The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Agency

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Documented money flows

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • INF-4.1: FBI, DHS and ODNI officials met regularly with platform staff about election content from 2017 and 2018, under the Trump administration, and the meetings continued through the 2022 midterms under the Biden administration.
  • INF-4.2: The FBI agent who ran the Bureau's platform contacts testified, from recollection, that about half of the items the FBI flagged led a platform to act under its terms of service. Twitter told a court in 2023 that its employees reviewed the FBI's flagged tweets independently.
  • INF-4.3: CISA's head of its misinformation team testified that CISA forwarded election officials' reports about posts to platforms in the 2020 election, and the record differs on whether it did so in 2022. The district court wrote in 2023 that no evidence produced in the case tied the Trump administration to the switchboarding, and a 2025 Senate Commerce majority report dates DHS's election-disinformation task force to March 2018.
  • INF-4.4: Twitter's chief executive told the Senate Judiciary Committee on 17 November 2020 that Twitter's 2018 hacked-materials policy was informed by conversations with the U.S. government. Twitter's head of Site Integrity stated in a declaration to the Federal Election Commission that Twitter's Trust and Safety leadership decided on 14 October 2020 to enforce the policy against the New York Post articles.
  • INF-4.5: Meta (26 August 2024) and Alphabet (23 September 2025) each wrote to the House Judiciary Committee that senior Biden administration officials pressed them in 2021 over COVID-19 content, and each wrote that the company made its own decisions on removal and enforcement.
  • INF-4.7: No public dataset states how many government reports to platforms from 2017 to 2024 led to removal, by agency, platform and administration. The only figure in the record is the FBI agent's recollection of about half.
  • INF-4.13: The 2026 consent decree in Missouri v. Biden bars the Surgeon General, the CDC and CISA from threatening platforms with punishment unless they remove or reduce protected speech, and records no admission (para. 17). The Ninth Circuit held in O'Handley (2023) that compliance with a California office's flag was optional for Twitter, with no intimation of adverse consequences, and that Twitter's moderation was not state action. Twitter's 2023 brief in Trump v. Twitter, a litigation position, argues that coercion requires the threat of a government sanction and that the FBI's emails were advisory.
  • INF-5.6: The Church Committee's 1976 study of the FBI's COINTELPRO counted 2,370 approved actions in five domestic programs from 1956 to 1971 and described them as secret action designed to "disrupt" and "neutralize" target groups and individuals. It also quotes a 16 September 1970 FBI Philadelphia memorandum describing an effort to have New Left campus groups think "there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox."
  • DEF-6.1: The Church Committee found that the FBI ran five COINTELPRO programs from 1956 to 1971 and approved 2,370 actions to "disrupt" and "neutralize" domestic groups and individuals, among them the November 1964 anonymous note to Martin Luther King Jr.
  • DEF-6.2: The Church Committee concluded that intelligence activities undermined citizens' constitutional rights primarily because checks and balances had not been applied. Congress then created the Senate and House intelligence committees and enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, with a seven-judge court.
  • DEF-6.9: The 9/11 Commission found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded al Qaeda.
  • POL-7.11: On 4 July 2023 the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana preliminarily enjoined officials of the White House, the Surgeon General's office, CDC, FBI, CISA, NIAID and the State Department, finding the plaintiffs likely to succeed on the claim that the government coerced or significantly encouraged platform moderation. The court wrote that the alleged censorship "almost exclusively targeted conservative speech" and that the issues "go beyond party lines."
  • POL-7.12: The Fifth Circuit on 3 October 2023 agreed with the district court "but only as to some of those officials" and removed NIAID and the State Department from the injunction. On 26 June 2024 the Supreme Court held 6-3 in Murthy v. Missouri that "no plaintiff has carried that burden" and so "none has standing to seek a preliminary injunction."

