2020 Presidential Election
February 9, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The New York Post editorial “AOC serves up disinformation about Hunter Biden — and us” has just rotated off our Picks. Let us pay tribute to it here as the editorial of the day. The Post editors write: “I believe that political operatives who sought to inject explosive disinformation with the Washington Post couldn’t get away with it — and now they’re livid,” railed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Wednesday’s hearings about
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February 9, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Miranda Devine characterizes the Dems’ performance in the House Oversight’s first committee hearing of the new Congress yesterday as “The Democratic litany of Hunter Biden’s laptop lies.” Having helped break the laptop story in the pages of the New York Post in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, Devine is the go-to source for comments on developments in the case. Here she is on yesterday’s hearing featuring the testimony
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February 6, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Last week I characterized Hunter Biden’s threatened legal assault on the purveyors of his abandoned laptop as “Battle of the Bulge, Biden style.” Hunter Biden’s new legal team invited the authorities to bring privacy claims and alleged defamation claims against a variety of parties that had the temerity to bring the contents of the laptop to the attention of the public. The news was notable for a number of reasons
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February 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Underneath the image of the New York Post cover above, Miranda Devine comments in her Devine Online email newsletter (sign up for free here) this morning: For more than two years Joe Biden has maintained the fiction that the laptop his son Hunter abandoned at a computer repair shop in Delaware was a “Russian plant.” Well, yesterday, Hunter finally admitted the laptop is his, only now he says his data
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February 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Once upon a time the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop were deemed akin to Russian “disinformation” by former law enforcement and national security authorities, candidate Joe Biden, and the media regurgitating the party line on Biden’s behalf. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see the party line a fairy tale, to put it kindly. Now lawyers representing Hunter Biden seek criminal investigations of those involved in the dissemination
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December 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi has reviewed additional sets of Twitter Files and will post threads summarizing his findings just in time to disrupt my holiday weekend. At his TK News site on Substack, he previews his findings with a focus on the government-related issues that have been the subject of my interest. He anticipates that “the broader picture will eventually describe a company that was directly or indirectly blamed for allowing Donald
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December 29, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Adam Goldman was one of the national security establishment’s go-to reporters for promotion of the Russia hoax. Indeed, Goldman “was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for national reporting on Russia’s meddling in the presidential election.” That’s the way the Times puts it. Those of us who don’t only get our news from the Times now know that it was the FBI more than any
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December 28, 2022 — Scott Johnson
George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley comments on the drivel released by the FBI last week in response to the Twitter Files: It is not clear what is more chilling — the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter’s censorship program, or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role. The FBI has issued a series of “nothing-to-see-here” statements regarding the Twitter Files. In its latest
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December 26, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Victor Davis Hanson comments on the FBI statement responding to the Twitter Files last week: The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech. “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal
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December 25, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi delivered part 9 of the Twitter Files as a Christmas Eve special last night. Part 9 is an important contribution to the series. I think readers can access the thread beginning with the tweet below, although I can only pull up the first 30 tweets at this point. 1.THREAD: The Twitter FilesTWITTER AND "OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES" — Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022 When I read the thread
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December 24, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Explaining the disruption of his professional routine, Matt Taibbi explains: “The reason for all this of course is the Twitter Files story.” Responding to the FBI’s drivel, Taibbi adds this preview to what we have seen so far: This last week saw the FBI describe Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and me as “conspiracy theorists” whose “sole aim” is to discredit the agency. That statement will look ironic soon, as we
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December 21, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I am particularly interested on the reverberations of the Twitter Files in the pages of the New York Post, whose reporting on the Biden family corruption was suppressed in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. Today Post columnist Michael Goodwin has a mostly understated column that gets rolling toward the end: So what if the FBI violated the First Amendment rights of ordinary Americans? So what if the bureau
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December 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Through the Twitter Files we have learned in some detail how the FBI and the intelligence community conspired to suppress the New York Post’s October 2020 reporting on the Biden family corruption. Jesse O’Neill reports on the latest revelations in the New York Post story “FBI pressured Twitter, sent trove of docs hours before Post broke Hunter laptop story.” The Post also runs the valuable companion editorial “Evidence shows FBI,
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December 19, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Late yesterday afternoon Matt Taibbi posted a Twitter Files Supplemental thread running to 12 substantive tweets. It is accessible here. I urge interested readers to check it out. Here are my notes and comments. • The New York Post covers it here. The Daily Mail covers it here. Mainstream media eyes remain wide shut. The revelations of the Twitter Files suggest that Elon Musk may not be public enemy number
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December 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Matt Taibbi posted a sixth installment of the Twitter Files in a 45-part Twitter thread yesterday afternoon. The thread is accessible here. This review is occasioned by the posting of Taibbi’s part 6. • I posted previous installments of my notes here (December 6, on Taibbi’s part 1), here (December 11, on part 2 by Bari Weiss, part 3 by Taibbi, and part 4 by Michael Shellenberger), and here (December
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December 16, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Twitter Files reveal the suppression of the New York Post’s reporting on Biden family corruption at the behest of the deep state authorities with whom Twitter was collaborating. The absurd letter by 51 former intelligence officials reported by Natasha Bertrand and published by Politico was a key piece of the puzzle (to the extent it was a puzzle). Holman Jenkins takes it up in his Wall Street Journal column
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December 15, 2022 — Scott Johnson
At her Free Press site Bari Weiss has posted background on the reporting behind the Twitter Files I have noted so far. She calls her backgrounder “Our reporting at Twitter.” (The URL suggests she might have called it “Why we went to Twitter.”) It answers certain of the questions I raised in my previous “Notes on the Twitter Files.” She writes (links omitted): [W]e—the journalist Matt Taibbi; investigative reporters connected
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