After a series of reports called the ‘Twitter Files’ detailed Twitter’s operations behind closed doors with the FBI and federal agencies to dictate public discourse, the FBI on Wednesday tried to enact damage control by portraying the revelations as normal procedure.
“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 stated to Fox News. “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 FBI has responded to Elon Musk putting out the Twitter files, saying, “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”
🚨BREAKING: The FBI responds to @elonmusk releasing the Twitter files:
"It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency." pic.twitter.com/U18JYkNptV
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 21, 2022
This statement by the FBI came after the release of Part 6 and Part 7 of the “Twitter Files,” which were covered by American journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, respectively. Other people who covered the files include journalists Barie Weiss and Lee Fang.
Some view the FBI’s allegation that only a “conspiracy theorist” would buy into reports of collusion between its agents and private sector employees to be a bit rich given the myriad of evidence from the Twitter Files.
One Sept. 15, 2020 email reported on by Taibbi featured an email between a Twitter legal executive to then-Twitter lawyer Jim Baker discussing Twitter employees’ “weekly” meetings with the FBI, U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and others on dealing with “election threats.”
Another revelation from the files reported on by journalist Michael Shellenberger showed that the FBI pushed Twitter to censor The New York Post’s October 2020 story about Hunter Biden’s laptop by arguing it is likely from Russia. The FBI had reportedly seized possession of the laptop months earlier from a repair shop in Delaware.
