Margot Cleveland of the Federalist highlights one of the most disturbing revelations within the Twitter Files.
[T]he barrage of information is blinding both pundits and the public to the most egregious political scandal in recent history: Our FBI interfered in the 2020 election by lying to tech giants about the Hunter Biden laptop story to induce Twitter, Facebook, and likely others to censor the story.
The Hunter Biden laptop story, of course, refers to the New York Post’s Oct. 14, 2020 article, “Smoking-Gun Email Reveals How Hunter Biden Introduced Ukrainian Businessman to VP Dad,” that details emails, text messages, and videos recovered from the hard drive of a laptop Hunter abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware. In the first dump of the Twitter Files, independent journalist Matt Taibbi focused on “How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story.”
Internal communications revealed that Twitter censored the New York Post’s story based on its “hacked materials” policy, preventing users from sharing the story and even suspending the New York Post’s official account. Those same communications showed Twitter staffers questioning the propriety and/or veracity of the “hacked materials” explanation, with both Yoel Roth and Jim Baker defending the decision.
Roth, who at the time was Twitter’s head of trust and safety, acknowledged the situation is “emerging,” as “the facts remain unclear,” but justified the censorship based on “the SEVERE risks here and lessons of 2016.” Twitter’s then-Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker agreed that “we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked,” but nonetheless concluded that “it is reasonable for us to assume they may have been and that caution is warranted.” …
… There is no need for a paper trail confirming that the government expressly told Twitter the Hunter Biden laptop, which served as the basis for the New York Post article, had been hacked, however, because intelligence agencies gave Twitter (and Facebook) a warning detailed enough to prompt the tech giants to presume the story represented the anticipated threat. And that is precisely what they did.