Biden Team Asked Twitter to Delete Graphic Hunter Images From Laptop Story Days Before the Election
Part 2 of “The Twitter Files” comes out tomorrow.
Matt Taibbi’s #8 tweet in his massive thread (seriously, just post it on your Substack) is probably the most interesting.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
However, there is a catch.
Taibbi should have put this tweet before #8, even though we all know the majority of people at Twitter lean to the left.
10.Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
This leaves me with a few questions.
1. Did everyone on the right know they had access to these channels?
2. Did the right other than the Trump White House ever try to take advantage of the channels?
3. Did Twitter ever turn down anyone else on the right’s request (besides the Trump White House) to scrub anything from the platform?
4. Is there any documentation of anyone on the right other than Trump asking Twitter to erase anything or Twitter denying their request?
The rest of the thread shows confusion among the team over how to handle the New York Post story about Hunter’s laptop.
None of the documents show people purposely wanting to censor the story to give Biden the edge against Trump. Then again, the New York Post made it known that the computer repair guy had the computer in his possession because Hunter had dropped it off and never picked it up. There was no hacking.
In the story they are discussing here, the New York Post printed exactly how we obtained the materials as well as what materials we had in our possession.
We published a subpoena from the FBI for the entire laptop hard-drive. https://t.co/hqDbr9ROhi
— Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC) December 3, 2022
They marked a story not from hacked materials as hacked material.
In the end, though, they cared more about their image than allowing people to spread the news or instead of manning up and admitting what they did.
20.This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams: pic.twitter.com/0IFnVPCOgY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I've seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err. pic.twitter.com/2wJMFAUBoe
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: pic.twitter.com/tg4D0gLWI6
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Oh, it was an ERROR that we made, and it threw an entire major national election in the direction of EVERY OTHER ERROR that we’ve ever made. Amnesty, please.
They not only turned something good into something bad, but they used it in an unethical and immoral way. The lack of principles is where the danger lies from these authoritarians.
Musk is trying to pull it back, just as Trump has. Will enough people finally wake up to see the corruption at the core of Democrats’ rule?
My take on America these days is like the X Files. Will most Americans finally see the light? I want to believe.
But the X Files was fiction about fiction. So yeah, we’re screwed.
That is illegal. The problem is getting a corrupt DOJ to do something.
How is it illegal?
IANAL, but I don’t think the government is allowed to use another entity to suppress free speech.
Exactly. The govt can’t coordinate with a non govt entity to violate civil rights. IOW just as the govt is bared from Direct censorship the govt is also bared from Indirect censorship by getting a non govt entity to do their bidding. It doesn’t matter if that act was coerced or voluntarily agreed to.
I could be totally off base here , but unless they have actual government employees making the requests not sure where you could implicate the government here. The DNC or those with ties to the DNC or other people associated with Biden are not government employees or acting as an agent for the government. You would need to find someone attached to a Democrat in Congress or the administrative state to make a case that government was involved.
As odd as it sounds it could be the people working in the Trump administration would be the government employees that could be at risk.
Buck,
True as far as the HB laptop impact on 2020 election.
Are we to believe that after Inauguration the Biden WH and those Biden loyalists throughout the vast federal bureaucracy didn’t continue to keep the HB laptop and other potential embarrassments suppressed?
Data or opinions about Covid vax efficacy? Data or opinions about side effects from the Rona vax? Data or opinion about Jan 6? Data or opinion about 2020 election shenanigans? Data or opinion about border security?
Those are few examples that will be found. In fact some of these have been admitted to in depositions and in public statements by members of the Biden team and agencies.
“but unless they have actual government employees making the requests not sure where you could implicate the government here.”
“Fix your companies. Or Congress will,” Markey tweeted to Musk on Sunday.”
Clear now?
That is not correct. The reason it’s not correct is that there is no civil right to post on Twitter. Twitter is the one with the right to host such accounts and posts as it chooses, so if the government were to compel it to take some down it would be violating Twitter’s rights, not those of the account holder or poster.
Milhouse,
Wherever an individual’s right to free expression is curtailed directly by the govt or via coercing/colluding with a non govt entity that is violation of the individual’s rights. Opinions vary but that seems pretty clear to me. There is plenty of case law to back that.
1. These people were not the government.
2. Even if they had been, there was no violation of civil liberties involved, because there is no right to an account at Twitter. It is completely legal for government employees to ask Twitter to take down a post or to close someone’s account. Since they lack any power to order it, and Twitter is making the decisions, it’s all legal. Even if Twitter is acting as a government agent when it does so, there’s still no law against it. If the government were to compel Twitter to do so, it would indeed be violating civil liberties — not those of the victim, but those of Twitter!
Unreported in-kind political donations to do public relations work. Twitter, google, facebook, cnn, msnbc, effectively donated trillions to the Democrats without reporting it.
“For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House”
Who? Not everyone in the Trump White House was actually supporting Trump.
Lot’s of turncoats and Rino’s.
That’s a good question, too!
By “delete graphic images,” the meant “bury the whole story.”
Well, duh!
Yeah, I’m kinda wondering why the headline is about “graphic images of Hunter” when there’s nothing about that anywhere in the story.
Click bait.
Ha ha ha. You clicked!
Well, I click on damn near everything here anyway.
https://youtube.com/shorts/QiyRqGelufo?
feature=share
Dave Chappell explains why President Trump is loved…
I would want to know what the alleged requests from the trump team actually were. I’m willing to bet they were nothing like the scale and content of the democrat ones. I’d also want to know who specifically made them.
I just saw something about James Woods activating the 1st Lawyer brigade. He’s going after the DNC, and it wouldn’t surprise me that a lot of these former little Twitlers are going to be seeing a lot of courtrooms in the next few years.
““I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee, no matter what. Whether I win or lose, I am going to stand up for the rights of every American, not a so-called celebrity, I’m not a celebrity anymore. I’m hardly recognizable anymore because my career has been destroyed by these very people. And I will sue and I’m hoping other people will sue. And if it turns out there are a lot of us on this list where the DNC targeted us, and I will quote the immortal words of Joseph Wells when he attacked Joe McCarthy for the enemy’s list he had, at long last sir, have you no shame? President Biden, all of your Stasi little operatives in the DNC who have targeted American citizens, have you, Mr. President, have all of you, at last, no shame?”
-James Woods, 12/02/2022
https://youtu.be/9RsedoC_PN4
“None of the documents show people purposely wanting to censor the story to give Biden the edge against Trump.”
Well, they all have the same political outlook, and it didn’t even need to be said. They all wanted Biden to win. This would have significantly damaged his chances.
Right. Because these people would be stupid enough to put that on paper.
The same thing was done at Google and Facebook.
Facebook had much more direct involvement in the entire election process at multiple levels that twitter at this point
Don’t give them the “both sides had access” fig leaf. It’s like the census miscounts. “Oh, the errors went both ways.” Yeah, when it’s many to one, your way vs. the way you don’t like, it looks like cover. (Because it is.)
Always remember, and never forget: it’s always an arms race between shenanigans and shenanigans reporting,