2020 the Year of the Shadow Coup
Much of the insidious unconstitutional activity revealed in the Twitter Files had to do with blocking Trump and manipulating the 2020 presidential election. The “shadow banning” and outright censorship of MAGA Republicans stands out in the Twitter leaks supplied by Elon Musk.
FBI Office Investigating Hunter Biden Sent Twitter Numerous Censorship Requests Right Before 2020 Election
When the bureau’s own former general counsel calls the FBI’s conduct ‘odd,’ it’s clear who’s discrediting the agency: It isn’t conspiracy theorists — it’s the FBI.
Emails released on Saturday as part of the latest dump of the “Twitter Files” reveal that the week before the 2020 presidential election, the FBI field office investigating Hunter Biden sent multiple censorship requests to Twitter — so many in fact, a top attorney for the tech giant found it “odd.” This blockbuster detail from the weekend came mere days after the FBI issued a statement framing coverage of the “Twitter Files” as “misinformation” being peddled by “conspiracy theorists.”
The FBI has “some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations,” then-Twitter legal executive Stacia Cardille stressed in a Nov. 3, 2020, email to Jim Baker, the then-deputy general counsel for Twitter. “This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” Cardille continued, before telling Baker to let her know if he had any other questions.”
Less than an hour later, Baker responded to Cardille, noting it was “odd” that the FBI is “searching for violations of our policies.”
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi published these emails as part of a 50-something Christmas Eve “Twitter Files” thread that he remarked showed “the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
The entire thread is newsworthy, but that FBI agents in both the Baltimore field office and at FBI headquarters were running keyword searches for supposed Twitter violations proves hugely significant because both offices were involved in the Hunter Biden investigation.
While the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office is — and was at the time of the 2020 election — handling the investigation into Hunter Biden, reportedly for potential money laundering and tax crimes, there is no separate Delaware FBI field office. Rather, the Baltimore FBI field office covers all of Delaware for the bureau and thus supported (and continues to support) the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office in its investigation of Hunter Biden.
We also know from multiple FBI whistleblowers that FBI headquarters entangled itself in the Hunter Biden probe: In July 2022, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, announced that “multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions,” had claimed that “in August of 2020, FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten opened an assessment, which was used by a team of agents at FBI headquarters to improperly discredit and falsely claim that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down.”
“The FBI headquarters team allegedly placed their assessment findings in a restricted access subfolder, effectively flagging sources and derogatory evidence related to Hunter Biden as disinformation while shielding the justification for such findings from scrutiny,” according to Grassley.
Given the involvement of both Baltimore FBI and FBI headquarters in the investigation of Hunter Biden — and the latter’s attempt to shut down the probe — the revelation that “some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ” were “doing keyword searches for violations,” suggests the FBI undertook a full-court press to interfere in the 2020 election.
Previously released “Twitter Files” and statements from Twitter and Facebook established the FBI lied to the tech giants, representing the Hunter Biden laptop story as Russian disinformation and prompting the censorship of the Biden-family scandal mere weeks before the 2020 election. Internal Twitter communications also revealed that the night before the New York Post published emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that implicated Joe Biden in a pay-to-play scandal, “the FBI used a private communications channel to send 10 documents to a top Twitter executive.”
The “Twitter Files” also exposed “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary of the FBI,” as Taibbi explained in an earlier thread. The “Twitter Files” Taibbi previously reported showed that from “January 2020 to November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth.” Those communications indicated “agencies like the FBI and DHS regularly sending social media content to Twitter through multiple entry points, pre-flagged for moderation.”
These earlier threads, however, all focused on either communications coming from the San Francisco FBI field office or discussed the monthly and then weekly meetings between Twitter and the federal government’s Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF. As Taibbi noted, the FBI greatly expanded the number of agents assigned to the FITF following the 2016 election, with the task force swelling to 80 agents.”
With FBI San Francisco and the FITF already liaisoning with Twitter, why then would the Baltimore field office and FBI headquarters have any involvement in communicating with Twitter? And as Saturday’s emails reveal, those officers were not merely passing on information they received, they were, according to a Twitter legal executive, running “keyword” searches — something even Baker, who was previously general counsel for the FBI, found “odd.”
And the Baltimore field office and FBI headquarters conducted these “keyword” searches and shared the results with Twitter for one reason only: to prompt Twitter to censor the speech the week before the 2020 presidential election.
