By David Ingram -
NBC News
Elon Musk, the chief executive of Twitter, retweeted a series of tweets on Friday revealing alleged internal documents about how the company maneuvered to control the controversy unleashed over Hunter Biden in 2020, blocking users and tweets on the subject.
In a long thread of tweets, writer Matt Taibbi said he received "thousands of internal documents" from sources on Twitter — and Musk himself tweeted "Here we go!!!
🍿🍿” when he started the thread.
NBC News, sister network to Noticias Telemundo, has not seen or verified those files.
The thread came after Musk teased that Twitter's past inner workings would be exposed.
On Monday, he said that the "Twitter Files on the Suppression of Free Speech" would be published soon, adding that the public has a right to know about past discussions.
As of early Friday afternoon, the thread revealed mostly internal and external deliberations -- including with Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. -- over Twitter's move to restrict access to the article.
Khanna appeared to question Twitter's reasoning for blocking the story.
[Twitter blocks rapper Kanye West's account for posting a swastika]
Musk tweeted in response to one of Taibbi's tweets: "Ro Khanna is great"
In response to a request for comment, Khanna said he believes the Constitution and the First Amendment are "sacred."
Elon Musk generates mass resignations on Twitter after sending this email
Nov 19, 202201:42
"As a congressman representing Silicon Valley, I felt that Twitter's actions were a violation of First Amendment principles, so I raised those concerns," Khanna said in a statement.
“Our democracy can only thrive if we are open to a marketplace of ideas and to engage with people we disagree with,” she added.
Taibbi's characterization of the documents was a strong criticism of the way Twitter's previous management - before it was bought by Musk in October for $44 billion - handled the situation and ran the company, claiming without clear evidence that it was biased towards the Democrats.
[Twitter “verified” Jesus Christ and other impostors before freezing their payment service for the blue badge]
Many of the details released Friday night were already public, including steps the company took surrounding the October 2020 New York Post article alleging it had a "steamy email" between Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian businessman.
However, the revelations are almost guaranteed to stir up the debate about social media censorship and free speech online.
Shortly after Taibbi's last post on Friday night's thread, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy of California tweeted: “In 32 days, the new House Republican Majority will get answers for the American people and the accountability they deserve."
The emails shared by Taibbi show a long-running internal debate among Twitter employees -- including at least two former employees of Republican senators -- over how best to handle the New York Post story and how to talk about that handling with the public and lawmakers.
Taibbi also included screenshots of request emails from unidentified individuals in the Biden Administration, asking contacts on Twitter to take action against certain tweets.
Versions of those tweets seen by NBC News in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which archives web pages, show that many, if not all, of the tweets in question violated Twitter's rules.
At least three of them included photos of Hunter Biden.
[Elon Musk assures that he had nothing to do with the decision to return the Twitter account to Kanye West]
Taibbi, a veteran magazine journalist who now writes a newsletter, is known for his provocative style and colorful twists.
In 2009, he coined the term "giant vampire squid" to describe the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Musk and Taibbi have maintained a friendly relationship on Twitter.
In May, Musk shared an edit of Taibbi's newsletter that criticized California regulators.
The controversy involving Twitter and Hunter Biden dates back to October 2020, weeks before the presidential election between Joe Biden and then-President Donald Trump.
The New York Post article dated October 14, 2020, quoted what it said was an email addressed to the younger Biden, thanking him for introducing the businessman to his father, who was vice president at the time. .
Hunter Biden at the White House, in Washington, on Monday, November 21, 2022. Carolyn Kaster / AP
The email was part of a cache of documents provided to the New York Post by Trump's then-personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who said he obtained the files from a laptop left at a Delaware computer store.
At the time, Giuliani refused to share a copy of the hard drive with NBC News.
Both Twitter and Facebook mobilized to limit the dissemination of the article.
Twitter blocked people from tweeting the link to the New York Post article or sending it in private messages, a highly unusual move for the social media app.
Facebook said it was "winding down" the article's distribution while third-party fact checkers reviewed it.
[Elon Musk studies the return of Vine, the social network of short videos to compete with TikTok]
Twitter has a policy against distributing "hacked materials," a product of how political operatives stole and then leaked Democrats' emails during the 2016 election. And it cited that policy as one of the reasons it had frozen Twitter. Article.
Musk has previously criticized Twitter's actions during the 2020 election. In April this year, he said it had been "obviously incredibly inappropriate" for Twitter to freeze the New York Post account.
Elon Musk in Warsaw, Poland on November 30, 2022.STRS / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Taibbi wrote that he has not seen any evidence of government involvement in Twitter's move to block the New York Post story.
The possible role of the FBI in the tech companies' decision to limit the reach of the New York Post article came to light in August, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an interview with
podcaster
Joe Rogan that the The FBI did not specifically warn about the laptop, but that it "fit the pattern" of what the bureau had warned about.
The FBI said in response that it provides companies with "foreign threat indicators" but cannot ask the companies to take action.
Shortly after the New York Post published the article, Twitter pointed to concerns about pirated material as the reason for blocking the story.
[Kanye West buys conservative social network Parler after being banned from Twitter for his anti-Semitic posts]
“We do not want to encourage hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as a distribution for potentially illegally obtained materials,” Twitter stated on October 14, 2020, in an explanation of its moves.
But by the end of the day on October 14, the day the New York Post article was published, Twitter was already expressing some concern about the way the company had handled the situation.
Jack Dorsey, then CEO of Twitter, said it was "unacceptable" to have blocked links to the article without knowing why.
[Donald Trump already has his Twitter account active but has not used it yet]
Zuckerberg separately defended his company's actions, claiming they were on high alert for election interference after Russian operatives used Facebook in 2016 to try to swing that year's presidential election.
Zuckerberg cited FBI warnings about election-related threats, though none about Hunter Biden in particular.
Republican lawmakers have since cited tech companies' handling of the story as evidence of alleged bias against their party, though the opposite has often been true.
Earlier this year, a Giuliani representative gave NBC News a copy of the laptop's hard drive, and an NBC News analysis of the drive, an iCloud account and documents from two Senate committees showed Hunter Biden and his company. they had received about $11 million through his work as a lawyer and board member with a Ukrainian company accused of bribery and his work with a Chinese businessman who has also been accused of fraud.
Hunter Biden has said that federal prosecutors in Delaware are investigating his taxes.
He has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing.
