In October 2020, Republican elected officials began to comb through the data from the laptop that had been abandoned at a Delaware computer shop.
Three weeks before the 2020 presidential election, the New York Post published a front-page story containing several emails from the laptop, alleging they showed clear signs of corruption involving at-the-time Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
The signed letter from intelligence officials discredited the story, leading it to being censored by Twitter and Facebook as disinformation. Many in the GOP believe this decision played a role in Biden’s victory over former president Donald Trump.