FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan made “false statements” under oath about the bureau’s investigation and suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on Monday.
Mr. Chan, a member of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, was deposed in November 2022 on the FBI’s efforts to suppress news of the laptop as it spread across social media just before the 2020 election.
According to a transcript (pdf) of that deposition, the agent testified that he had “no internal knowledge” of the FBI’s investigation of the laptop and only became aware that the agency had the laptop in its possession “when news media outlets posted it, or published it.”
Mr. Chan also testified that he was “not a party to any meeting” with social media companies where Mr. Biden or his laptop were discussed, outside of a preliminary briefing the task force gave to Facebook on the subject on Oct. 14, 2020—the same day the New York Post broke the story.
And when asked whether he was aware of any other communications between anyone at Facebook and anyone at the FBI related to the laptop, he replied, “No.”
But according to Mr. Jordan, internal documents his committee obtained from Facebook show that those statements were “completely false.”
Sharing an excerpt from those documents via his X account, the congressman noted that a Facebook employee—a former FBI agent—described a follow-up call with Mr. Chan on Oct. 15, 2020, one day after the initial briefing.
Chan was asked again if, other than the October 14 Facebook-FITF meeting, he was “aware of any communications between anyone at Facebook and anyone at the FBI related to the Hunter Biden laptop story?”
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 7, 2023
He answered: “No.” pic.twitter.com/bwHXU9DjpC
“I asked SSA Chan whether there was any update or change since the discussion on 14 October 2020 as to whether the FBI saw any evidence suggesting foreign sponsorship or direction of the leak of information related to Hunter Biden as published in the New York Post story on 14 October,” wrote the Facebook employee, whose name was redacted from the excerpt.
“SSA Chan advised that he was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI and that there was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection or direction of the leak,” the employee added.
