One journalist uncovered to the public how social media giant Twitter took unprecedented steps to hide The Post's Hunter Biden laptop bombshell with his controversial tweets about the "Twitter Files."
On Friday night, it was revealed that Matt Taibbi, a writer renowned for his brash, irreverent tone, was behind the startling findings about Twitter's censoring, which he supported with insider information and a series of censored corporate emails, as per The New York Post.
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
According to NY Magazine, Taibbi, who has over 30,000 paid members to his TK News on Substack, informed his readers on Thursday night that he had written "a unique and explosive" piece that he would post on Twitter because he "had to agree to certain terms."
It's been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Insider papers on Twitter's controversial decision to restrict access to a New York Post piece about the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop were supposedly sent to newsletter author Matt Taibbi by Musk's team three weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
'Twitter Files' Source: Elon Musk
A Twitter spokesperson at the time said that the company was censoring the Post article due to its policy against stolen and hacked content. Some conservatives claimed the firm was suppressing negative stories about them. After just two days, CEO Jack Dorsey retracted the decision and issued an apology.
Axios reports that Elon Musk, the wealthiest man on the planet, purchased Twitter last month and promised to give it a free-speech overhaul. On Friday, he released to Taibbi a shocking collection of internal correspondence proving that Democrat insiders leaned on Twitter's censors to suppress The Post's coverage of Hunter Biden laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
The Post stated that in 2015, Hunter Biden, then an executive at a Ukrainian firm, sought to organize a meeting between his father and a company official. Biden's representatives at the time disputed the reports.
Discussions over whether or not to censor the Post report were revealed in the tweets.
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Conservatives were outraged by Twitter's decision. However, Taibbi also recounts receiving comments from outside groups and a Democratic lawmaker who was critical of the company's decision.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) allegedly texted a Twitter executive, "Generating major outrage on hill re speech."
Left-Wing Journalists Blast Taibbi
In unison with Democratic strategists, mainstream media blasted journalist Matt Taibbi as a "sad", "fraud" when he dropped his bombshell expose on Twitter's political censorship.
In a social media post, Daily Beast columnist and New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali called Taibbi's move a "sad, disgraceful downfall" and accused him of "selling" his soul to "the richest white nationalist on Earth."
Ali had just struck publish on a scathing tweet when Democratic pollster Matt McDermott sent out an almost similar retort.
McDermott wrote that Taibbi "always was, and still remains, a fraud." He even accused the writer of "doing PR" for Elon Musk.
Meanwhile, The Hill published an opinion piece from lawyer Jonathan Turley, stating that the New York Post got banned from Twitter due to its coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. He also stated that Twitter even used a process originally developed to prevent the spread of child pornography to prevent people from sharing The Post's report.
"Musk's dumped Twitter documents not only confirm the worst expectations of some of us but feature many of the usual suspects for Twitter critics," Turley wrote. He went on to say that though ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's participation is unclear, it seems that the company's former top legal officer Vijaya Gadde was the real censor in chief along with James Baker, a former FBI general counsel, who serves as Twitter deputy general counsel.
