Friend,
Critics may say what they wish about the eccentric Elon Musk, but they can hardly minimize the man's accomplishments. His Tesla has advanced transportation and environmental protections. SpaceX might, as speculated, someday ensure the survival of the human species. Now, with Musk's purchase of Twitter and his release of the Twitter Files, the world’s richest man could, as he reasoned, "save civilization." Future historians may look back on 2022 as an inflection point, a crossroads in time when one man adjusted humankind's trajectory toward darkness onto a course to the light.
Despite the legacy media’s panicked efforts to smear and bury the Twitter Files, their drip-drip release has unleashed a Victoria Falls of evidence. As the links below show, Twitter’s backchannel communications are exposing governmental abuses of power on a monumental scale.
On Christmas Day, Madeline Hubbard with Just the News reported, “The latest installment of the ‘Twitter Files’ revealed that the FBI acted ‘as a doorman’ for the social media giant to other government agencies, including the CIA, the State Department and the Pentagon.”
For the record, the CIA is supposed to operate outside the nation’s borders. Not only was the FBI coordinating the control of information for public consumption among the CIA, State Department, and Pentagon, but also unnamed 'Other Govt Agencies,' were involved. Three-letter agencies throughout the federal government were actively stifling public discourse that could de-rail their political agendas.
A government of the elite
To anyone tempted to defend this control of discourse as for the public good, ponder this: Suppressed discussion included the Hunter Biden laptop, whose contents threatened to expose what many describe as the Biden crime syndicate and thereby hand the presidential election to Donald Trump.
Criticism of the U.S. support of a corrupt Ukrainian government.
Silenced.
Doubts about the origins of COVID-19?
Squelched.
Criticisms of COVID lockdowns? Vaccines? Mandates?
Axed. Axed. Axed.
The cone of silence quelled cries of alarm at the stunning loss of American lives in Afghanistan and the U.S.’s forfeiture of billions of dollars of high-tech military equipment to the Taliban and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Questions related to the integrity of the nation’s elections were rendered unsharable, or their authors were banned.
Put simply, covert leftist censorship pulled the levers of the government's propaganda machine. In the process, these totalitarian wannabes trampled on the U.S. Constitution and on We the People's rights.
Twitter, the tip of the iceberg
On December 22, Federalist writer Victoria Marshall reported, “After a series of ‘Twitter Files’ detailed Twitter’s extensive collusion with the FBI and federal agencies to control public discourse before Elon Musk took over the tech giant, the FBI on Wednesday tried to salvage its reputation by spinning the revelations as normal procedure.”
“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the FBI said in a statement to Fox News. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers.”
Put another way, the FBI’s best defense was to claim, We didn’t exert totalitarian control over just Twitter, we exerted it as we always do to media as a matter of standard operating procedure. Nothing to see here.
So, the government's overreach extended well beyond the bounds of Twitter into other social media companies. It wheedled its creepy tentacles into big tech giants, into print and television, into online media. Government censors latched their 1984-style suction cups onto the nation’s free-speech lifeblood and drained it, much as nineteenth-century physicians attached leeches to their languishing patients on the auspices of sucking out so-called blood poisons.
FBI in freefall
As a result of these and other stories breaking from the Twitter Files, the renowned Victor Davis Hanson of American Greatness wrote,
“The FBI is now, tragically, in freefall. The public is at the point, first, of asking what improper or illegal behavior will the bureau not pursue, and what, if anything, must be done to reform or save a once great but now discredited agency.”
No wonder the Left’s alarm
Fallout from Musk’s release of the Twitter Files is taking on a life of its own. Twitter is unique among major social platforms in that outside researchers can access a real-time data feed of every tweet ever sent. The truth will out. Real Clear Politics reported, “In one of the company’s most controversial moderation decisions since Musk took ownership, Twitter suspended a group of journalists last week, before restoring some of them just days later, leaving others banished and suspending new ones. Musk’s explanation, delivered after the fact with little specificity, was that he was only silencing journalists who were engaged in 'doxxing' behavior that put his own family at risk." “What was undeniably true was that only days earlier, the legacy media had largely ignored the revelations of the recent ‘Twitter Files.’”
Seems the old guard at the likes of the Washington Post and New York Times didn't take well to having the cone of silence placed over their heads. On Dec. 22, the NYT.com published Twitter Is Said to Have Struggled Over Revealing U.S. Influence Campaign.
Musk, most likely by design, succeeded in capturing their attention.
On the legislative front, the U.S.House is calling for investigations, and talk of a Church Committee is afoot. Lawyers are shaking their scabbards.
State governors like Ron DeSantis are chomping at the bit to take action.
The sleeping giant of Federalism has awakened
Resistance was futile. Releasing the Twitter Files appears to have jumpstarted the systems of checks and balances into gear. As we head into the new year, there is hope that, due to Musk's calculated efforts, free speech will be restored, and a representative government of the people and for the people will return to its corner.
Merry Christmas and may 2023 be filled with integrity,
Patrice Johnson, chair
The Twitter Files, Part Nine: Twitter & 'Other Govt Agencies' Matt Taibbi, Twitter
Twitter-Intel Ties Raise Questions About Big Tech Benjamin Weingarten, NY Post
2022: The Year in Review Bevan, Cannon & Walworth, RCP Takeaway
The FBI's Tragic Freefall Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness
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