Friday, the “Twitter Files” release topic was the FBI’s intimate relationship with Twitter (Matt Taibbi Drops ‘Twitter Files, Part Six,’ Details How Platform Was Like FBI’s ‘Subsidiary’) and the FBI’s role in having information on Twitter suppressed (New Twitter Files Drop Delves Deeper Into FBI Involvement in Content Moderation). The files revealed a stunning number of former FBI officials worked at Twitter in content moderation, so many that they had their own Slack channel and had a glossary translating FBI terms to Twitter-talk (How Many Former FBI Officials Are Working at Twitter? It’s Astonishing). The FBI had even established an 80-agent cell to monitor Twitter traffic and have troublesome accounts and information vaporized by Twitter (Are the Social Media Giants Corporations Just an Arm of the Federal Government?).
Today, the FBI responded to the tsunami of bad news. I should say “responded again” as they trotted out one “nothing going on here” statement last week; see FBI Response to Latest Twitter Files Release Just Doesn’t Cut It.
🚨BREAKING: The FBI responds to @elonmusk releasing the Twitter files:
“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.” pic.twitter.com/U18JYkNptV
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 21, 2022
The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries. As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public.
It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.
While I can understand why the FBI wants to adopt the “nothing to see here” defense to try to make the pain stop, the emails show something entirely different.
They show that far from the FBI using Twitter to stomp out foreign disinformation, the FBI actively meddled in US domestic politics by having Twitter ban accounts for sending political jokes that offended the feds. It appears that the FBI used its backdoor to Twitter to open investigations on American citizens for their political speech when they did not have cause to get a search warrant.
It’s apparent that FBI was going after protected First Amendment free speech & not criminal or hostile intelligence activity. FBI uses the word ‘misinformation’ – signifying no malicious or criminal intent – instead of ‘disinformation,’ which is an intelligence tradecraft term.
— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) December 17, 2022
Tarting up their denial by throwing in the leftist slur “conspiracy theorists” does nothing to change the fact that their denial is hogwash. The emails do not show the FBI providing information about foreign interference because the emails show there was no foreign interference attempted on Twitter in 2020.
15. Indeed, Twitter executives *repeatedly* reported very little Russian activity.
E.g., on Sept 24, 2020, Twitter told FBI it had removed 345 “largely inactive” accounts “linked to previous coordinated Russian hacking attempts.” They “had little reach & low follower accounts.” pic.twitter.com/hy7hPahChS
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
17. After FBI asks about a WaPo story on alleged foreign influence in a pro-Trump tweet, Twitter’s Roth says, “The article makes a lot of insinuations… but we saw no evidence that that was the case here (and in fact, a lot of strong evidence pointing in the other direction).” pic.twitter.com/jJjnczZnA5
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
Read the whole thread for more context.
The emails show the FBI was actively discrediting the information retrieved from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and labeling it as a Russian information operation. Their devotion to monitoring Twitter resulted in FBI field offices being told that child porn cases with international connections were a “local problem.”
Far from the FBI being a guardian of freedom, the Twitter Files demonstrate rather conclusively that the FBI was intent upon building a Stasi-like surveillance and censorship operation that could quickly stop narratives unfavorable to the Biden candidacy and presidency from circulating. People need to go to jail for this. The FBI needs to be burned to the ground, in only the most figurative kind of way, and serious consideration should be given to not rebuilding it.
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