Weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Facebook censored the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan his company censored the story only after an F.B.I. warning about Russian misinformation.

In 2020, the New York post leaked emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop. The emails showed while he was vice president, Joe Biden helped his son’s business dealings in Ukraine.

Republicans jumped on the story quickly, saying it was evidence the Biden’s were involved in questionable business dealings.

Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, gave the post the laptop. No other news agency had access to the data.

Zuckerberg told Rogan, “The background here is that the F.B.I. came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that’.”

Zuckerberg said he could not recall whether the F.B.I. warned about Hunter Biden’s laptop specifically, but Facebook thought it “fit the pattern” of the type of Russian disinformation the F.B.I. warned about just days before the story broke. So, Facebook began censoring the story

Unlike Twitter, though, Facebook didn’t completely remove the story from the platform. But it did limit how the story would appear on peoples’ feeds by manipulating the algorithm.

Zuckerberg said the censorship lasted for seven days, while independent fact checkers tried to verify the story.

Zuckerberg eventually went before Congress to explain his company’s actions.

With this latest revelation, critics are pouncing on the media giant again saying this is another example of big tech working with a corrupt F.B.I. to bring down former President Donald Trump.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Twitter the F.B.I.’s warning to Facebook amounted to collusion, and that the Democrats in Congress are intentionally ignoring the facts.

Straight Arrow News reached out to the F.B.I.’s National Press Office for comment, but did not receive a response yet. This story will update to reflect the F.B.I.’s response when and if it is issued.