“Odd” doesn’t even begin to capture the situation — which, given the connection between those two FBI offices and the Hunter Biden investigation, suggests a new wing to the Big Tech scandal: one in which FBI agents proactively sought out people and speech to censor for the benefit their politician of choice.
Ironically, the Wednesday before Taibbi broke this latest news, the FBI issued a statement claiming that “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. … It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
When the bureau’s own former general counsel calls the FBI’s conduct “odd,” it’s pretty clear who is discrediting the agency: It isn’t conspiracy theorists — it’s the FBI.
Margot Cleveland is The Federalist's senior legal correspondent.
FBI Office Probing Hunter Requested Pre-Election Censorship
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GOP Calls for ‘Church-Style’ Investigation Into Big Tech Following Latest Twitter Disclosures
New evidence of government players attempting to suppress the speech of ordinary Americans on Twitter raises constitutional and First Amendment concern As the 2020 election neared, the FBI-FITF assailed Twitter with hundreds of requests to censor Twitter accounts and tweets. There were so many requests that Twitter execs had to come up with a system to prioritize them.
Why You Need To Start Paying Attention To The 'Twitter Files
This is an article to show your haughty, “know-it-all” brother-in-law who thinks our government is somehow squeaky clean...
The “Twitter Files” have now officially had more sequels than Planet of the Apes and can be difficult to absorb. Thus, I don’t think they’re getting the attention they deserve.
For those of you not following the “Twitter Files” drops, let me catch you up on what I believe are some of the most important parts:
The FBI paid Twitter $3.5 million to censor conservatives.
The FBI pressured Twitter to give them information that would legally require warrants, though they did not have warrants.
Leading up to the 2020 election, the FBI would eventually hold weekly meetings with Twitter and tell them whose tweets to squelch and which accounts they wanted to be suspended. Almost all were those of conservatives.
The FBI knew the Hunter Biden laptop story was real, they knew it was coming out — weeks before the 2020 election — and they told Big Tech to expect a “Russian disinformation” drop and squelch the story. That means the FBI corrupted the election to help Joe “totally showered with his daughter, Ashley” Biden.
There are so many former FBI employees at Twitter that they have their own Slack channel.
FACT-O-RAMA! Hunter’s laptop proves beyond a doubt that the Biden family took in tens of millions of dollars from Chinese companies linked to the commies for no discernible work. The FBI pressured Big Tech firms to downplay the story, even making it unsharable, even thought the FBI knew the laptop was real. The commie bum-lickees at Twitter were happy to play along, even going so far as to suspend the account of the the NY Post for releasing the Hunter laptop story.
In response to the “Twitter Files” detailing how the FBI-Twitter circle jerk was real, the bureau called the allegations “conspiracy theories” but never actually denied its relationship with Twitter.
Elon Musk provided the world with an early Christmas present on Saturday with Twitter Files Pt. IX. I’ll sum it up so you can avoid the Twitter mess and get to the relevant facts:
In response to the “Twitter Files” detailing how the FBI-Twitter circle jerk was real, the bureau called the allegations “conspiracy theories” but never actually denied its relationship with Twitter.
Elon Musk provided the world with an early Christmas present on Saturday with Twitter Files Pt. IX. I’ll sum it up so you can avoid the Twitter mess and get to the relevant facts:
The FBI was a portal, specifically the San Francisco office, for other government agencies to get to Twitter to surveil and censor Americans.
Hiding under the title of Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), actors from local police departments to the Department of Defense (DOD) and the CIA were watching and censoring Americans — not foreigners.
Twitter wasn’t the only Big Tech firm hip-deep in spooks. The feds had their fingers in Verizon, Reddit, Facebook, Microsoft, and, for some reason, Pinterest.
FBI employees were tasked with doing word searches on Twitter, looking for violations of Twitter policies — instead of chasing actual criminals.
The FBI had roughly 80 agents working with Big Tech companies. It is unclear how many members of the DOD, CIA, etc. were involved
CENSOR-O-RAMA! Articles written by our own Matt Margolis are marked on Twitter as “unsafe.” Matt is doing something right. Be more like Matt!
What Have We Learned?
