In the latest installment of the Twitter Files, we learned that the social media platform was essentially a playground for former FBI agents. In fact, the number of Feds that were crawling at the influential Big Tech outlet is downright disturbing
Matt Taibbi, a journalist who has been one of the point-persons to handle Musk’s tranches of Twitter Files releases, recently characterized the platform as virtually a ‘subsidiary’ of the FBI.
“Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth,” Taibbi reported.
In a follow-up report, the New York Post’s Jon Levine revealed that Twitter’s former deputy General Counsel Jim Baker was far from the only former Fed to have run the platform in the pre-Musk era.
“Twitter’s top ranks were riddled with ex-FBI agents and executives, stitching the company even closer to the federal agency now under fire for leaning on Twitter to meddle in the 2020 elections,” Levine wrote. “More than a dozen former feds flocked to the company in the months and years prior to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social network in October.”
“The Post found FBI influence was considerably more significant than just James Baker, the FBI’s former general counsel who later worked in the same role for Twitter,” the Post adds. “He was recently fired by Musk for interfering in the billionaire’s efforts to come clean about past transgressions at the company.”
The revelations are particularly interesting because former FBI agents are not an ideal fit for Big Tech companies by training or mental disposition. While the relationship between the Feds and Big Tech platforms since 2016 was couched in terms of preventing “Russian election interference,” the impact of the Russians’ efforts to persuade Americans to vote for their preferred candidate was minimal.
If anything, Big Tech companies have committed far more “election interference,” particularly by banning and suspending those who claimed there was “election-rigging” or “stolen elections,” than the Russians could have ever dreamed of committing. Indeed, Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg dropped $400 million in the election himself, which predominately benefited Democrat-heavy districts.
The FBI wasn’t the only federal agency with deep ties to Twitter. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned Twitter repeatedly that Russia was attempting to take advantage of social media platforms that were “permissive” of “misinformation.”
The term “misinformation” has been used as a watchword for federal agencies to engage in unconstitutional censorship advocacy against American citizens who do not abide by the U.S. government’s preferred narratives when it comes to U.S. elections, public health policy, or the nation’s participation in foreign wars.
Follow Kyle Becker on Twitter @kylenabecker.
