“Real people need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.” — Twitter exec Yoel Roth.

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The took a wonderful digital platform designed to share our thoughts and ideas and with the express assistance of the country’s most venerated intel agencies weaponized to destroy our freedoms, our country, our very way of life.

This is bombshell.

The FBI Director is openly bragging at the corrupt WEF about how much the FBI “partners” with Big Tech to censor the Free Speech of Americans

Apparently the Twitter Files didn’t scare them

The FBI seems quite proud of its tyranny https://t.co/t8TC4kq4lh

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) January 19, 2023

McCarthy was right.

1.THREAD: Twitter Files #15
MOVE OVER, JAYSON BLAIR: TWITTER FILES EXPOSE NEXT GREAT MEDIA FRAUD pic.twitter.com/bLRpDpuWql

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

3.“Falsely accuses a bunch of legitimate right-leaning accounts of being Russian bots.” pic.twitter.com/EHRWACkZu4

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

4.“Virtually any conclusion drawn from it will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.” pic.twitter.com/g7Ozzj4ST8

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

5.These are quotes by Twitter executives about Hamilton 68, a digital “dashboard” that claimed to track Russian influence and was the source of hundreds if not thousands of mainstream print and TV news stories in the Trump years. pic.twitter.com/KzCVBCm1hv

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

6.The “dashboard” was headed by former FBI counterintelligence official (and current MSNBC contributor) Clint Watts, and funded by a neoliberal think tank, the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD). pic.twitter.com/XW4JXfAlGM

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

7.The ASD advisory council includes neoconservative writer Bill Kristol, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, ex-Hillary for America chief John Podesta, and former heads or deputy heads of the CIA, NSA, and the Department of Homeland Security. pic.twitter.com/Nug3CpF6iK

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

https://t.co/0yk0y7VlGX outlets for years cited Watts and Hamilton 68 when claiming Russian bots were “amplifying” an endless parade of social media causes – against strikes in Syria, in support of Fox host Laura Ingraham, the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. pic.twitter.com/Qwf5UuKUkb

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

10. The secret ingredient to Hamilton 68’s analytical method? A list: “Our analysis has linked 600 Twitter accounts to Russian influence activities online,” was how the site put it at launch. pic.twitter.com/8ipRLSfzOm

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

11. Hamilton 68 never released the list, claiming “the Russians will simply shut [the accounts] down.” All those reporters and TV personalities making claims about “Russian bots” never really knew what they were describing. pic.twitter.com/q89kuDPIIH

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

12. Twitter executives were in a unique position to recreate Hamilton’s list, reverse-engineering it from the site’s requests for Twitter data.

Concerned about the deluge of Hamilton-based news stories, they did so – and what they found shocked them. pic.twitter.com/qRZyylALUe

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

13.“These accounts,” they concluded, “are neither strongly Russian nor strongly bots.”

“No evidence to support the statement that the dashboard is a finger on the pulse of Russian information ops.”

“Hardly illuminating a massive influence operation.” pic.twitter.com/LMrgWVKe7k

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

14. In layman’s terms, the Hamilton 68 barely had any Russians. In fact, apart from a few RT accounts, it’s mostly full of ordinary Americans, Canadians, and British.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

16. Twitter immediately recognized these Hamilton-driven news stories posed a major ethical problem, potentially implicating them.

“Real people need to know they’ve been unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse,” Roth wrote. pic.twitter.com/JSDowtPzHY

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

18.Yoel Roth wanted a confrontation. “My recommendation at this stage is an ultimatum: you release the list or we do,” he wrote.

However, there were internal concerns about taking on the politically connected Alliance for Securing Democracy. pic.twitter.com/Ejg1VcH73R

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

20.“I also have been very frustrated in not calling out Hamilton 68 more publicly, but understand we have to play a longer game here,” wrote Carlos Monje, the future senior advisor to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. pic.twitter.com/JvfSkyUlfL

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

22.“I’m shocked,” says Sonia Monsour, who as a child lived through civil war in Lebanon. “Supposedly in a free world, we are being watched at many levels, by what we say online.”

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

24. “When I was growing up, my father told me about the McCarthyite blacklist,” says Oregon native Jacob Levich. “As a child it would never have occurred to me that this would come back, in force and broadly, in a way… designed to undermine rights we hold dear.”

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

25. Even Twitter execs were stunned to read who was on the list. Wrote policy chief Nick Pickles about British comic @Holbornlolz: “A wind-up merchant… I follow him and wouldn’t say he’s pro-Russian… I can’t even remember him tweeting about Russia.” pic.twitter.com/kFCqyFjG0l

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

26. I’m listed as a foreign bot?” said conservative media figure Dennis Michael Lynch. “As a proud taxpaying citizen, charitable family man, and honest son of a U.S. Marine, I deserve better. We all do!” pic.twitter.com/HhKE9FPfpO

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

28.What makes this an important story is the sheer scale of the news footprint left by Hamilton 68’s digital McCarthyism. The quantity of headlines and TV segments dwarfs the impact of individual fabulists like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass. pic.twitter.com/zfyjLb5Tkq

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

30.These stories raised fears in the population, and most insidious of all, were used to smear people like Tulsi Gabbard as foreign “assets,” and drum up sympathy for political causes like Joe Biden’s campaign by describing critics as Russian-aligned. pic.twitter.com/3lsuG1ZTrd

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

https://t.co/FAazMoLnTO was a lie. The illusion of Russian support was created by tracking people like Joe Lauria, Sonia Monsour, and Dave Shestokas. Virtually every major American news organization cited these fake tales— even fact-checking sites like Snopes and Politifact. pic.twitter.com/zleliOsckq

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 27, 2023

My response to being on the discredited list. I also should thank @elonmusk for allowing Matt and team to reveal the truth about what’s been happening behind the ugly curtain. pic.twitter.com/zf0cFzghTc

— Dennis Michael Lynch (@realDennisLynch) January 27, 2023

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.