We have learned the FBI is not the only government agency censoring and surveilling Americans. Twitter was a veritable “pig pile” when it comes to spying on We the People. The DOD, CIA, and even local police had their fingers in the pie. And Twitter was only one of the pies. Other Big Tech firms, including Facebook and Verizon (pssst that’s a cell phone carrier), were in on the game. Big Brother is watching. We are being spied on, and frequently silenced. Well, at least those of us who speak out against the Stalin-like censoring and surveilling of Americans.
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-you-need-start-paying-attention-twitter-files
Elon Musk Says "Almost Every Conspiracy Theory That People Had About Twitter Turned Out To Be True"
Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, claimed on Dec. 24 that nearly every conspiracy theory about the social media platform has turned out to be true.
Musk made the comments during an interview on the “All-In” podcast, where he also discussed the so-called “Twitter files” that were initially released earlier this month via independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.
“To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true,” Musk said.
“Is there a conspiracy theory about Twitter that didn’t turn out to be true? So far, they’ve all turned out to be true. If not more true than people thought.”
While speaking of the Twitter files, the Tesla CEO was asked if there is “a part of the files that really shocked you,” to which he responded that the “FBI stuff is pretty intense.”
The Twitter files contain multiple documents, including internal conversations among employees at the social media platform, detailing the company’s attempts to censor tweets from conservative commentators and suppress a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 election.
Twitter ‘Worked With Pentagon’
Files released earlier this month showed how the FBI worked to discredit the Biden laptop report and prevent it from spreading on the platform in October 2020, just weeks ahead of the general election that year.
Others showed how the FBI pressured Twitter to find evidence of foreign influence and sources of disinformation and to take action against specific accounts.
Files released on Dec. 21 and reported on by journalist Lee Fang detailed how Twitter had “quietly aided the Pentagon’s covert online psyop campaign” aimed at swaying opinion in the Middle East, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
According to those files, Twitter worked with the Pentagon despite claiming that it makes “concerted efforts to detect and thwart government-backed platform manipulation.”
“Despite promises to shut down covert state-run propaganda networks, Twitter docs show that the social media giant directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations,” wrote investigative journalist Fang of The Intercept.
“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological influence ops,” Fang continued, pointing to social media accounts and online personas created by the U.S. military.
FBI Weighs in on Twitter Files
In a statement following the release of the Twitter files, the FBI said: “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,” the statement continued. “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
Further files were published on Dec. 25 by Taibbi detailing how the FBI allegedly acted “as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government—from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
Taibbi explained that Twitter had “so much contact with so many agencies” that executives lost track of the communications. The meetings usually centered on “foreign matters,” according to Tabbi, including topics such as misinformation regarding Ukraine and COVID-19 vaccines.
“Despite its official remit being ‘Foreign Influence,’ the FITF [the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force] and the [San Francisco] FBI office became a conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, even local police,” Taibbi said.
House Republicans have since suggested they will launch an investigation into the FBI’s interactions with Twitter.
When Musk was asked on Saturday if he suspected that the FBI played a role in flagging content for companies to take down, he noted that the content that was being flagged had “nothing to do with like, terrorism,” adding that “they literally flagged satire.”
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Dr Kulldorff ‘Not Surprised’ About Being Censored by Twitter, Says Trust in Science Has Been Undermined
Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a prominent epidemiologist, biostatistician, and former Harvard School of Medicine professor, said he was “not surprised” after seeing concrete evidence that a post he shared on Twitter was flagged and prevented from wider dissemination.
He expressed disapproval and said that the social media giant’s overall censorship actions have stifled free debate on COVID-19 topics and undermined trust in science.
In the latest installment of the Elon Musk-endorsed “Twitter Files” published early on Dec. 26, journalist David Zweig shared how posts from Kulldorff and several others about COVID-19, including about vaccines, were flagged and censored in various ways by Twitter.
It marked the first trove of direct evidence from the “Twitter Files” showing how Twitter censored scientists, potentially at the behest of the U.S. government, ever since journalist Bari Weiss revealed in early December that Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been put on a blacklist due to his views on COVID-19-related lockdowns and school closures.
While Kulldorff said he was not surprised by evidence showing how he and others were censored, he said Twitter should not be the arbiter of which scientists have valid views, and that such censorship shouldn’t happen.
“There should be an open discussion. You can’t expect people to trust public health and trust the scientific community if you don’t have that open communication and open debate,” Kulldorff told The Epoch Times.
