(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) In the latest batch of Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi confirmed the widely held suspicion that Democrats knowingly lied about the presence of Russian bots that, they claimed, spread disinformation using viral hashtag campaigns.
1.THREAD: Twitter Files #14
THE RUSSIAGATE LIES
One: The Fake Tale of Russian Bots and the #ReleaseTheMemo Hashtag— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
Among the most egregious offenders was Rep. Adam Schiff of California—who was, at the time, the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee.
He, along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, published a letter on Jan. 23, 2018, demanding that Twitter and Facebook conduct an investigation of Russian bot interference, even though Twitter had earlier provided evidence to debunk the claims that the accounts in question were of Russian origin.
9.On January 23rd, 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) published an open letter saying the hashtag “gained the immediate attention and assistance of social media accounts linked to Russian influence operations.” pic.twitter.com/kOC3ab6mXS
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
Schiff notoriously exploited the fact that a memo by Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the House Intelligence chair, had been classified to intentionally dupe the public about its contents and sugges the opposite.
9b. Feinstein/Schiff said the Nunes memo "distorts" classified information, but note they didn't call it incorrect. pic.twitter.com/3ZMVM6XH9p
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
As they had done with the bogus Steele Dossier, the Democrat lawmakers—joined also by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct.—used a flimsily sourced website to support their claims.
The Hamilton 68 site was, in fact, created by a former FBI counterintelligence official Clint Watts.
Twitter’s Global Policy Communications Chief Emily Horne warned that the information coming from the site was false calling it a “comms play” for Watts’s activist front group, the Alliance for Securing Democracy.
14.“I encourage you to be skeptical of Hamilton 68’s take on this, which as far as I can tell is the only source for these stories,” said Global Policy Communications Chief (and future WH and NSC spokesperson) Emily Horne.
She added: “It’s a comms play for ASD.” pic.twitter.com/PZRZC51K7f
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
Even Yoel Roth, the social-media platform’s now disgraced Trust and Safety chief, who oversaw significant censorship campaigns at the behest of the intelligence community, disputed the claims after running an investigation of some of the accounts that Watts had claimed were Russian.
Many were using the hashtag #ReleaseTheMemo to urge government officials to declassify Nunes’s analysis. But instead, the viral hashtag seemed to have been driven by influencers including Wikileaks.
Other organic hashtags likewise faced the same accusation from Democrats anytime an unfavorable story began to trend on the platform.
Twitter warned the Democrat accusers that they stood to “look silly” once the truth emerged.
21.Added another: “It might be worth nudging Blumenthal’s staffer that it could be in his boss’ best interest not to go out there because it could come back to make him look silly.” pic.twitter.com/tP6VZF0PPC
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
But Blumenthal persisted in lodging the false claims and proceeding to make unreasonable demands that Twitter investigate every allegation thereafter.
Finally, Twitter executives came to the conclusiong that Blumenthal’s intention was never to get to the bottom of a serious issue, but simply to grandstand and flex his power over the company.
They likened it to the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, in which the titular mouse keeps making greater and greater demands that snowball on to one another.
26.Eventually Twitter staff realize “Blumenthal isn’t looking for real and nuanced solutions” but “just wants to get credit for pushing us further.” pic.twitter.com/GbMvgeLH6g
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
Nonetheless, Twitter’s own far-left ideology and its desire to avoid political snares led the company to play along and act like it was taking seriously the spurious requests.
That, in turn, fueld lazy mainstream media outlets like the Associated Press, NBC, Politico and Rolling Stone to continue to legitimize the false claims in their breathless coverage of the Russian bots.
None of the Democrats involved ever sought to correct the record, and Nunes alone was left to speak the truth while routinely being ridiculed by fake-news outlets, Taibbi noted.
37. Who did comment? Devin Nunes. "Schiff and the Democrats falsely claimed Russians were behind the Release the Memo hashtag, all my investigative work… By spreading the Russia collusion hoax, they instigated one of the greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in U.S. history.”
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 12, 2023
The release was the latest in the series, based off information from new Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Among the other episodes, the Twitter Files have confirmed collusion between the intel community and social-media companies to censor information in order to push false narratives that helped sway the 2020 election.
They also have revealed that pharmaceutical companies pressured Twitter to censor valid concerns about the untested coronavirus vaccines.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/realbensellers.
