Newly released chat logs reveal that the FBI silenced an employee who attempted to confirm to Twitter that the Hunter Biden laptop story was legitimate on the day it was published. On October 14, 2020, the same day The New York Post first reported on Hunter Biden’s laptop, the FBI instructed employees, “do not discuss [the] Biden matter,” according to chat logs released by the House Judiciary Committee. The logs also indicate that an analyst who confirmed the laptop’s authenticity to Twitter during a meeting was subsequently subjected to a “gag order” and reprimanded by FBI officials.

Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official with the bureau’s foreign influence task force, previously testified that during the call with Twitter, an analyst confirmed the laptop was real before an FBI attorney stated the bureau would not comment further. The chat logs show internal discussions within the FBI on how to handle the situation, with messages reiterating the directive not to discuss the laptop.

Following the meeting, the analyst was “admonished” for speaking up, and one FBI staffer complained that the analyst “won’t [sic] shut up” as instructed. The FBI declined to comment on the matter. The bureau had already verified the laptop in late 2019 by cross-referencing the device’s serial number with Biden’s iCloud storage, according to FBI Special Agent Erica Jensen’s testimony during Hunter Biden’s gun trial last year. Federal agents obtained data from the laptop after securing a search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into Biden’s tax affairs.

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley provided a similar account to Congress in 2023, alleging misconduct by IRS and DOJ officials in the investigation. Independent journalists Catherine Herridge and Michael Shellenberger first reported on the chat logs. Herridge has claimed that she was prevented from reporting on the laptop ahead of the 2020 election during her tenure at CBS News. Both Twitter and Facebook censored The New York Post’s reporting on the laptop after the FBI and other government agencies spent nearly a year preparing social media platforms to suppress the story.

Attorney General Pam Bondi later disbanded the foreign influence task force, which had played a role in coordinating content moderation efforts. House Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Subcommittee have been investigating the suppression of the laptop story and other instances of political censorship.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has been vocal in opposing social media companies working with the government to restrict certain viewpoints. Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that Facebook was wrong to suppress the Post’s reporting and criticized the Biden administration for pressuring the platform to censor certain discussions related to COVID-19.

Twitter, now rebranded as X, was acquired by Elon Musk in late 2022. Following the acquisition, Musk authorized the release of the “Twitter Files,” which detailed how company executives decided to censor the laptop story and limit the reach of conservative accounts. In December, then-President Joe Biden pardoned his son before his sentencing for federal gun and tax charges. Hunter Biden had been convicted on gun-related charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax violations in California.

Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, along with the IRS whistleblower allegations, were central to the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. The investigation uncovered over $27 million in payments from foreign sources to Hunter Biden and his associates during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president.

The inquiry also documented instances where Joe Biden met with his son’s business partners and joined them on speakerphone approximately 20 times. The Trump administration recently promoted Shapley and IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler to senior adviser positions after they faced alleged retaliation within the IRS.

Additionally, former President Trump granted clemency to two of Hunter Biden’s business associates, Devon Archer and Jason Galanis, both of whom testified during the impeachment proceedings.

SOURCE: NATIONAL REVIEW

The U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) cannot confirm how much bitcoin it holds. It is also struggling with serious organizational issues. The agency has attempted to address these problems through procurement, but the process has dragged on for years.

The USMS is responsible for managing assets seized during criminal investigations, including real estate, cash, jewelry, antiques, and vehicles. It is also tasked with handling cryptocurrencies—such as the billions of dollars worth of bitcoin (BTC) the FBI seized from the darknet marketplace Silk Road in 2013.

The USMS’s Uncertainty Over Its Crypto Holdings

Despite its role in managing seized digital assets, the USMS doesn’t seem to know how much cryptocurrency it currently holds. In fact, it is struggling to even estimate its bitcoin holdings, a source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk.

This uncertainty could be a major issue, especially after White House Crypto Czar David Sacks announced earlier this month that the U.S. government is actively exploring the creation of a national crypto reserve. If this plan moves forward, the government may stop liquidating seized cryptocurrencies and could even start purchasing crypto.

