Former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, appeared on Sunday with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the Twitter file release that pertained to his former office and the contact between DNI election official Shelby Pierson and Twitter executive Noel Roth. {Direct Rumble Link}

DNI Ratcliffe does not use Shelby Pierson’s name within his comments, but refutes her action as described within the release by Matt Taibbi.  WATCH:

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Within the Twitter file release, you will find Twitter’s lead censor, Yoel Roth, meeting with an official from the U.S. Dept of National Intelligence (DNI).  From the testimony of FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan, we know that official was Shelby Pierson.  Chan was speaking under oath in an ongoing first amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration for manipulating and censoring speech on social media.

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The fifth installment of the Twitter Files release drops today courtesy of Ms. Bari Weiss [READ HERE]. The focus of Ms Weiss was on the decision to ban President Donald Trump from the platform, and her outline walks through the events leading up to the decision to remove him.

After a review of internal discussions, slacks and conversations within the social media platform, ultimately the officers within the company decided to protect their view of democracy by removing their biggest ideological opponent.

The Twitter executives justified their actions by echo-chambering a belief that President Trump was tweeting “coded messages,” the secret transmission of thoughts that can only be received by those wearing red hats, tuned to a specific psychological frequency.  As Weiss notes: “Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be “coded incitement to further violence.”

President Trump tweeted the term “American Patriots,” which would be viewed by the Twitter ideologues as something akin to “the leader of a terrorist group responsible for violence/deaths comparable to Christchurch shooter or Hitler and on that basis and on the totality of his Tweets, he should be de-platformed.”

It did not take long for the narrative to embed as the most senior Twitter regulatory officers assembled. “One hour later, Twitter announces Trump’s permanent suspension “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

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… 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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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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… And if he does, the outlook is worse.

According to both the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI), via Chairman Mark Warner, and the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) via Mike Turner, the Chinese social media platform TikTok represents a “national security risk” to the United States.  South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, soon to be the vice-presidential candidate for the DeSantis-Noem 2024 ticket, has also called TikTok a national security threat and banned it in the state. Now, think about that carefully.

What is it about a social media app allowing short video sharing that would constitute a national security risk?  The answer is not about dog and cat videos, or dancing diatribes or funny, weird or goofy content; nor is the national security risk attached to any data of the app users or content providers.  The national security risk is found in the ability to influence public opinion that is not under the control of the United States government, or more specifically the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS).

The need for control is a reaction to fear.  TikTok, as a social media platform, is not considered a national security threat because the Chinese government can control it.  TikTok is considered a national security threat because the United States government does not control it.

For several years CTH has been outlining the relationship between DHS and social media.  Currently, the headlines are filled with stories about Twitter and revelations of censorship and government influence coming from the purchase of the platform by Elon Musk.  I promise you things are not what they seem.

Let me put some context to the dynamic that will hopefully clarify what is going on, and perhaps the context will help explain what you are seeing and what you are not seeing as this unfolds.  There are going to be a lot of citations to fill in the details and understanding the modern Fourth Branch of Government is critical.  The bigger picture also explains why SSCI Chairman Mark Warner said “people will die” if the seized Trump Mar-a-Lago documents become public.

♦ Elevator Speech: Twitter is to the U.S. government as TikTok is to China. The overarching dynamic is the need to control public perceptions and opinions. DHS has been in ever increasing control of Twitter since the public-private partnership was formed in 2011/2012.  Jack Dorsey lost control and became owner emeritus; arguably, Elon Musk has no idea (you’ll see proof toward the end).

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President Donald Trump came under massive amounts of fire recently for saying, “So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

What President Trump is noting, is the exact same reason why Kari Lake’s lawsuit, like every other election lawsuit before it, will fail.   Our U.S. Constitution permits election fraud and manipulation, as long as that state level election fraud and manipulation does not break federal law.  {Direct Rumble Link} – WATCH:

Obviously, it would be frustrating for President Trump to ask legal advisors what can be done about certified results from fraudulently constructed elections.  The reply from the legal advisors around the state certification would frustrate anybody, because the constitution permits fraudulent elections.   The decision on how to conduct elections is entirely up to the states.

The states, via state legislature, determine their election rules, laws and outcomes that eventually lead to state certification.  If a state wants to block voters, impede voters, or manipulate the voting outcome, there is generally nothing in federal law to stop them – as long as the state or county does not break federal laws protecting classes or protected categories of persons.

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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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Previously billionaire Rupert Murdoch paid Megyn Kelly, through advances on her book deal, $10 million for her political efforts in 2015 and 2016.  Rupert Murdoch owns Harper Collins book publishing.

Book publishing, as done by politicians in both parties, is the way money is laundered to candidates and various campaign finance rules are subverted.  Nikki Haley, Kristi Noem, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and Tim Scott have all released books in the past two months in advance of their 2024 presidential bids.

As noted recently by The Guardian, “Lachlan Murdoch, the heir apparent and eldest son, who co-chairs News Corp and runs the parent company of Fox News, has reportedly told DeSantis that the group would back him if he ran in the next election. “Lachlan has been keen on Ron for some time. He’s viewed within the organization as a sanitized version of Donald.”

Candidates are personally financed by the book publication laundry system through advances, typically several million, and then again indirectly by supporting organizations through mass purchasing.  It is not uncommon to find hundreds-of-thousands of books in various warehouses purchased by groups as indirect contributions to boost the candidate of their choice.   The purchases determine the “best seller” rankings.

It is unknown how much billionaire Rupert Murdoch has paid Ron DeSantis for the 2024 campaign but considering the stakes for this election cycle it’s likely in the $20 million range.

(Via Fox News) – Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida will chronicle his life in public service in a new book that will publish in late February in what will be seen by political pundits as another step by the conservative champion toward a possible 2024 presidential run.

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