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 299 23 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: COINTELPRO: The FBI's Covert Action Programs Against American Citizens (Church Committee, Book III)
  • Exhibit 300 25 August 1967. Federal Bureau of Investigation (quoted by the Church Committee): FBI letter to 23 field offices, Black Nationalist-Hate Groups program, as quoted in Church Committee Book III
  • Exhibit 301 23 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study (Church Committee, Book III)
  • Exhibit 302 26 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans (Church Committee, Book II), S. Rep. 94-755
  • Exhibit 323 1 September 2005. FBI and CIA: Executive Summary, joint FBI-CIA report on the nature and extent of Saudi Government support for terrorism (cover letters 1 September 2005; declassified 15 July 2016)
  • Exhibit 324 11 September 2021. Federal Bureau of Investigation: FBI 9/11 document release no. 1, 16-page investigative record on Saudi-linked contacts (11 September 2021)
  • Exhibit 865 4 July 2023. U.S. District Court, Western District of Louisiana (Judge Terry A. Doughty): Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Memorandum Ruling on Request for Preliminary Injunction, Doc. 293
  • Exhibit 866 3 October 2023. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit: Missouri v. Biden, 83 F.4th 350 (5th Cir. 2023) (revised opinion), No. 23-30445
  • Exhibit 1069 23 April 1976. United States Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations: The FBI informant program, Philadelphia Field Office memorandum of 16 September 1970 (Church Committee, Book III)
  • Exhibit 1070 16 September 1970; compilation March 1972. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Philadelphia Field Office; published in 'The Complete Collection of Political Documents Ripped Off from the FBI Office in Media, PA, March 8 1971' (WIN, March 1972): New Left Notes - Philadelphia, Edition #1, 16 September 1970, 'An Agent Behind Every Mailbox' (document taken from the FBI resident agency at Media, PA)
  • Exhibit 1105 9 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part Three: The Removal of Donald Trump, October 2020 - January 6th 2021 (thread, 9 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1106 16 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files, Part Six: Twitter, the FBI Subsidiary (thread, 16 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1107 19 December 2022. Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD), Twitter thread: Twitter Files Part 7: The FBI & the Hunter Biden Laptop (thread, 19 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1109 24 December 2022. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: Twitter and "Other Government Agencies" (thread, 24 December 2022)
  • Exhibit 1111 3 January 2023. Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi), Twitter thread: The Twitter Files: Twitter and the FBI "Belly Button" (thread, 3 January 2023)
  • Exhibit 1116 29 November 2022. U.S. District Court, W.D. La. (deposition taken by plaintiffs, 29 November 2022; filed 3 March 2023): Deposition of Elvis Chan (FBI San Francisco), Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Doc. 204-1
  • Exhibit 1119 17 December 2020 (response letter of 21 December 2020). Twitter, Inc. (counsel Covington & Burling) to the Federal Election Commission: Declaration of Yoel Roth (Twitter Head of Site Integrity), 17 December 2020, Exhibit A to Twitter's response in FEC MUR 7821 / MUR 7827
  • Exhibit 1120 1 June 2023. Twitter, Inc. and Jack Dorsey (WilmerHale), filed in the U.S. District Court, N.D. Cal.: Defendants' Opposition to Plaintiffs' Motion for Indicative Ruling under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60, Trump v. Twitter, No. 21-cv-08378-JD (N.D. Cal.), Doc. 195
  • Exhibit 1122 4 February 2026. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Chief Judge Boasberg): Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 23-3004 (JEB) (D.D.C.), Memorandum Opinion, Doc. 27
  • Exhibit 1136 September 2025. U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (Chairman Ted Cruz, majority): The Mechanics of Government Censorship: How the Biden Administration Converted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency into the Thought Police (report)
  • Exhibit 1138 26 August 2024. Meta Platforms, Inc.: Letter from Mark Zuckerberg (Meta Platforms) to Chairman Jim Jordan, House Committee on the Judiciary
  • Exhibit 1141 17 November 2020. Twitter, Inc. (written testimony to a Republican-chaired Senate committee): Testimony of Jack Dorsey (Twitter, Inc.) before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 'Breaking the News: Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election'