Twitter Files: Deep State Used Media to Manipulate Twitter

The deep state used the media as a tool to pressure social media companies into censorship, according to a new batch of the Twitter files released by Matt Taibbi on Tuesday.

“By 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts,” wrote Taibbi.

“In February, 2020, as COVID broke out, the Global Engagement Center – a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department – went to the media with a report called, ‘Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns.'”

In one email, then director of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth attempted to persuade outside researchers — who reportedly had a relationship with the U.S. government — to talk to Twitter before going to the press.

“We’re happy to work directly with you on this, instead of NBC,” said Roth.

Twitter apparently convinced the Global Engagement Center not to go to the media with its findings before contacting the platform, but were not convinced they would do so in a timely enough manner.

“The delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,” wrote a Twitter communications official.

Twitter’s disputes with the GEC eventually spilled over into the media, with the company publicly denying the GEC’s allegations about Chinese influence operations on the platform.

The conundrum mirrored Twitter’s experience with the House and Senate Intelligence committees in earlier years, in which Democrat staffers would work with the media to amplify exaggerated claims of “Russian disinformation” on Twitter.

In both cases, Twitter caved, and by September 2020 was taking and escalating censorship requests “from every conceivable government body” in the U.S.

Emails also showed a preference for working with the FBI and DHS, which were perceived as “(generally) apolitical” according to one communication from Roth.

One former DOD official who spoke to Taibbi had a different view: “I think they thought the FBI was less Trumpy.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.