… Both were targets of the U.S. government’s use of Twitter and social media to manipulate election outcomes.

While current conservative headlines are filled with discussion surrounding revelations of Twitter being used by U.S. government officials to control and manipulate public opinion, it is worthwhile reminding everyone how this process was first triggered – and then look at how the intelligence community applied the lessons to the USA in 2020.

The Obama administration first created the public-private partnership with Twitter and Facebook to support the “Arab Spring” uprising.   As a consequence, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the first elected official to be taken out by former President Obama’s deployment of Twitter as a community activist tool for revolution in 2011. In direct and consequential ways, Egypt was the BETA test for a process that surface a decade later in the United States during the 2020 election.

Using and influencing social media was a tool created by the Obama state department, as noted years ago in Mic.Com:

[…] In countries like Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, rising action plans such as protests made up of thousands, have been organized through social media such Facebook and Twitter. “We use Facebook to schedule the protests” an Arab Spring activist from Egypt announced “and [we use] Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” The role that technology has taken in allowing the distribution of public information such as the kinds stated by the aforementioned activist, had been essential in establishing the democratic movement that has helped guide abused civilians to overthrow their oppressor. (link)

(NationalPulse) The most popular Twitter hashtags in the Arab region in the first three months of this year were “Egypt”, “Jan25”, “Libya”, “Bahrain” and “protest”.

Nearly 9 in 10 Egyptians and Tunisians surveyed in March said they were using Facebook to organise protests or spread awareness about them. All but one of the protests called for on Facebook ended up coming to life on the streets.

These and other findings from the newly released second edition of the Arab Social Media Report by the Dubai School of Government give empirical heft to the conventional wisdom that Facebook and Twitter abetted if not enabled the historic region-wide uprisings of early 2011. (link)

Fast forward to 2020, and those same elements deployed against the Egyptian government were deployed in the United States in a coordinated public-private partnership with Twitter, Facebook and social media.

The U.S. government control over these social media platforms is ultimately what lies at the heart of the latest Twitter Files release.

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Twitter File Release #3 come from Matt Taibbi – SEE HERE – and includes a review of some internal documents and internal communication in the lead up to the 2020 election.

As noted by Taibbi, “as the election approached, senior executives – perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed – increasingly struggled with rules and began to speak of “vios” as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway.”

“Vios” is a short-hand term for violations.

Internal Slacks, communication chats within the organization, show Twitter executives discussing various relationships with federal agencies, specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS), various elements of the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI.  Twitter’s main censor Yoel Roth plays a key role in the discussion.  Mr. Roth organized many of the communication chats that surrounded the election.

The slacks (communication chats) contain channels to create sub-sets of topics with smaller groups of internal officers assembled to prioritize the discussion.

The reports being cited by Taibbi are, “based on searches for docs linked to prominent executives, whose names are already public. They include Roth, former trust and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, and recently plank-walked Deputy General Counsel (and former top FBI lawyer) Jim Baker.” … “On October 8th, 2020, executives opened a channel called “us2020_xfn_enforcement.” Through J6, this would be home for discussions about election-related removals, especially ones that involved “high-profile” accounts (often called “VITs” or “Very Important Tweeters”).”

There was internal discussion about how they should describe their contact with federal agencies who were involved in the process of filtering the public discussion.  Essentially, what were these Twitter executives going to say about how they are coordinating with DHS, FBI and ODNI?  Policy Director Nick Pickles, eventually led a discussion to label the government contacts in the generalized term “partnerships.”

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Thesis: Begin with The End in Mind – The U.S. Government control over social media though DHS was going to surface eventually.  The people who constructed the systems knew exposure would eventually come.  Two CENSORSHIP lawsuits, one filed by Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai in 2020 [LINK], and another filed by Missouri Attorney General in May 2022 [STATE OF MISSOURI ET AL VERSUS JOSEPH R BIDEN JR ET AL], were going to push the relationship between DHS and social media into the public consciousness; mitigation efforts would be needed.

The timing of the Twitter purchase by Elon Musk, initially triggered via major stock purchase in April 2022, must be considered with the overlay of these two sunlight lawsuits.  Regardless of who owned Twitter, the nature of DHS controlling a backdoor portal into the content of social media was going to surface – as it has been unfolding from the two referenced censorship lawsuits.