In the Twitter post of concern, dated March 26, 2021, Kulldorff said that children and those who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 do not need to be vaccinated, but that vaccines were important for older high-risk people and their caretakers. The post was flagged by a Twitter moderator as having violated the company’s COVID-19 “misinformation policy.”
An internal email shared by Zweig showed that the moderator claimed Kulldorff had shared “false information regarding the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which goes against CDC guidelines.” Twitter subsequently labeled the post as “misleading” and turned off all likes and replies.
Kulldorff reiterated his views on COVID-19 vaccination in children, telling The Epoch Times late Monday: “We know and we’ve known ever since the very beginning of the pandemic, and the data from Wuhan, that children are at minuscule risk … from dying from COVID-19.”
“So the benefit of the vaccine, therefore, is almost nothing, because it doesn’t prevent [transmission]. [And] the risk of death and hospitalization [with children] is very low. The benefit is very, very small. We know that,” he added.
“So then the question is, what are the potential harms? And we know there are potential harms, with myocarditis, for example. I think the benefit is so tiny it’s not worth taking the risks of adverse reactions, which we know there is myocarditis, but we don’t know the full extent of adverse reactions yet.”
Kulldorff also dismissed the view that had been promulgated incessantly by health officials and media outlets that COVID-19 vaccination is “safe and effective” at large.
“I think for many people, they only heard one voice. And when they heard alternative voices, [those voices] were sort of dismissed as cranks. But that’s not how medicine or science works,” he said.
“There are many vaccines and many drugs that are important for some people, but unnecessary for others. So to say that everybody should get a vaccine, that’s not very scientific way of thinking about things,” he said. “Just like saying that nobody should ever be vaccinated is equally unscientific,” he added.
“But Kulldorff’s statement was an expert’s opinion—one which also happened to be in line with vaccine policies in numerous other countries. Yet it was deemed ‘false information’ by Twitter moderators merely because it differed from CDC guidelines,” Zweig wrote. “After Twitter took action, Kulldorff’s tweet was slapped with a ‘Misleading’ label and all replies and likes were shut off, throttling the tweet’s ability to be seen and shared by many people, the ostensible core function of the platform.”
“But we get sort of a polarizing view between the anti-vaxxers and vaccine fanatics,” Kulldorff observed, adding that in his opinion, “the vaccine fanatics have done much more damage to vaccine confidence than anybody else with pushing vaccine mandates based on flawed scientific thinking.”
“I think that [the push for vaccine mandates] has had consequences not only for the COVID-19 vaccine but also for childhood vaccines—important childhood vaccines like polio, for example,” he said. “So vaccine fanatics who have been pushing for mandates—that everybody should get vaccinated—they have done a lot of damage to vaccine confidence in the U.S. and other parts of the world as well.”
Amid emerging evidence that U.S. government officials have exerted influence on social media companies with regard to the sharing of views on COVID-19, Kulldorff expressed that the government “should not at all be involved” in any such influence.
While various examples have now come to light with regard to Twitter’s censorship of scientists, Kulldorff said he hopes to see the full extent of this censorship one day, such as “a summary of how many were censored, how many were blacklisted, for how long, and so on.”
He said it would also be important to know which person or people were behind the decisions to censor and whether there were people who were reporting posts to Twitter to be censored.
“Were other scientists involved in urging Twitter to censor their fellow scientists who had a different opinion?” he pondered. “And if so, to what extent, and who were those scientists?”
“I have never sent in a report to Twitter, asking them to censor a scientist with a different opinion of mine. I don’t think scientists should engage in such activity.”
The Epoch Times - Truth & Tradition. Fact Based. Unbiased. Accurate News
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/dr-martin-kulldorff-not-surprised-a
This is why the Biden family corruption matters: Miranda Devine | Will Cain Podcast
CATASTROPHIC: Twitter COVID FILES: US Govt Censored Content, Suspended Users, Targeted “Anti-Vaxxers”, Promoted Fear
We have no constitution. Like us, the Constitution has been suspended.
All of us who were permanently suspended from Twitter for Covid or election truths were removed by order of the US government. America has been torn asunder. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I’ve posted the whole thread. Read it all.
This proves that Trump was right all along about his allegations. Now that we have all of this fuckery exposed, what will anyone in government do about it? I pray that God will do this work thru a few courageous souls and shame the others into doing something to these criminals.