More on Twitter/Democrat collusion

Musk fires James Baker, the former FBI right-hand to Comey who pushed “Russia collusion,” over suppressing the Hunter Biden story in Twitter

The New York Post exposes the next chapter in the Twitter collusion saga by reporting on the firing of James Baker.

Elon Musk has fired Twitter’s deputy general counsel, James Baker, over his alleged suppression of internal documents about blocking The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop exposé.

“In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,” Musk tweeted Tuesday.

Musk added that he questioned Baker before his firing about the events surrounding the laptop suppression scandal and that the lawyer’s explanation was “unconvincing.” 

Baker, a former top FBI lawyer, was discovered to be secretly vetting the internal Twitter documents before they could be reviewed by journalists, leading to a delay in the release of more material related to the company’s censorship scandal. 

“On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay,” independent journalist Matt Taibbi tweeted on Tuesday.

“We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of ‘Twitter Files’ – without knowledge of new management,” Taibbi added.

Taibbi further revealed that former Wall Street Journal and New York Times writer Bari Weiss is also involved in reviewing the social media giant’s internal documents related to The Post’s Hunter Biden story and that it is was her who discovered Baker’s involvement, which Musk was unaware of, according to Taibbi.

@mtaibbi In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dia… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

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Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 06, 2022

(Read more at the New York Post)

Someone get the New York Times a Life Alert pendant

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

All the New York Times can occupy itself with is a review of the “media conversation” surrounding the release of information by Musk. And most of this is a condemnation of Matt Taibbi (the only liberal who seems to be intent on actually also being a real journalist).

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Musk says Twitter suppressed free speech under orders from government

The Epoch Times outlines Elon Musk’s argument that Twitter conspired to violate the First Amendment.

Elon Musk suggested that Twitter was acting under government orders to suppress free speech, with his remarks coming hot on the heels of the release of a trove of documents that lift the lid on some of the social media platform’s censorship machinations around the 2020 presidential election. “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is,” Musk said in a tweet late Friday. Musk’s remarks came in the context of Friday’s unveiling of a series of internal Twitter communications that give insight into steps taken by staff at the social media platform around suppressing the New York Post’s explosive Hunter Biden laptop story.

(Read more at The Epoch Times)

It was not just Biden’s FBI that recently worked to suppress the free flow of information at Twitter. Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs got tweets removed from Twitter

BizPacReview lays out the scene where Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (aka corrupt governor-elect Katie Hobbs) got tweets removed from Twitter.

As Americans are wrapping their heads around the implications of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files,” a leaked internal email reveals that Arizona Governor-elect and current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs allegedly colluded with Twitter’s old guard by flagging accounts she determined were spreading election “misinformation.”

In an email dated January 7, 2021, the communications director for the Office of the Arizona Secretary of State reportedly emailed the Center for Internet Security (CIS), a 501 nonprofit that claims to be “leading the global community to secure our ever-changing connected world,” to say, “I am flagging this twitter account for your review.”

The subject line read, “Election Related Misinformation” and two people at the Secretary of State’s office were copied on the request.

Additionally, the Daily Wire reports, the email went to “an unknown employee at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a branch under the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security.”

The email was forwarded to an employee at Twitter along with a note saying, “Please see this report below from the Arizona SOS office. Please let me know if you have any questions.”

The dutiful Twitter employee reportedly emailed back, thanking the sender and saying, “We will escalate.”

A follow-up email reads, “Both Tweets have been removed from the service.”

Unreal! Katie Hobbs’s office contacts Twitter to have posts removed! So, the democrat candidate, who ran the AZ e… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
Christina Bobb (@christina_bobb) December 04, 2022

(Read more at BizPacReview and see dueling tweets from BPR, Kari Lake, and Katie Hobbs)

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Oddly, the apologists on the left say the government was not involved

As demonstrated by the 27 January 2021 article in The Atlantic, the left has no problem with trying to dissuade us of government’s involvement in this censorship. Rather, they would have us believe it all stems from company fiat.

There is a rich historical irony to the fact that today, conservatives are the ones who argue most forcefully that the decisions by private companies to “deplatform” certain speakers threaten what President Donald Trump described in 2020 as the “bedrock” American right to freedom of speech. Until very recently, this was an argument made almost exclusively by those on the left.

The decision by Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other social-media outlets to ban Trump from their platforms after the January 6 attack on the Capitol intensified conservatives’ long-standing concerns that the powerful tech industry is violating their free-speech rights. Trump encouraged and amplified these arguments when he issued a (largely symbolic) executive order in May 2020 declaring that “free speech is the bedrock of American democracy,” and insisted that “in a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey.”*

The deplatforming of the president appeared to many conservatives to offer vivid proof that these companies are just as dangerous to freedom of speech as Trump had claimed. Steve Daines, a Republican senator from Montana, took to Twitter to attack “Big Tech” for “censoring [Trump] and the free speech of American citizens.” Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, claimed that the platforms’ decision to restrict speech “threatened our democracy.” And on the floor of the Capitol building, newly sworn-in Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wore a mask bearing a single word—censored—in stark white letters. Many liberals, meanwhile, insisted that the decision to deplatform the president had nothing to do with freedom of speech, at least not as protected by the First Amendment.

This is something of a reversal. Indeed, the idea that private actors, not just government officials, might threaten the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, as well as the other rights protected by the Constitution, was first suggested by big-government liberals, whom contemporary conservatives love to hate. In the early 20th century, progressive legal scholars such as Felix Cohen and Robert Hale argued against the notion that the Constitution protects rights including freedom of speech from only government action. Private corporations wield tremendous power over individuals’ lives and fortunes, and to overlook that power when interpreting the meaning of constitutionally protected rights, Cohen and Hale believed, would make no sense.

(Read more at The Atlantic, but their verbosity primarily covers for their bias)

Their problem remains with the fact of things like FEC records

The apologists on the left for the Biden regime say the government was not involved in this suppression. Or rather, they gaslight us again, since their claims are directly contradicted by the declaration to the FEC by Yoel Roth, Twitter’s legal counsel. Who said (on page 25 of the document at paragraph 10):

Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers
regarding election security.

Those (National Intelligence, Department of Homeland Security, and the FBI), to me, seem like divisions of government. It seems that other thinking individuals, like Elon Musk, might think the same.

@hodgetwins @micsolana Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but actin… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

—
Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 03, 2022

Still, to further prove the point, paragraph 11 says:

During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected “hack-and-leak operations” by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October. I was told in these meetings that the intelligence community expected that individuals associated with political campaigns would be subject to hacking attacks and that material obtained through those hacking attacks would likely be disseminated over social media platforms, including Twitter. These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.

If (like the Democrat apologists) you seek to disprove government involvement in the suppression of free speech, “these weekly meeting” by “federal law enforcement agencies” communicating with groups under them who must do their bidding or face consequences, then you have to prove a negative. That is a near impossibility.

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