FBI personnel reportedly received assignments to “look” for “violations” of Twitter policy, which one former executive at the social media platform noted as “odd,” according to documents published by independent journalist Matt Taibbi Saturday as part of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.”
“Twitter executives noticed the FBI appeared to be aasigning [sic] personnel to look for Twitter violations,” Taibbi tweeted, noting an internal email from legal executive Stacia Cardille to Jim Baker, Twitter’s former deputy general counsel, who was fired by Elon Musk on Dec. 6. (RELATED: Twitter Deleted Posts With Pics Of Trump’s Tweets In Them — Even If They Were Bashing Him)
Almost every report the agency made to Twitter was couched as a “possible terms of service violation,” Taibbi noted.
The volume of FBI requests was noted by employees at the company, who discussed the “odd” situation.
“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” Cardille emailed Baker, according to a document released by Taibbi.
27.“They have some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days,” remarked Cardille. pic.twitter.com/asTlMhs2if
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
“Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies,” Baker, a former FBI attorney who played a key role in the approved surveillance on Carter Page, a Trump campaign aide, based on the now-discredited Steele Dossier, said in another email released by Taibbi.
28. Even ex-FBI lawyer Jim Baker agreed: “Odd that they are searching for violations of our policies.” pic.twitter.com/ini1eMznTA
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
The volume of reports from the FBI and other government agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Defense and even local police departments, prompted some at Twitter to ask if a system could be set up to determine which requests should take priority, according to Taibbi.
24. There were so many government requests, Twitter employees had to improvise a system for prioritizing/triaging them: pic.twitter.com/NRSyM6Z5Vu
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 24, 2022
“Is there some way we can figure out an accommodation to prioritize the reports we escalate, particularly in light of the depreciation of go/electionsescalations?” Cardille emailed to at least five people on Oct. 28, 2020, according to Taibbi.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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