Legal Penalty For Twitter’s Collusion With FBI Could Be Massive; Here’s What We Know…

The latest Twitter files released by Michael Shellenberger were, though not particularly shocking given what we know about bias at the FBI and the something other than high esteem in which it and America’s other intelligence agencies view the American Constitution and the rights enshrined in it, quite disturbing.

According to Shellenberger, the FBI not only had an inordinately high number of employees embedded within Twitter, such as former FBI general counsel James Baker, but was using both those employees, its weight as the FBI, and monetary payments to Twitter to get it to crack down on content and/or accounts that it didn’t like, even if those accounts or posts hadn’t broken the Twitter rules.

In one post, for example, Shellenberger exposed the FBI as having reached out to Yoel Roth in a panicked message just before the Hunter Biden story dropped. The New York Post’s reporting was accurage, it wasn’t a “hacked material,” and the NYP should have been allowed to post it…but instead Yoel Roth and Twitter went along with what the FBI wanted and censored an American newspaper.

8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate. pic.twitter.com/TC2AnLNJAw

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) December 19, 2022

Oh, and James Baker, the “former” FBI employee working for Twitter, was at the center of the NYP and Hunter Biden story, supposedly being the one that convinced Yoel Roth to do what the FBI wanted and censor the story despite it not being in violation of any Twitter rules.

35. In response to Roth, Baker repeatedly insists that the Hunter Biden materials were either faked, hacked, or both, and a violation of Twitter policy. Baker does so over email, and in a Google doc, on October 14 and 15. pic.twitter.com/MpQTUj6Esl

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) December 19, 2022

That is just one example Shellenberger provided, but it showed what many have known, or at least thought, to be true for a while now: rather than protecting Americans and their Constitutional rights, the FBI is working against those fundamental rights and partnering with supposedly private companies to do so. Then, when the American people start realizing what’s going on, it and the other assets of the regime say that what is happening is okay because Twitter/Facebook/etc “is a private company.”

But here’s the thing: if the government is demanding the censorship, it doesn’t matter if Twitter is a private company. The government cannot achieve an unconstitutional end by washing it through a private entity. So, just as courts are not allowed to enforce race-restrictive clauses for neighborhoods and segregation is verboten,  the FBI can’t be pressuring Twitter to censor protected speech, such as the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story.

That’s because of 18 U.S. Code § 241 and 242. Section 241 makes it a crime for “two or more persons [to] conspire to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” Section 242 prohibits the creation of any law, regulation, or similar legal rule that “willfully subjects any person … to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

Doesn’t that sound a whole lot like what the FBI was up to when it leaned on Twitter to censor conservatives? Indeed it does. And the penalties for violation of those two sections of the US Code are quite severe.

Violation of Section 241 “is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment unless the government proves an aggravating factor (such as that the offense involved kidnapping aggravated sexual abuse, or resulted in death) in which case it may be punished by up to life imprisonment and, if death results, may be eligible for the death penalty.” A violation of Section 242, “ is a misdemeanor, unless prosecutors prove one of the statutory aggravating factors such as a bodily injury, use of a dangerous weapon, kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse, death resulting, or attempt to kill, in which case there are graduated penalties up to and including life in prison or death.”

So the FBI, Yoel Roth, and the rest of those colluding to censor conservatives could be in for a heap of trouble now that Elon and his journalists have shed light on the inner workings of the Twitter crime scene.