responded.

“How do you know?” Goldman shot back. “You would have to authenticate it to know it was the same contents.”

“Are you suggesting the New York Post participated in a conspiracy to construct the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop?” Shellenberger replied.

“No, sir, the problem is that hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia,” Goldman said.

“But what’s the evidence that that happened?” Shellenberger asked.

“Well, there is actual evidence of it,” Goldman went on. “But the point is, it’s not the same thing.”

“There’s no evidence of that, so you’re engaging in a conspiracy theory,” Shellenberger said, before being cut off.

“I’m glad you agree with me, Mr. Shellenberger, that transparency is the most important thing,” Goldman interjected, moving swiftly on to his next question.

When asked what data may have been “manipulated,” a spokesman for Goldman directed The Post to reports about some files on the hard drive having been created after Hunter had dropped it off at a computer repair store in Wilmington, Del, in April 2019, according to metadata analysis.

The store’s owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, also said in an April 2022 interview with “Real America’s Voice” that there had been “multiple attempts over the past year-and-a-half to insert questionable material into the laptop as in, not physically, but passing off this misinformation or disinformation as coming from the laptop.”

Federal investigators picked up the laptop from the Delaware shop in December 2019, but not before Mac Isaac made a copy and gave it to Giuliani’s then-personal lawyer, Robert Costello.

Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of the hard drive in October 2020.

Independent analyses by the Washington Post, CBS News, New York Times and other media outlets have consistently confirmed the authenticity of the contents included in The Post’s bombshell reports.

Finally, Hunter Biden’s attorney admitted in February that the laptop belonged to his client — while claiming that its data had been “unlawfully” accessed by Mac Isaac.

Emails obtained from the laptop revealed the first son had leveraged the Biden family name to score a lucrative business deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate.

The communications also showed Hunter introduced his father, then serving as vice president, to a Burisma Holdings executive months before the elder Biden pressured Kyiv officials to fire an investigator looking into the Ukrainian natural gas company.

Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019, earning an annual salary of roughly $1 million despite having no relevant energy industry experience.

The FBI told Twitter that the laptop was real on Oct. 14, 2020, the same day The Post published its first report — even as the social media platform went on to censor the story and lock America’s favorite tabloid out of its account for allegedly violating its terms of service regarding hacked materials.

Former Twitter executives later admitted in congressional testimony that it had been a “mistake” to block access to stories about the so-called “laptop from hell.”

Goldman also sought to downplay efforts by the federal government to censor the free speech of Americans online, arguing the actions were taken by social media platforms due to violations of terms of service.

“You would agree that these flags, that the systematic flags that you saw, were flagged for a violation of the terms of service of the social media company, is that right?” he asked fellow “Twitter Files” journalist Matt Taibbi.

“Sometimes, but sometimes in the case of the instances like Congressman [Thomas] Massie [R-Ky.], they were actually true information,” Taibbi pushed back.

“And then the social media company has to determine whether or not … it is actually a violation of their terms of service. And in 87% of those flags, they were not removed,” Goldman said.

Subcommittee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) interjected later to highlight the absolute clarity of First Amendment protections under the US Constitution.

“Congress shall take no action to abridge freedom of speech,” Jordan said. “Mr. Shellenberger, is 13% censorship, still censorship?”

“Absolutely,” Shellenberger replied.

“And the other 87% is what we call the chilling effect that the courts have long recognized that they engaged in,” Jordan added. “That is the problem.”

“By the way, part of the operation, Congressman Goldman, was to change the terms of service,” Shellenberger also noted. “It was 35% of the URLs … were labeled removed or soft-blocked. That’s all forms of censorship.”

“But 65% were not,” Goldman butted in. “So how can the government be so coercive?”

“Does the First Amendment say that the government can censor 35%?” Shellenberger asked.

“It’s not the First Amendment. It’s the terms of service, as you said, and they are flagging it for the social media companies to make their own decisions,” Goldman added.

“Congressman, you’re an attorney. You know that the four federal judges have already ruled that…” Taibbi began, referencing court decisions that had faulted federal agencies for infringing on Americans’ free speech online.

“And I know that it’s on appeal in front of the Supreme Court right now,” Goldman jumped in, prompting laughter from the panel witnesses.

The high court has agreed to hear Missouri v. Biden next year, which will determine whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media platforms to remove protected speech deemed false or misleading.