2020 Presidential Election
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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December 14, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I have been keeping up in my own way with the Twitter Files documented in threads posted by Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger on Twitter. I posted previous installments here (December 6) and here (December 11). On Monday Weiss posted part 5 (“The removal of Trump from Twitter”) — a 30-tweet thread. Please forgive the repetition involved in my observations. These are my comments on part 5: •
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December 13, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Hunter Biden scandal lies at the intersection of the great reporting of the New York Post on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the Biden family business, the 2020 presidential election, the deep state, the suppression of the scandal by Twitter and other social media platforms, Elon Musk, and the Twitter Files. It is an incredibly important story. Daniel Oliver shares my assessment. He places the scandal in the context of
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December 11, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Elon Musk has divvied up the Twitter Files documenting the platform’s historical censorship practices to Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger. Each has posted long threads on Twitter reporting on the contents of the files. I posted my notes on Taibbi’s first thread on December 6. I have an abbreviated set of notes and queries following on the publication of parts 2, 3, and 4 over the past few
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December 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I thought when the New York Times published Michael Grynbaum’s December 4 meta-analysis of the Twitter Files coverage on page B5 earlier this week, it would give the Star Tribune permission to mention the story in one way or another. I have searched “Elon.” I have searched “Musk.” I have searched “Twitter” (below, by recency). Wrong! Readers who get their news from the Star Tribune remain clueless. Since I wrote
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December 8, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I wish National Review would let Andrew McCarthy’s columns out from behind its paywall, but it is not to be. I have paid the big bucks to read Andy’s columns and found the fee worth it, but it rubs against the grain of the Internet. Surely some one or two of NR’s benefactors could spring for whatever it would take to free up Andy’s columns, at least on occasion. I
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December 6, 2022 — Scott Johnson
James Baker is a key player in old Twitter’s suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop reporting before the 2020 election. Jonathan Turley noted his ubiquity as a player in the scandals of the past six years in “Six degrees of James Baker.” After including him in my “Notes on the Twitter Files” this morning, I now have to add this mind-boggling postscript. It never occurred to me
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