WASHINGTON — House Republicans sent the FBI a “preservation notice” Friday seeking records on the bureau’s role in Twitter censoring content like The Post’s Hunter Biden reporting, citing evidence from recent “Twitter Files” releases facilitated by the platform’s new owner, Elon Musk.

The demand follows the revelations that FBI agent Elvis Chan sent Twitter executive Yoel Roth a batch of 10 yet-to-be identified documents just hours before The Post published its first Hunter Biden laptop bombshell on Oct. 14, 2020  —   and that the FBI paid at least $3.5 million to Twitter to process its requests.

“Newly released information shows the FBI has coordinated extensively with Twitter to censor or otherwise affect content on Twitter’s platform,” incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to FBI Director Chris Wray.

“These documents show that the FBI maintained this relationship with Twitter apart from any particularized need for a specific investigation, but as a permanent and ongoing surveillance operation,” Jordan wrote. “These revelations sadly reinforce our deep concerns about the FBI’s misconduct and its hostility to the First Amendment.”

The request for documents broadly seeks evidence of FBI-Twitter relations, and Republicans, who retake the House on Jan. 3, will soon have the power to compel testimony and documents.

The letter asks for “all documents and communications between or among employees or contractors of the FBI referring or relating to content moderation on Twitter’s platform.”

An internal Twitter email published Monday by journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed the mysterious files transfer from Chan to Roth, who then worked as Twitter’s director of trust and safety.

“Twitter folks, Heads up I will be sending a Teleporter link for you to download 10 documents. It is not spam! Please confirm receipt when you get it. Thanks,” Chan emailed Roth and at least one other Twitter employee on Oct. 13.

Roth replied two minutes later, “Received and downloaded – thanks!”

Chan insisted in a deposition last month, as part of a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, that no one mentioned Hunter Biden’s laptop to him before The Post broke the story and that he had not discussed it with anyone at Twitter.

The laptop documents described Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s business relationships in Ukraine and China, but Twitter cited a “hacked materials” policy to ban distribution of the reporting, despite no evidence that the documents were hacked, and locked The Post out of its primary account.

The computer came from a Delaware repairman who provided evidence that Hunter Biden dropped off the device and then failed to retrieve it, thereby legally abandoning it. The repairman provided the laptop to the FBI nearly more than 10 months before The Post’s reports, allowing the bureau time to verify its contents, but made a copy of the hard drive that he later distributed. 

Jordan’s letter also seeks “a full and complete accounting of all money transferred by the FBI to Twitter and any other social media company since January 1, 2016, for purported law-enforcement purposes, including the dates, amounts, and specific reasons for each transfer.”

Shellenberger’s reporting also showed that the FBI reimbursed Twitter to the tune of nearly $3.5 million for time spent processing law enforcement requests around the 2020 election.

In an email dated Feb. 10, 2021, an unidentified Twitter employee told then-deputy general counsel Jim Baker — a former top FBI lawyer — and then-general counsel Sean Edgett that “we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”

The email explained that Twitter’s Safety, Content & Law Enforcement (SCALE) division had instituted a “reimbursement program” in exchange for devoting staff hours to “processing requests from the FBI.”

Jordan’s inquiry reflects an opening shot in what many Republicans hope will be a broad unmasking of unconstitutional government pressure on Big Tech to censor domestic speech.

“Twitter’s internal documents reflect a ‘cozy relationship’ between the FBI and Twitter — numerous former FBI employees have taken jobs at Twitter — which one journalist described as a ‘unique one-big-happy-family vibe,'” Jordan writes.

“This closeness created, in the words of journalist Matt Taibbi, a ‘master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter.’ For example, Twitter employees ‘maintain[ed] regular check-ins’ with the FBI as they decided how to censor certain content. These communications occurred before the 2020 and 2022 elections, and at least one prominent FBI official expects that these censorship operations will continue in advance of the 2024 elections.”

Taibbi, a former Rolling Stone reporter, also found that a “surprisingly high number” of the FBI’s missives were requests “for Twitter to take action on election misinformation,” including obvious jokes.

Jordan’s letter asks Wray to produce records of communications between the FBI and 23 named Twitter employees believed to be involved in censorship decisions, including Baker, Roth and another ex-executive, Vijaya Gadde, who also was involved in Twitter’s decision to censor The Post’s reporting.

Taibbi also found that a “surprisingly high number” of the FBI’s missives were requests “for Twitter to take action on election misinformation,” including obvious jokes.

Musk fired Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel, this month for allegedly slow-walking his efforts to release records on past censorship decisions.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, co-signed Jordan’s request for documents, which sets a Jan. 11 deadline.

The letter informs Wray, “You should construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to prevent the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that are or may be responsive to this congressional inquiry.”

Some House Republicans are clamoring for the establishment of a House select committee to investigate the alleged politicization of the FBI and other federal agencies — citing 2020 election efforts to fight “misinformation” as well as misconduct inthe FBI’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, which ultimately turned up no evidence of a conspiracy.

The Twitter censorship is part of a broader controversial effort by federal authorities to police domestic speech.

Then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last year that the Biden administration was “flagging” alleged COVID-19 misinformation to Facebook for removal. The Intercept reported Oct. 31 that content flagged by the Department of Homeland Security through a special portal included “parody accounts or accounts with virtually no followers or influence.”

The American Civil Liberties Union said following the Facebook-portal revelation, “The First Amendment bars the government from deciding for us what is true or false, online or anywhere.”