The Twitter Files represent a gateway of discovery into how government assisted creating “Oligarchical Systems.” Surveillance systems delivering mutual benefits called public-private partnerships were formed.  Readers here are months ahead of where the arc of this story is destined.  However, oligarchical beneficiaries will always defend the system against rogue oligarchs who become a threat.

There are major inconsistencies in the public narrative as it swirls around Elon Musk and Twitter.

How could a businessman, an entrepreneur like Elon Musk, spend $44 billion, that’s BILLION, on an enterprise without knowing the basic outline of how that enterprise was operating.  In a world of financial due diligence, on a scale of this size, the contradictions do not make sense.

Yet if we are to take Elon Musk at his word, he had no idea that DHS operated a portal into the network. He also had no idea about James Baker working as Twitter legal counsel and carrying such a massive conflict of interest.  Additionally, via his announcement last night, Musk had no idea that Perkins Coie was legally representing Twitter.

How does an owner/operator take ownership of an organization and not know these senior executive issues?  Reconcile these questions, and we begin to reconcile a background of activity that Mr. Musk may not know about.  The alternative explanation is much more nefarious and involves Musk as a willing participant.

Regardless, before going further I cannot emphasize this point enough.   We cannot fight our way through these puzzling issues until we all approach the big questions from the same baseline, the root of what created the system.

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The latest release of information behind the controversial “Twitter Files”, comes from Bari Weiss complete with the strategic promotion of a new website [The Free Press] launching via the booster provided by their access to the internal Twitter documents.

Curiously intelligent people will note the Weiss website is structured to support the 2024 presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is, not coincidentally, riding atop a multi-staged booster guided by Elon Musk and fueled by Wall Street billionaires.

For the moment, just note and I digress – but please do not miss the connections.

As noted by the former New York Times journalist, Ms. Weiss states, “the [website] authors have broad and expanding access to Twitter’s files. The only condition we agreed to was that the material would first be published on Twitter.”  You can read the entire Twitter Thread Here, and with that, we look at what the current narrative consists of.

Overall, the story as released walks through the process that Twitter used to control users and as a consequence control the flow of information on the platform.  Accounts were subject to restrictions, manipulations and other inorganic engagement controls depending on the ideology of the content being provided.

Twitter had teams set up to attach limiting flags within the Twitter platform that would essentially hide content the platform control officers did not want to see reaching a wider audience. As noted by Twitter employees Weiss writes, “we control visibility quite a bit. And we control the amplification of your content quite a bit. And normal people do not know how much we do,” one Twitter engineer told us. Two additional Twitter employees confirmed.”

What I find interesting is in segment/tweet #12 where Ms. Weiss reveals the existence of the top tier of Twitter control officers.  “The group that decided whether to limit the reach of certain users was the Strategic Response Team – Global Escalation Team, or SRT-GET. It often handled up to 200 “cases” a day.”

I find it curious that Ms Bari Weiss mentioned several names in her expose’ yet failed to mention the name or curriculum vitae of the head for the Strategic Response Team, a fellow named Jeff Carlton.

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Jack, who never had control, says just release everything without filter.

Elon says stuff might have been hidden from you too, and some stuff deleted:

(Source)

Knowing the background of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop…

Obvious question… Hey fellas, who was doing the hiding and deleting?

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Yesterday, we speculated publicly the first set of “Twitter Files” released was heavily pre-filtered by internal stakeholders connected to DHS who hold a vested interest in controlling any evidence of Twitter’s former political activity.

Knowing there are multiple executives remaining within the company who previously aligned with the intents of government, specifically DHS officials, to control the platform, the prediction was not a stretch. Indeed, it just made common sense.

Former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker, a man of notoriously corrupt disposition, was one of those former government officials who started working for Twitter as general counsel.  James Baker (pictured below left) working as a government mechanism for filtration of damaging information was not a leap. Again, just common sense.

Today, as an outcome of internal discoveries that indeed Jim Baker did prefilter internal documents in order to mitigate sunlight and exposure [outline here], Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired legal counsel James Baker.

Mr Musk said through his Twitter account, “In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today.”  Mr. Musk followed up a question about James Baker being asked to explain himself by saying, “His explanation was …unconvincing.”

Matt Taibbi provides the context:

Taibbi – 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.

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.

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Sooner or later someone, if not Donald Trump, is going to have to start a second party.

