FBI
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 22, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Is the FBI chastened now that it has been exposed as a rogue agency that, on behalf of the Democratic Party, intervened in the 2020 election by suppressing news–that it knew to be true–that was damaging to Joe Biden? Not a bit of it. The Bureau gave a statement to the New York Post yesterday: “The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional,
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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
Michael Shellenberger has just posted another multipart thread on the Twitter Files here — part 7 of the Twitter Files project. This may be the most important of the threads published so far. • As Techno Fog puts it: “[T]his release provides more details on the relationship between Twitter and the FBI, the suppression and removal of the Hunter Biden story from Twitter the FBI’s desire for Twitter to confirm
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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 7, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson have made it a mission to expose the Biden family corruption at whose apex sits President Biden. Their various reports, speeches, and correspondence are all accessible here. Most recently, they summarized the fruits of their research in this letter dated October 26, 2022 (“[t]he letter summarizes key elements of the Biden family’s engagements with individuals linked to the Chinese communist party and Chinese intelligence
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November 17, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Remember the hysteria over the classified documents that Donald Trump had in his basement at Mar-a-Lago? Remember the claim that the fugitive boxes contained “nuclear secrets” that Trump supposedly might sell to foreign adversaries? That was one of the dumbest theories of recent times, which is saying a lot. But now that the midterms are safely behind us, the Biden administration is leaking a different message: never mind. As usual,
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November 17, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient history may recall that FBI Director Christopher Wray wriggled away from the Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing this past August 4 when he claimed he had a flight to catch. It turned out that the flight was on the Gulfstream jet dedicated to the Director’s use and he was headed off on vacation. Senator Josh Hawley followed up on Wray’s wriggle today at a hearing before the
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November 6, 2022 — John Hinderaker
On Friday, Republican House Judiciary Committee staff released a report titled “FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS: WHAT THEIR DISCLOSURES INDICATE ABOUT THE POLITICIZATION OF THE FBI AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.” The report is 50 pages long, but it also includes an appendix of approximately 1,000 pages consisting of letters Judiciary Committee members have written to DOJ and the FBI, requesting information that, I take it, has rarely if ever been forthcoming. The report’s contents
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October 12, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Scott wrote earlier today about the first day’s testimony in the trial of Igor Danchenko. I want to elaborate on the most significant point that emerged from the testimony of FBI supervisory intelligence analyst Brian Auten: the FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million if he could come up with evidence to support the wild allegations in his “dossier” on Donald Trump. This at a time when the FBI knew that,
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