WASHINGTON. When Delaware computer repairman John Isaac discovered hundreds of emails on a water-damaged laptop computer belonging to Hunter Biden, he was concerned. That’s because the emails in question detailed Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings with Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma. Worse still, they exposed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s efforts to use the power of his office to shield Burisma and son Hunter from the scrutiny of Ukraine’s top prosecutor.
The computer repair shop of John Isaac. Fox News screen capture.
So says recent bombshell articles by the New York Post. (Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad)
Down the rabbit hole with john
Getting back to Isaac, when Hunter Biden did not retrieve the repaired laptop, the repairman kept the computer in forfeiture of payment. But knowing the power of the Bidens in Delaware, Isaac feared reprisals. And so, he copied the contents of the hard drive before sending the computer to the FBI in late 2019.
It’s time for Republicans to act and go Roman on social media censorship
And that’s where it sat while at the same time Democrats impeached and tried President Trump for asking Ukraine’s new president to investigate Burisma and the Biden family’s corruption.
When the FBI failed to update Isaac on the progress of its investigation, he contacted members of Congress. Among them, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, considered by many to be the US Senate’s leading constitutional conservative.
Sen. Lee did nothing.
Making all the right noises
US Senator Mike Lee. Fox News screen capture.
And this is where it gets interesting. As we all know by now, the New York Post bombshell exposé on the Bidens was censored by social media sites Twitter and Facebook. A practice that is well known to the platform’s conservative users – the victims of shadow banning or outright exile.
But good conservative Sen. Lee has developed strange new respect for Big Tech in recent years.
An office at Google headquarters. Google screen capture.
According to the Campaign for Accountability, a Big Tech watchdog group,
“Sen. Lee was a prominent critic of Google when he first entered the Senate in 2011. Sen. Lee pointedly questioned then-Google Chairman Eric Schmidt about whether Google was abusing its prominent position in the marketplace.
“Google subsequently initiated a lengthy, multifaceted campaign to appease Sen. Lee. The company built Google Fiber and Google Cloud infrastructure in his home state of Utah, contributed $7,500 to his 2016 reelection campaign, and wooed his conservative allies with jobs and donations… Today, Sen. Lee is a reliable ally of Big Tech… [and has] complained about big fines imposed on Google, and defended the tech industry against Republican charges of liberal bias.”
Full of sound and fury
Many conservative GOP lawmakers appeared on Fox News to denounce the actions of Twitter and Facebook. Sen. Mike Lee among them.
Lee described social media censorship of the New York Post story as “a stunning display of hypocrisy and of favoritism” to the “Fox and Friends” team.
That’s when Fox co-host Brian Kilmeade chimed in with a question,
“They [computer repairman John Isaac] said they reached out to your office with this information. Did you know that?”
Lee looked a bit uncomfortable,
“Yeah, that was news to me. I’ve learned that as of just the last few hours. I haven’t been able to confirm that. As you might imagine, we receive tens of thousands of emails and, um, we haven’t been able to verify we heard from anybody on this. But we’ll keep you posted on that.”
The friendly folks at “Fox and Friends” shouldn’t hold their breath.
Follow the money
That’s because Google’s political action committee gave 56 percent of its financial contributions to Republican candidates in 2019, according to the online technology journal Protocol.
Rep. Jim Jordan. Fox News screen capture.
And frequent Fox News guest, GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, complained of Twitter’s censoring the official House Judiciary Committee’s website, which reposted the New York Post’s Biden exposé.
In a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Jordan wrote:
“Twitter’s intervention to stop the dissemination of election-related information in a way that helps Vice President Biden’s candidacy raised serious questions about election interference and reinforces the fact that Big Tech is biased against conservatives.”
According to the Federal Election Commission, Jordan received $10,000 from tech giant Google in 2020.
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This goes a long way in explaining why Republican lawmakers – especially Congress’s most vocal conservatives – are so reluctant to hold Big Tech companies accountable for attempting to influence the upcoming presidential election in a manner Vladimir Putin’s Russia can only envy.
That means conservative users of social media shouldn’t hold out hope conservative senators like Mike Lee or representatives in the vain of Jim Jordan will do much to remove congressional protections provided to Big Tech monopolies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
They have, in the words of Morpheus in the motion picture “The Matrix,” swallowed the blue pill.
Choosing the blue or red
Scene from the 1999 film “The Matrix.” CDN screen capture.
In a pivotal scene from the film, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) explains to computer hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves) that the world around him is a technologically-induced illusion created by The Matrix.
“You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
An intrigued Neo leans forward and asks, “What truth?”
“You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.”
Morpheus holds out both hands. In his right is a red pill. In his left a blue.
“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.
“You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.”
Put up or shut up
Red and blue pill from the 1999 film “The Matrix.” CDN screen capture.
Congressional Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Jim Jordan make all the right noises but aren’t all that interested in the truth. They’ve swallowed the blue pill, washed down with a chaser of Big Technocrat campaign cash.
In doing so, they remain bound to Big Tech’s imaginary reality. A digital illusion appropriately unmasked by that reluctant Morpheus of Delaware – computer repairman John Isaac.
