Elon Musk Expose; Twitter Bury Hunter Biden Corruption Report
Elon Musk reveals that Twitter hid a corruption scandal involving Joe Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election.
When Joe Biden was elected president of the United States in 2020, his son Hunter Biden was the subject of a damning corruption news report that was buried by Elon Musk’s newly acquired company, Twitter.
Mr. Musk had teased the release of “The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself” earlier in the week. He said, “The public deserves to know the truth.”
Author and Substack writer Matt Taibbi posted a lengthy thread of tweets on Friday evening titled “The Twitter Files,” in which he detailed the steps Twitter had taken to prevent the distribution of a New York Post article exposing widespread corruption.
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022
Mr. Musk reposted Mr. Taibbi’s line of tweets, calling it “the first of a series” that demonstrated how Twitter had suppressed free expression before he bought the network.
According to Mr. Taibbi, some high-ranking Twitter staff members, without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey, labeled the report as “hacked material” and blocked access to it for users.
Twitter removed links to the story and warned users that they might be exposed to “unsafe” content. Mr. Taibbi said that “they even blocked its transmission via direct message,” a tool usually reserved for “extreme cases,” such as child pornography.
The news outlet claimed that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, had tried to improperly set up a meeting between his Ukrainian client, Vadym Pozharskyi, and his father, who was serving as vice president at the time, in order to leverage his influence to the benefit of the energy firm in Ukraine.
Former head of legal, policy, and trust Vijaya Gadde was credited with playing a “key role” in preventing the report from being made public on the platform.
Although the conspirators initially blamed the suppression on hacking, saying it was against Twitter policies to disseminate “hacked materials,” Mr. Taibbi wrote, “no one had the guts to reverse it” after they realized the hacking excuse would not work.
While some Twitter users have criticized Mr. Musk for publicizing the private conversations of his employees, others have praised him for resisting the platform’s attempt to stifle free speech.
