EXCLUSIVE: House Weaponization Committee To Focus On The ‘Twitter Files’ In Second Hearing
The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government plans to shine a spotlight on the FBI misconduct revealed in the “Twitter Files” at the panel’s second hearing, scheduled for next week.
On March 9, lawmakers participating in the bipartisan probe will hear from a trio of writers who were the primary journalists given access to Twitter’s internal records by the company’s new CEO Elon Musk. Substack reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger will testify at the daytime hearing.
In December, Taibbi began to unravel how the company made censorship decisions based on political motivations. Part 6 of the series detailed how Twitter was used as a conduit for the FBI to influence voters ahead of the 2020 election with “constant and pervasive” contact. The FBI partnered with the Silicon Valley tech giant to suppress right-leaning content throughout the presidential election cycle. That suppression appears to be continuing.
Part 7 of the “Twitter Files,” published by Shellenberger, showcased how the FBI launched an operation to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop that implicated President Joe Biden in global influence-peddling schemes. The federal agency even arranged to provide security clearances for Twitter executives and paid $3.4 million in taxpayer dollars to the platform. Jim Baker, Twitter’s then-deputy general counsel who pushed for censorship of the laptop, was a former general counsel at the FBI who was instrumental in creating the Russia hoax.
“Put simply,” explained Federalist Senior Editor John Davidson at Hillsdale College last month, “the ‘Twitter Files’ reveal an unholy alliance between Big Tech and the deep state designed to throttle free speech and maintain an official narrative through censorship and propaganda.”
Subsequent batches of “Twitter Files” revealed the corporate tech giant also rigged the debate on Covid-19 and colluded with other government agencies in this effort, including the Pentagon and the CIA.
The FBI responded to the series of revelations from the “Twitter Files” with an acknowledgment that the agency meddles in “numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.” On Fox News’ “Special Report with Bret Baier” Tuesday night, FBI Director Christopher Wray denied that his agency plays a major role in censorship.
“The FBI does not and is not in the business of functioning as the truth police,” Wray said. “We don’t tell social media companies to censor anything.”
The clip was posted on Twitter by House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York, who serves on the Weaponization Committee. In January, Stefanik pledged in an interview with The Federalist that rooting out deep state corruption was a top priority for the new GOP majority, starting with the new select panel modeled after the Church Committee from the 1970s.
Lawmakers on the select subcommittee, chaired by Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, held their first hearing on Feb. 9. Democrats mocked the proceedings as hyperpartisan despite their participation in the probe — a guarantee Democrats denied to Republicans appointed by then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi established the Select Committee on Jan. 6.
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