A shocking revelation surfaced in December that the Federal Bureau of Investigation allegedly paid Twitter $3.4 million of taxpayer money to ban or suspend accounts on its platform.
The FBI reportedly targeted so-called “foreign influence” operations on Twitter, as well as accounts espousing conservative viewpoints.
As the so-called “Twitter Files” continue to be released by Elon Musk, offering a view of the inner workings of one of the world’s most important social media companies, new information has come to light about the influence wielded by the FBI on content and information.
Records indicate that as the FBI demanded more and more of Twitter staff’s time to suspend or ban accounts it targeted, the company developed a “reimbursement program” to process the federal agency’s requests.
In a February 2021 email, an as-yet-unidentified Twitter employee emailed the company’s then-general counsel Sean Edgett and then-deputy general counsel Jim Baker and gleefully announced, “We have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019” from the reimbursement program.
Interestingly, while the program had existed prior to October 2019, the records indicate that Twitter had not exercised its right to seek reimbursement until then.
In the latest release of internal Twitter documents by Musk, the depth of the FBI’s apparent manipulation of the platform was made plain.
For example, on November 3, 2020, the day of the national general elections, in an internal company chat, one employee asked, “Anyone need help reviewing the tweets forwarded in *FBI Report on Possible Violative Content?*”
After securing a volunteer, another employee wrote, “Thank you all so much for your help. A monumental undertaking!”
Weeks after the national general election, Edgett and Baker apparently received an email from another Twitter employee touting how the social media company “was on the front line of protecting our users (and the public at large) from misinformation/disinformation campaigns that had the potential to negatively affect the fair election process.”
The employee reportedly went on to lament that Twitter would never get public credit for helping the FBI track “violent actors” who wanted to perpetrate “acts of domestic terrorism” at polling locations.
“We had an unprecedented national security and law enforcement response that was the result of a tight, well-coordinated partnership with the FBI that was based on trust,” the employee touted.
The employee then asked if Edgett and Baker would sign a letter of thanks for the FBI’s “willingness to partner on matters of election integrity and public safety.”
Both Edgett and Baker reportedly responded affirmatively.
“We should be mindful that the letters could leak and will be subject to [Freedom of Information Act], so we should prepare them with that expectation in mind,” Baker replied.
You tax dollars at work. Time to independently investigate the FBI
No joke!!!! And why is there not more people out there screaming about this criminal activity that took place?????
It’ll be an even bigger joke and a disaster trying to investigate the very organization that is clueless and derelict in their own duties!!
Not sure what you are whining about here. The “Law and Order” crowd upset about employees assigned to work with the FBI in an investigation to stop “domestic terrorist” from spreading misinformation/ disinformation in an effort to disrupt a fair election? Or are you upset they were not investigating Hunter Biden? How is what they were doing any different than a Citizens Patrol or a Crime Watch group working with law enforcement to prevent crime in their neighborhood?
These dummies don’t recognize their own contradictions. Not sure how they function in daily life with the sheer lack of education.
The FBI needs a top to bottom clean out
The FBI MUST be defunded. All employees TERMINATED and any involved in these kinds of activities face the prison time they deserve for “violation of civil rights under color of authority”, and their retirements seized as well.
Then FBI must be broken into at least THREE divisions with SPECIFIC and limited authority. The FBI should become investigative ONLY with NO arrest powers at all and one of the new departments set up to ONLY investigate violations of Constitutional Rights under color of law and refer to FEDERAL PROSECUTION.
The Federal Marshals should be the ONLY division of government with arresting power.
All you morons are the first to cry out where the FBI is or why aren’t they helping anytime there is an article on here about a federal crime.
You are so unintelligent that you don’t recognize your own logical contradictions. Laughable.
You do realize the dems are the perpetrators behind the actions of the FBI.
Our government pays a lot of private companies do many things. This is now new or a revelation
Yes. By its very definition a revelation because it took someone revealing it to the public to make it known. I see that word of the day calendar is working for you.
Sorry. It’s a revelation for uneducated people that don’t read anything but right wing media and no nothing about tech companies and how they work with the government. I see your lack of education is not working out for you. Nice try.
The good part is that NOW THAT WE KNOW the FBI has “HIRED” private corporations to violate the civil rights of citizens, those citizens can band together and sue the private corporations and the FBI for those violations. Those people whose accounts were banned and deleted from Twitter need to be the ones that start.
Musk will not be harmed because those that SOLD the company to him gage Estoppel in the sale. Failure to disclose made THEM personally responsible. The Courts can claw back the ENTIRE VALUE of the sale form the OLD owners.
What I’m saying is that we always knew. You didn’t know. I’m not sure what conspiracy theory you are rambling on anoint, but you have no rights, other than what is stated in the end-user agreement, when joining any social media platform. Thinking otherwise is purely ignorant. Can I come to your house and tell you what you are going to watch on your TV?