“When you start talking about reserves, you need to be familiar with the unique properties of the assets, like forks, airdrops, and the constant volatility,” said Les Borsai, co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, a firm that provides asset management services and has been in a dispute with the USMS over not getting hired as a contractor. “You have to have the agencies educated enough or dealing with professionals that understand how to help them achieve their goals.”

Even if the crypto reserve never materializes, the USMS still plays a crucial role in managing and liquidating seized digital assets—especially since asset forfeiture helps fund the Department of Justice (DOJ).

“As far as I’m aware, the USMS is currently managing this with individual keystrokes in an Excel spreadsheet,” said Chip Borman, vice president of capture strategy and proposals at Addx Corporation, a firm that provides technological solutions to the U.S. government and was also turned down for a USMS contract. Borman said he observed USMS processes firsthand in 2023.

“They’re one bad day away from a billion-dollar mistake.”

USMS’s Troubled History With Crypto Management

Issues with the agency’s handling of cryptocurrency aren’t new. Timothy Clarke, CEO of crypto consulting firm ECC Solutions and a former special agent at the Department of Treasury, told CoinDesk that frustration has been building for years in both the public and private sectors.

As recently as 2019, the USMS “only handled a handful of cryptocurrency assets, like eight or 10, so all the different U.S. government agencies had to do their own storage, instead of the USMS doing its job and intaking seizures,” Clarke said.

He also noted that when agencies requested bitcoin deposit addresses after making a seizure, the USMS took weeks to provide them—and even then, it simply sent them via unencrypted email without any verification process.

By contrast, agencies like IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) communicate such sensitive information through video calls, read-only encrypted attachments with password-protected follow-ups, or in-person handling by specialists.

“It was very, very unsecure,” Clarke said. “It’s just shocking that nothing happened in the years they did that.”

The USMS declined to comment.

In 2022, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) warned that the USMS was struggling with the management and tracking of its cryptocurrency holdings.

“The USMS did not have adequate policies related to seized cryptocurrency storage, quantification, valuation, and disposal, and in some instances, guidance was conflicting,” the OIG report stated.

For example, the agency had no measures in place to track forked assets—cryptocurrencies created when a blockchain splits, like Bitcoin Cash (BCH) or Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV). “As a result, the USMS may fail to identify and track forked assets, and thereby lose the opportunity to sell those assets when they are forfeited,” the OIG said.

The spreadsheets the agency relied on to track crypto holdings also contained inaccuracies, the report found.

In November 2022, five months after the OIG report was published, the USMS admitted it had lost access to two Ethereum wallets due to a software update.

“It is unclear if the private key is incorrect, or the wallet malfunctioned,” the agency stated. “The Contractor will identify the issue(s) and potentially open the wallet. If the wallet cannot be opened, documentation of efforts taken to unlock or open the wallet will be provided to the USG.”

Clarke said it was unclear whether the issues with the Ethereum wallets had occurred before, during, or after the OIG audit, as the report made no mention of missing ether (ETH).

“At a minimum, it speaks to a lack of a backup wallet and a lack of competent storage, update, and handling procedures,” Clarke said.

“The perception is that everything has remained the same since the 2022 OIG Findings,” said John Millward, chief operating officer at Addx.

Millward claimed that a single employee is currently managing asset disposal “right now on a retail account,” despite the massive financial responsibilities involved. However, the agency has not confirmed this.

Liquidating Crypto Ahead of a Possible Stockpile

In July 2024, at a Bitcoin conference in Nashville, President Trump stated that, if reelected, he would order the federal government to stop selling seized bitcoin. The idea had been championed by Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), one of bitcoin’s strongest supporters in Congress, who introduced legislation to establish a national bitcoin reserve.

On Jan. 15, just days before Trump was set to take office, Lummis wrote to then-USMS Director Ronald L. Davis, expressing concern that DOJ attorneys were rushing to liquidate 69,370 bitcoin (worth about $6.6 billion) seized from Silk Road.

“Recent court filings from earlier this month show that the Department of Justice is citing bitcoin price volatility to justify an expedited sale of these assets,” she wrote.

She also noted that the DOJ was pushing ahead with liquidation plans despite pending legal challenges, calling it an “unusual urgency” that contradicted the incoming administration’s plans for a national bitcoin stockpile.

