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‘Making the KGB proud’: FBI strikes back at ‘conspiracy theorists’ behind Twitter Files

December 22, 2022 | | Print Article

Despite overwhelming evidence laid out clearly for the world to read, to the contrary, the FBI has decided to take the gaslighting route in responding to the explosive Twitter Files, claiming it never requested “any action” on specific tweets, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a “conspiracy theorist.”

As BizPacReview has reported, the seventh seal on the FBI’s collusion with a pre-Elon Musk Twitter was broken on Monday, with a thread written by journalist Michael Shellenberger, whose findings — which he calls a “chilling episode in American history” — have prompted him to call for the defunding of the agency.

Shellenberger’s thread detailed the involvement of several former FBI agents at the social media platform, showing via internal communications their efforts to deal with the Hunter Biden laptop story.

“What I quickly put together is a pattern where it appears that FBI agents, along with former FBI agents within the company, were engaged in a disinformation campaign aimed at top Twitter and Facebook executives, as well as at top news organization executives to basically prepare them, prime them, get them set up to dismiss Hunter Biden information when it would be released,” Shellenberger told “The Brian Kilmeade Show” on Tuesday.

In response, the FBI officials speaking to Fox News attempted to shift the blame to Twitter’s disgraced former staff.

“We are providing [the information] so that they can take whatever action they deem appropriate under their terms of service to protect their platform and protect their customers, but we never direct or ask them to take action,” the officials said.

In the sixth installment of the Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi shared multiple communications from the FBI to Twitter staff in which accounts were flagged for potential violations of the platform’s Terms of Service (ToS).

Taibbi characterized the FBI’s actions as “hyper-intrusive,” noting that the agency also went after satirical left-leaning accounts.

The difference?

The account belonging to @clairefosterPHD wasn’t banned.

In his thread, Shellenberger revealed via an email to the platform’s then-Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, himself a former member of the Bureau, that the FBI paid Twitter more than $3 million as “reimbursement” for the time the staff had devoted to the FBI’s concerns.

“Jim, FYI, in 2019 SCALE instituted a reimbursement program for our legal process response from the FBI,” a staffer wrote Baker. “Prior to the start of the program, Twitter chose not to collect under this statutory right of reimbursement for the time spent processing requests from the FBI. I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019! This money is used by LP for things like the TTR and other LE-related projects (LE training, tooling, etc.).”

According to the FBI officials speaking to Fox News, the impressive payout was “reimbursement”  for the “reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process…for complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.”

“We don’t just reimburse Twitter,” the officials added, suggesting that other social media platforms are also receiving taxpayer money to aid in the agency’s censorship efforts.

The agency, the officials argue, didn’t give Twitter staffers “specific instructions or details regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story.”

The officials denied using back-channel communications with the platform to bury or spike the notorious “laptop from hell” story. When asked, they responded, “We did not request anything of the sort.”

With respect to Russian influence and Hunter Biden, the Bureau maintains it neither directly nor indirectly fed Twitter employees information.

“We focus on activities attributed to foreign actors, not on the content or narrative,” the officials claimed.

An FBI spokesperson issued a statement to Fox News insisting that the agency’s intrusion into social media is totally normal, happens all the time across multiple business sectors, and is for everyone’s safety.

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the statement read. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.”

If you don’t like the FBI policing free speech, you are clearly a “conspiracy theorist.”

“The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the spokesperson continued. “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

According to the former editor of The Atlantic, Benjamin Carlson, the FBI’s response constitutes a “psyop” within a psyop.

Richard Grenell, former acting director of National Intelligence, wants to know who is behind the FBI’s statement.

“Did Wray approve this @fbi statement?” he asked. “He’s either purposefully telling the spokesman to lie – or he doesn’t know what happened.”

“Who at FBI made this statement?” Grenell demanded to know.

https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1603952644808404994?s=20&t=cCigD73UD4p5ethIB34o-A

According to J. Michael Waller, senior analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy, the statement from the FBI is “garbage.”

“It reads like a press release by political hacks,” he tweeted, “not a thoughtful statement from America’s top law enforcement agency.”

But it was Matt Couch who brought the statement into focus: “The FBI putting out a statement saying that Americans aren’t allowed to question them is making the KGB proud today…”

 

Melissa Fine
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