December 11, 2022
Friday heralded the release of yet another installment of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files,” with substack journalist Matt Taibi dropping a shocking thread of information related to the 2021 de-platforming of President Donald Trump.
“…The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th…,” Taibbi tweeted.
He continued, “…We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies.”
This third installment of information capped off two weeks of jaw-dropping evidence of widespread politically-motivated censorship at Twitter. The second drop, which Musk directed readers to on Thursday, revealed shadowy Twitter “Blacklists” that provided powerful evidence of the social media giant’s shadowbanning and suppression policies.
Friday’s drop was tagged as the “first installment” of “The Removal of Donald Trump,” covering the time between October 2020 to January 6, 2021.
Taibbi explained that “As soon as they finished banning Trump, Twitter execs started processing new power. They prepared to ban future presidents and White Houses – perhaps even Joe Biden. The ‘new administration,’ says one exec, ‘will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.’”
Taibbi also reported that there was a great deal of internal debate surrounding the ultimate decision to remove President Trump from the platform in Jan. 2021, but his report adds some chilling details: “As the election approached [2020], senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of ‘vios’ as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”
Former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, was even caught making light of “intensified relationships with federal agencies” during internal Slack chats at the company. “Very Boring Business Meeting That Is Definitely Not About Trump ;)” one of Roth’s messages read.
Another one of his Slack messages facetiously read, “’DEFINITELY NOT meeting with the FBI I SWEAR[.]’”
Taibbi highlighted an example of the FBI sending reports about supposedly problematic tweets in more internal messages. “We just got a report from the FBI concerning 2 tweets,” the message reads.
Even more disturbing, there was a Slack message from Roth purporting to “miss the FBI and DHS meetings today…”
The FBI report specifically targeted a tweet from John Basham, a well-known meteorologist and data scientist, which included information on problems related to voting by mail.
The evidence seems clear: the federal agencies appear to have been working with Twitter to decide who to suppress, de-platform, and suspend.
Notably, Taibbi also concluded: “Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here.”
Tom Fitton, the President of Judicial Watch, stated on Friday, “@ElonMusk @Twitter Files show Twitter activist employees, without basis, suppressed and censored the President of the United States, @realDonaldTrump in the days before the 2020 election. This is damning evidence of election interference.”
Musk replied simply, “Unequivocally true. The evidence is clear and voluminous.”
President Trump also responded to the third Twitter drop with a short but meaningful statement on Truth Social on Friday:
“The biggest thing to come out of the Twitter Targeting Hoax is that the Presidential Election was RIGGED – And that’s as big as it can get!!!”
SOURCE: Right Side Broadcasting