Lummis requested details on the USMS’s bitcoin holdings, why the information wasn’t publicly available, and how the agency tracks and manages its assets. The agency was given until Jan. 31 to respond but has yet to do so, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The USMS has since contacted Lummis’ office twice but was unable to provide a clear answer on how much bitcoin it controls, blaming the transition between administrations. Lummis’ office declined to comment.

According to sources, large amounts of bitcoin are being held across multiple government agencies, including the DOJ and the Department of Treasury, and the USMS lacks a reconciliation process to determine where it all resides.

USMS’s Procurement Struggles

In 2022, the OIG acknowledged that the USMS was taking steps to improve its asset management by partnering with private-sector firms. However, the agency has been slow to award contracts, and its decisions have been controversial.

After procurement efforts began in 2018, the agency awarded a contract to Bitgo in April 2021, but later revoked it because the company didn’t meet the “small business” requirement. The award then went to Anchorage Digital in July 2021—only for Anchorage to be disqualified for the same reason.

In 2024, the USMS awarded two new contracts: one to Coinbase for managing “Class 1” cryptocurrencies (widely supported coins) and another to Command Services & Support (CMDSS) for “Class 2-4” cryptocurrencies (less common assets).

Both awards have faced legal challenges. Anchorage protested Coinbase’s contract, while Wave Digital Assets is challenging CMDSS’s award, arguing that the company lacks the necessary SEC and FINRA licensing and that it hired a former USMS official with access to nonpublic information.

Borsai was blunt in his assessment:

“If you don’t care about the basics, like being licensed to handle securities, then what are you doing? It just shows you how little they know about the process.”

SOURCE: COINDESK

In a significant development, the Justice Department revealed to a federal judge late Monday that it possesses transcripts of President Joe Biden’s conversations with a biographer, contradicting earlier denials. These transcripts are related to the recently concluded criminal investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials before he became president.

The special counsel, Robert Hur, issued a report in February describing Biden as “a well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” This report has prompted a surge of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and lawsuits aimed at obtaining records related to Hur’s investigation. These requests have come from various news outlets and conservative groups seeking to scrutinize Biden’s mental acuity and fitness for the presidency.

Concerns about Biden’s cognitive abilities were exacerbated by a poor debate performance against Donald Trump, leading Biden to announce on Sunday that he would not seek reelection. It remains unclear how his exit from the race will affect the Justice Department’s handling of the materials from Hur’s investigation.

The Justice Department has argued that releasing the audio of Biden’s interviews would violate his privacy, potentially lead to abuses like deepfakes, and discourage other witnesses from agreeing to recorded interviews. Biden has asserted executive privilege over these recordings to prevent House Republicans from holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to release them.

During a hearing last month, DOJ lawyers informed U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich that processing the audio files of Biden’s interviews with writer Mark Zwonitzer would be highly time-consuming. They claimed that the recordings spanned 70 hours and reviewing audio for classified material is more challenging than reviewing written material.

Justice Department lawyer Cameron Silverberg stated at a June 18 hearing that no transcripts from the special counsel existed. However, Silverberg’s recent court filing revealed that the DOJ had found six electronic files, consisting of 117 pages of verbatim transcripts, created by a court-reporting service from Biden’s discussions with Zwonitzer. Some of these conversations contained classified information, but DOJ policy barred pursuing charges against a sitting president.

In an unexpected reversal, the Justice Department reached out to Robert Hur directly after initially resisting requests from the Heritage Foundation to contact him about materials he used for his report. Hur confirmed he relied on the Biden-Zwonitzer audio recordings and a portion of Biden’s handwritten notes regarding a memo about Afghanistan.

Judge Friedrich has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday morning to address these developments. The Justice Department has indicated it will discuss with the parties seeking access to Hur’s materials whether Biden’s notes should also be processed for potential release.

The Justice Department’s admission of the existence of transcripts in the Biden classified material investigation marks a crucial turn in the ongoing scrutiny of Biden’s handling of classified information. As legal proceedings continue, the implications for transparency, presidential privacy, and the political landscape remain to be seen.

SOURCE: POLITICO