FBI Pushed Twitter to Discover Evidence of Foreign Influence When There Was None to be Found

  |  
Dec 19, 2022

On December 18, 2022, Matt Taibbi released another installment of the Twitter Files, which exposed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s attempt to pressure Twitter to find evidence of foreign influence on the social media platform. 

The irony here is that, as Joshua Young of The Post Millenial noted, Twitter informed the FBI the evidence of foreign influence was non-existent.  

FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan was the main point of contact in the government’s efforts to get Twitter to censor content. Chan was the FBI agent who asserted in 2020 that the Hunter Biden laptop story covered by the New York Post was a Russian disinformation operation. 

“THREAD: Twitter Files Supplemental. In July of 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan tells Twitter executive Yoel Roth to expect written questions from the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), the inter-agency group that deals with cyber threats,” Taibbi started the thread.

“The questionnaire authors seem displeased with Twitter for implying, in a July 20th ‘DHS/ODNI/FBI/Industry briefing,’ that ‘you indicated you had not observed much recent activity from official propaganda actors on your platform’.”

One would think that would be good news. The agencies seemed to feel otherwise, Taibbi added.”

“Chan underscored this: ‘There was quite a bit of discussion within the USIC to get clarifications from your company,’ he wrote, referring to the United States Intelligence Community.”

“The task force demanded to know how Twitter came to its unpopular conclusion. Oddly, it included a bibliography of public sources – including a Wall Street Journal article – attesting to the prevalence of foreign threats, as if to show Twitter they got it wrong.”

“Roth, receiving the questions, circulated them with other company executives, and complained that he was ‘frankly perplexed by the requests here, which seem more like something we’d get from a congressional committee than the Bureau’.”

“He added he was not ‘comfortable with the Bureau (and by extension the IC) demanding written answers.’ The idea of the FBI acting as conduit for the Intelligence Community is interesting, given that many agencies are barred from domestic operations.”

“He then sent another note internally, saying the premise of the questions was ‘flawed,’ because ‘we’ve been clear that official state propaganda is definitely a thing on Twitter.’ Note the italics for emphasis.”

“Roth suggested they ‘get on the phone with Elvis ASAP and try to straighten this out,’ to disabuse the agencies of any notion that state propaganda is not a ‘thing’ on Twitter.”

“This exchange is odd among other things because some of the ‘bibliography’ materials cited by the FITF are sourced to intelligence officials, who in turn cited the public sources.”

“The FBI responded to Friday’s report by saying it ‘regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities’.”

“That may be true, but we haven’t seen that in the documents to date. Instead, we’ve mostly seen requests for moderation involving low-follower accounts belonging to ordinary Americans – and Billy Baldwin.”

“Watch @BariWeiss and @ShellenbergerMD for more from the Twitter Files.”

Supervisory Special Agent Chan also curiously made donations to the Democratic Party. Bari Weiss, Matt Taibbi, and Michael Shellenberger have posted on Twitter the Twitter files which comprise several reports that detail internal conversations at Twitter over the course of several years dealing with the company’s efforts to censor and suppress content. 

The files uncovered how the previous Twitter leadership, which was made up of CEO founder Jack Dorsey and former Twitter lead counsel Vijaya Gadde, lied about shadow banning conservative content creators for years. In addition, the files revealed concerted efforts to suppress stories concerning Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” and have shown how a Twitter executive, namely former head of Twitter Trust and Safety Yoel Roth crafted a pretext to kick former President Donald Trump off Twitter. 

The Twitter Files should serve as a wake up call for all Americans.

The FBI is another unaccountable government agency that must be taken to task for its malicious behavior. Gone are the days of “impartial” government agencies that are “above” politics. The FBI is one of the various enforcement arms of the US Deep State and it must be cut off if we want to preserve our great Republic. 

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