Twitter Files: Staffers Had to 'Triage' Multiple FBI Requests on Tackling 'Misinformation' Accounts

The publication of Twitter Files kicked off on December 2 after a pledge by the social platform's chief executive Elon Musk to release the company's internal dialogue on the suppression of the New York Post's exclusive Hunter Biden laptop story.

The recently released sixth and seventh batches of the Twitter Files claimed that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had issued instructions to censor specific tweets and accounts for "violating" the company's terms of service.

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who published the latest installment, tweeted that the FBI appear to have inundated Twitter with so many requests to grapple with obscure accounts posting "misinformation" that the platform's employees "had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them."

Taibbi also revealed some emails that cite cases in which FBI executives had gone to extreme lengths to “validate theories of foreign influence” to justify the requests.

The writer accused the bureau of acting as "doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship."

"Encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency]. The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the [FBI's] Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors - from local cops to media to state governments," he tweeted.

Taibbi went on to argue that Twitter "had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track; is today the DOD [Department of Defense], and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying."

He claimed that "a chief end result was that thousands of official 'reports' flowed to Twitter from all over, through the FITF and the FBI's San Francisco field office."

The remarks come after the FBI responded the Twitter Files disclosures by arguing in an interview with a US media outlet that it didn't request "any action" on specific tweets. According to the bureau, it didn't give Twitter employees "specific instructions or details regarding the Hunter Biden laptop story."

When asked whether the FBI used back channel communications with Twitter employees to suppress or spike the laptop saga, the FBI officials said, "We did no request anything of the sort."

Taibbi has been releasing the Twitter Files in coordination with the platform’s new CEO Elon Musk and other journalists, including Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger. The disclosures have so far revealed information about suppression of reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story and efforts to remove former US President Donald Trump from the platform following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

The content of the laptop, including the First Son’s naked photos and 18+ videos, is part of a federal probe into whether Hunter Biden violated US laws when he engaged in financial and business dealings in foreign countries during his father’s vice presidency between 2009 and 2017.

President Joe Biden has repeatedly dismissed any knowledge of his son’s shady business activities, with most US news outlets and social media companies successfully shielding him from the laptop-related revelations ahead of the 2020 presidential election campaign. Earlier this year, however, a number of big newspapers made a U-turn, confirming that the laptop was authentic and that the damning information contained within the device was genuine.