AMAC Exclusive – By Aaron Flanigan
Last fall, newly minted owner of Twitter Elon Musk coordinated the release of the “Twitter Files,” a series of reports that outline in detail the staggering extent to which social media executives conspired with government agencies and federal bureaucrats to stifle public debate and censor free speech.
Since AMAC Newsline’s last update of what we’ve learned so far, even more troves of shocking content have been released. Here are three of the biggest revelations from the first few Twitter Files of 2023.
How Twitter “Let the Intelligence Community In” After Trump’s 2016 Victory
The 11th installment of the Twitter Files—posted by journalist Matt Taibbi in early January—examined Twitter’s growing collusion with federal intelligence agencies following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election.
According to internal Twitter documents posted by Taibbi, Trump’s win triggered a “PR crisis” among company executives, ultimately pressuring them to launch a “Russia Task Force” with the help of entrenched bureaucrats within the U.S. intelligence apparatus to investigate supposed Russian influence on the platform—even though Twitter officials conceded “no larger patterns” of interference had been detected.
Taibbi also noted a discrepancy between Twitter’s “external” policy, which held that it was at the platform’s “[sole] discretion” to remove content, and Twitter’s “internal” guidance that “any user identified by the U.S. intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber operations against targets associated with U.S. or other elections… shall not be allowed to advertise on Twitter.”
This batch of the Twitter Files demonstrates that, even though platform executives knew that so-called “Russian interference” was far from a major concern on their platform, they teamed up with Deep State bureaucrats and the mainstream media to push the false narrative of “Russian collusion.”
“The big take-away is there was NEVER any evidence of #RussiaCollusion or even widespread Russian involvement in the 2016 election. The whole narrative was cooked up by Democrats and the Deep State to deny that Trump won legitimately,” wrote Dinesh D’Souza in response to Taibbi’s reports. “It was an exercise in election denialism!”
Twitter & the “Great Covid-19 Lie Machine” Working to Censor “True Stories”
Several releases of the Twitter Files this year have shed light on the platform’s handling of information pertaining to COIVD—and how platform executives coddled Big Pharma in their attempts to promote vaccines.
A January 16 iteration of the Twitter Files revealed how the “pharmaceutical industry lobbied social media to shape content around vaccine policy.” This initiative, wrote journalist Lee Fang, included “direct pressure from Pfizer partner BioNTech to censor activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries.”
Though it now remains unclear whether or not—or to what degree—Twitter met BioNTech’s demands, it is easy to imagine Twitter complying, especially given Part 10 of the Files from December, which exposed Twitter’s “rigging” of the COVID debate by means of censoring scientists who challenged the dominant left-wing COVID narrative.
Additionally, the 19th batch of the Files, posted by Matt Taibbi on March 17, examined how the “Virality Project,” a so-called “anti-vaccine misinformation” campaign led by Stanford University, pushed Twitter to censor content that deviated from the prevailing COVID orthodoxy. The Virality Project particularly took issue with what it deemed as “true stories that could fuel hesitancy”—including the notorious leaked emails from Anthony Fauci about the origins of the virus.
“The release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s spring 2020 emails via the Freedom of Information Act has been used to exacerbate distrust in Dr. Fauci,” the Project wrote in June 2021—indicating that, in the words of Matt Taibbi, the group “knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself.”
Furthermore, the Virality Project cautioned against the practice of “just asking questions,” which it decried as a method “commonly used by spreaders of misinformation.”
In a similar vein, the 13th installment of the Twitter Files unveiled that former FDA commissioner and Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb wielded his influence on Twitter to crack down on vaccine skepticism, though the degree of his success at this point also remains uncertain.
Over time, however, official Twitter language came to mirror that of Stanford’s Virality Project and other anti-“misinformation” organizations, indicating that some of the group’s requests may have been granted by platform leaders—a chilling possibility for all who cherish the right to free speech and are seeking accurate medical information.
Democrats Lobbied Twitter to Promote Russiagate Hoax, Target Conservative Accounts
In the 14th installment of the Twitter Files, it was revealed that top Democratic Party officials—including Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA), Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)—complained to Twitter about so-called Russian bot accounts perpetuating “misinformation.” But despite Twitter’s insistence that there was “no significant activity connected to Russia” and these Democrats were “putting the cart before the horse,” Schiff, Feinstein, and Blumenthal continued to peddle the false narrative of Russian collusion in the 2016 election.
Similarly, without any evidence, Democrats claimed that Russian bot accounts were responsible for promulgating Devin Nunes’s 2018 memo which completely discredited the Russiagate narrative. Nevertheless, their streak of lies continued.
Likewise, in the 12th batch of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported that Adam Schiff’s office urged Twitter officials to ban accounts that drew negative attention to his office—particularly journalist Paul Sperry. Though Twitter first maintained that they “don’t do this,” Twitter ultimately complied and suspended Sperry’s account. Taibbi later reported that Schiff “quite often” requested the removal of tweets he did not like—including something as trivial as a visual parody of Joe Biden.
As stunning as many of these revelations have been, the findings of the Twitter Files thus far could very well just be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media censorship and Deep State political suppression.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
