On Wednesday, the FBI responded to the “Twitter Files” releases, appearing to show that the organization worked closely with the social media giants. The bureau claimed that “conspiracy theorists” are trying to discredit them.
“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,” the FBI statement said in response to the files. “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.”
The FBI statement did not elaborate on whom it considers “conspiracy theorists.”
Twitter CEO Elon Musk has been working to release files to several independent journalists since early December, including Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Bari Weiss, as well as The Intercept’s Lee Fang.
This week, Shellenberger posted files related to the Hunter Biden laptop story, showcasing messages between the FBI and Twitter in which the intelligence agency attempted to discredit the report and keep it from being spread via the social media platform in October 2020, weeks before the General Election of that year.
“What I quickly put together is a pattern where it appears that FBI agents, along with former FBI agents within the company, were engaged in a disinformation campaign aimed at top Twitter and Facebook executives, as well as at top news organization executives to basically prepare them, prime them, get them set up to dismiss Hunter Biden information when it would be released,” Shellenberger wrote.
Other emails showed FBI officials flagging specific accounts for Twitter to take action against. On Nov. 3, FBI field office official Elvis Chan flagged 25 accounts, which included news outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network, which created posts that “may warrant additional action due to the accounts being utilized to spread misinformation about the upcoming election.”
Another email showed that four accounts “may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy,” according to a post from Taibbi earlier this month.
Yet another revealed that Twitter was evaluating and processing a list of tweets that had been flagged by the FBI for “Possible Violative Content.” Among them was a post criticizing then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s comment about vaccine mandates.
Other installments showed that communication between the FBI and Twitter was “constant and pervasive” and that the two organizations set up communications channels between federal agents and the social media company’s employees.
With the latest revelations, House Republicans hope to compel testimony and documents from FBI officials when the GOP takes the majority in 2023.
“We’re going to do more than just subpoena them. We’re going to change the course of where the FBI is today,” House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said in a recent Fox News interview.
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