Appearing on CBS with Margaret Brennan, incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner walks through the priorities of the new HPSCI committee, to include that President Trump is horrible, Ukraine President Zelenskyy is awesome, Joe Biden is doing an awesome job and Ukraine needs more U.S. money and weapons.

If you listen closely, you might even catch the part where Mike Turner says he is working swimmingly with current HPSCI Chairman Adam Schiff and current Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner.  Yes, folks, you just cannot make this stuff up.  Ms. Brennan is absolutely smitten with Mr. Turner, he’s an acceptable republican.  WATCH:

[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: And we turn now to Ohio Congressman Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman Turner, good to have you here in person.

REPRESENTATIVE MIKE TURNER: Thank you. Yes. It’s great to be here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So just yesterday, the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said that Russia was perhaps struggling to keep up with the amount of munitions that it’s using in this war in Ukraine, the cold weather is slowing combat. The Secretary of State, though, didn’t really give hope for diplomacy at this moment. Given what you know, when will this war end?

REP. TURNER: Well, the one thing that we know is that the- the gains that Ukraine is making are real, they’re real in the battlefield. They’re real in the support that they have around the world, they have with democracies on the floor of the United Nations, in condemning this aggression by Russia. But Ukraine really has to be the one that decides that if, when, and how negotiations are entered into, and at this point, you know, they’re battling for their country. They’re losing lives for democracy. President Zelenskyy says, I was just in Ukraine, just before the elections, he says openly, he understands that he’s the frontlines for democracy, and he’s fighting an authoritarian regime. And I think, you know, obviously, Russia has to reevaluate how they look at this conflict and how Putin looks at what he has started–

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It is very well known by now that FBI agents worked within social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram through direct portals connecting the government to the backdoors of the networks.  The Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) continue to operate in partnership with various tech systems and platforms to monitor content.

During a deposition this week the FBI admitted to giving instructions to tech companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft to block URLs without a basis in legality.  Essentially the ideology of the FBI and DHS determines the targets of the content removal, blockage and/or censoring.

To repeat, these are not FBI and DHS instructions based on defined criminal activity, these are government instructions based on disagreements over ‘information’ as espoused by the content provider.

Information the government agrees with is safe; however, information the U.S. government doesn’t agree with is targeted.   Obviously, a person of reasonable intelligence can see the problem with allowing law enforcement to determine which information is valid and which information is invalid.

(Fox News) – On Tuesday, lawyers from the offices of Attorneys General Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Jeff Landry of Louisiana deposed FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan as part of their lawsuit against the Biden administration. That suit accuses high-ranking government officials of working with giant social media companies “under the guise of combating misinformation” to achieve greater censorship.

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The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals having previously ruled the special master cannot review classified documents, also ruled today against the special master having any involvement in the filtering of seized documents from Mar-a-Lago.  [Ruling Here]

Previously, the lower court appointed a special master to review the seized documents and ensure no privileged material was exploited by the DOJ.  However, the appellate court determined the DOJ can independently define a national security interest and classify documents with no legal basis for challenge, therefore the special master cannot filter classified documents.

Today the appeals court essentially said if the search warrant was legally predicated and legally valid, and if the search warrant was used legally, then all the seized documents are valid for the investigative purposes of the DOJ – regardless of their content.  The only way to fight the authority of the DOJ seizure is to challenge the legality of the search warrant.  However, here’s where things get weird.

President Trump’s lawyers have been: (1) blocked from receiving a non-redacted search warrant; (2) denied access to the underlying probable cause affidavit used to predicate the search warrant, and (3) denied the full contents of the documents that were seized as part of the warrant (they are not allowed to see).  Yet somewhere in this convoluted mess, we are supposed to believe a 4th amendment violation doesn’t exist.

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CTH has not visited the various Twitter stories recently, quite frankly because we are ambivalent to them.  It just seems illogical for Elon Musk to have purchased Twitter without any idea of what was happening inside Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop, the public-private partnership that structures the operations of the social media company known as Twitter.

That said, some interesting developments recently as media rail against the platform and organized ultra-leftist groups demand advertising boycotts.  Apparently, Apple and Android are threatening to remove the Twitter App and Mr. Musk is doubling down on exposing the matrix of how the U.S. government was working with Twitter toward controlling speech that was against their interests.

This tweet about releasing internal “files” on “speech suppression” follow on the heels of Mr. Musk noting that government involvement in the blocking of speech is very troubling.

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