WASHINGTON — House Republicans sent the FBI a “preservation notice” Friday looking for records on the bureau’s efforts to get Twitter to censor content like The Post’s Hunter Biden reporting — citing evidence from recent “Twitter Files” disclosures facilitated by the platform’s latest owner, Elon Musk.
“Newly released information shows the FBI has coordinated extensively with Twitter to censor or otherwise affect content on Twitter’s platform,” incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote to FBI Director Chris Wray.
The letter seeks communications and details of FBI payments to Twitter.
“These documents show that the FBI maintained this relationship with Twitter other than any particularized need for a selected investigation, but as a everlasting and ongoing surveillance operation,” Jordan wrote. “These revelations sadly reinforce our deep concerns concerning the FBI’s misconduct and its hostility to the First Amendment.”
The request for documents broadly seeks evidence of FBI-Twitter relations, and Republicans, who retake the House on Jan. 3, will soon have the ability to compel testimony and documents.
The letter asks for “all documents and communications between or amongst employees or contractors of the FBI referring or referring to content moderation on Twitter’s platform.”
It also seeks “a full and complete accounting of all money transferred by the FBI to Twitter and some other social media company since January 1, 2016, for purported law-enforcement purposes, including the dates, amounts, and specific reasons for every transfer.”
An internal Twitter document published Monday by journalist Michael Shellenberger said that the FBI reimbursed Twitter to the tune of nearly $3.5 million for time spent processing law enforcement requests across the 2020 election.
In an email dated Feb. 10, 2021, an unidentified Twitter worker told then-deputy general counsel Jim Baker — a former top FBI lawyer — and then-general counsel Sean Edgett that “now we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!”
The e-mail explained that Twitter’s Safety, Content & Law Enforcement (SCALE) division had instituted a “reimbursement program” in exchange for devoting staff hours to “processing requests from the FBI.”
Other documents released within the “Twitter Files” project show close relations between the FBI and Twitter.
“Twitter’s internal documents reflect a ‘cozy relationship’ between the FBI and Twitter — quite a few former FBI employees have taken jobs at Twitter — which one journalist described as a ‘unique one-big-happy-family vibe,’” Jordan writes.
“This closeness created, within the words of journalist Matt Taibbi, a ‘master-canine quality of the FBI’s relationship to Twitter.’ For instance, Twitter employees ‘maintain[ed] regular check-ins’ with the FBI as they decided censor certain content. These communications occurred before the 2020 and 2022 elections, and no less than one distinguished FBI official expects that these censorship operations will proceed prematurely of the 2024 elections.”
Taibbi also found that a “surprisingly high number” of the FBI’s missives were requests “for Twitter to take motion on election misinformation,” including obvious jokes.
The letter asks Wray to supply records of communications between the FBI and 23 named Twitter employees believed to be involved in censorship decisions, including former executives Vijaya Gadde and Yoel Roth, who were involved in Twitter’s October 2020 decision to censor The Post’s accurate reporting on documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop that described Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s business relationships in Ukraine and China.
Twitter cited a “hacked materials” policy despite no evidence that the documents were hacked, and likewise locked The Post out of its primary account.
Taibbi reported last week that “between January 2020 and November 2022, there have been over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.”
The House demand also seeks bureau communications with Baker, who worked as Twitter’s deputy general counsel from June 2022 after previously working because the FBI’s general counsel. Musk fired Baker this month for allegedly slow-walking his efforts to release records on past censorship decisions.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), the highest Republican on the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Structure, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, co-signed Jordan’s request for documents, which sets a Jan. 11 deadline.
The FBI didn’t immediately reply to The Post’s request for comment.
The letter informs Wray, “You need to construe this preservation notice as an instruction to take all reasonable steps to stop the destruction or alteration, whether intentionally or negligently, of all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, which can be or could also be aware of this congressional inquiry.”
Some House Republicans are clamoring for the establishment of a House select committee to research the alleged politicization of the FBI and other federal agencies — citing 2020 election efforts to fight “misinformation” in addition to misconduct within the FBI’s investigation of former President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia, which ultimately turned up no evidence of a conspiracy.
The Twitter censorship is an element of a broader controversial effort by federal authorities to police domestic speech.
Then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last yr that the Biden administration was “flagging” alleged COVID-19 misinformation to Facebook for removal. The Intercept reported Oct. 31 that content flagged by the Department of Homeland Security through a special portal included “parody accounts or accounts with virtually no followers or influence.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said following the Facebook-portal revelation, “The First Amendment bars the federal government from deciding for us what’s true or false, online or anywhere.”
