Alana Mastrangelo (Breitbart)
Elon Musk’s Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Friday night, which revealed that executives at the social media company had established the “framework” for banning Donald Trump’s account before the events of January 6, and used the Capitol riots as their excuse to finally blacklist the President. The goal of the left-wing executives is clear in statements such as, “the narrative that Trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”
The documents posted to Twitter by journalist Matt Taibbi is the third release of what are known as “Twitter Files” and the first release of documents pertaining to President Trump’s account ban in January 2021.
1. THREAD: The Twitter Files
THE REMOVAL OF DONALD TRUMP
Part One: October 2020-January 6th— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
In a lengthy Twitter thread, Taibbi explained that the internal communications at Twitter between January 6 and January 8 2021 suggest that even the employees of the social media company understood the move to censor a sitting U.S. president would have a historical impact.
“Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?” one Twitter user asked in internal communications.
After banning Trump, Twitter executives appeared to relish their newfound power, and even flirted with banning future the official @POTUS and @WhiteHouse accounts, but ultimately decided the accounts “will be transitioned over to the new administration in due course and will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”
5. Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import. Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech. pic.twitter.com/tQ01n58XFc
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
With regards to their reasons for banning Trump’s account, one Twitter executive said in an internal chat: “the narrative that Trump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly the last 4+ years must be taken into account.”
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In his Twitter thread, Taibbi pointed out that the “intellectual framework” for banning Trump’s account was already laid out before January 6, which suggests that the Capitol Riots were simply their excuse for finally doing what they had always wanted to do.
“The bulk of the internal debate leading to Trump’s ban took place in those three January days. However, the intellectual framework was laid in the months preceding the Capitol riots,” he said.
7. Twitter executives removed Trump in part over what one executive called the “context surrounding”: actions by Trump and supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.” In the end, they looked at a broad picture. But that approach can cut both ways. pic.twitter.com/Trgvq5jmhS
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
In addition to these revelations, Taibbi also published several damning internal documents pertaining to Twitter executives communicating with federal agencies during the 2020 presidential election.
Internal conversations via the messaging program Slack revealed Twitter executives “getting a kick out of intensified relationships with federal agencies,” Taibbi said.
“I’m a big believer in calendar transparency. But I reached a certain point where my meetings became… very interesting… to people and there weren’t meeting names generic enough to cover,” former Twitter “Trust and Safety” head Yoel Roth said in an internal chat.
“Very Boring Business Meeting That Is Definitely Not About Trump :)” Roth continued, before adding, “DEFINITELY NOT meeting with the FBI I SWEAR.”
10. As the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
Other internal documents suggest that the FBI, DHS, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) met with Roth about the New York Post‘s bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story, which Twitter — and Facebook — infamously censored during the 2020 presidential election.
“We blocked the NYP story, then we unblocked it… and now we’re in a messy situation where our policy is in shambles, comms is angry, reporters think we’re idiots,” Roth complained in an internal chat. “In short, FML [Fuck My Life].”
20. This post about the Hunter Biden laptop situation shows that Roth not only met weekly with the FBI and DHS, but with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI): pic.twitter.com/s5IiUjQqIY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
We just got a report from the FBI concerning 2 tweets,” another internal Twitter chat reads.
23. Some of Roth’s later Slacks indicate his weekly confabs with federal law enforcement involved separate meetings. Here, he ghosts the FBI and DHS, respectively, to go first to an “Aspen Institute thing,” then take a call with Apple. pic.twitter.com/i771hD8aCD
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 9, 2022
Taibbi added that more details regarding “the chaos inside Twitter on January 7th” and “the secret internal communications from the key date of January 8th” will be revealed over the weekend.
This is a developing news story CVisit out friends at Breitbart News for more updates.
