Almost one week ago, Elon Musk (via Matt Taibbi) began blowing the whistle on Twitter’s censorious conduct, specifically regarding the social media company’s handling of The New York Post’s bombshell report on Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell and its contents.
The “Twitter Files” revealed many realities inside Twitter that conservatives already believed to be true, including a relationship between Twitter and the “Biden team” and DNC that saw Democrats flag specific tweets for Twitter to delete from the platform in October 2020.
The warm relationship between Twitter and Democrats is unsurprising, but the first dump of Twitter Files also showed that internally, Twitter employees were scrambling to figure out how they were going to handle or explain its enforcement decisions against Twitter users who shared or talked about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Described by employees as “freelancing” it, there were questions about whether the “hacked materials” policy cited at Twitter actually applied to Hunter Biden’s laptop since there was no evidence or law enforcement confirmation that Hunter’s files were hacked. Even Democrat U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna reached out to Twitter to express his concern with the company’s censorship of the story.
But, instead of heeding the concerns of Twitter employees or warnings from lawmakers, Twitter continued actively suppressing talk of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its content based on the decision, as shown in the Twitter files, of the company’s deputy general counsel.
Citing “caution,” James Baker said that Twitter should continue censoring the Hunter Biden story. As I pointed out on ‘Fox News at Night’ as the Twitter Files were still being digested last Friday, Twitter’s lawyer was straight from the Democrat’s swampy deep state where he previously served as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s general counsel.
In his previous work at the FBI and within the federal government, Baker became known as a controversial henchman of sorts, being involved in the Russia collusion hoax and Steele Dossier mess that arose from supposed “hard proof” that Trump was working with the Russians via server communications between the Trump organization and the Russian Alfa-Bank. Baker ended up being dealt merely a forced resignation over alleged leaks to reporters. Naturally, as a deep state Democrat, Baker eventually failed-up into the deputy general counsel position at Twitter.
That revelation — paired with evidence in the Twitter Files that then-CEO Jack Dorsey was unaware of what his employees were doing to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story — raised even more questions about who was really in charge and Twitter and just how closely it was operating with swampy Democrats who worked to use the social media platform as another wing of Democrats’ partisan political machine.
But then more information — damning about the old Twitter’s structure but ultimately unsurprising — came to light this week as the mainstream media continued to ignore the Twitter Files.
While Musk was working on the release of the second installment of Twitter Files to be published via Bari Weiss, it was discovered that the Twitter Files were vetted and prepared by someone in Twitter’s legal department named “Jim.” As good journalists do, Weiss reached out to Twitter to confirm the identity of Jim.
It turns out that the Twitter lawyer preparing documents for release in Musk’s whistle-blowing efforts on the censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop and other issues is none other than James “Jim” Baker, the former FBI general counsel who himself worked to suppress the Hunter Biden story at Twitter.
It’s a classic deep state move — feign transparency by releasing internal information, some of which raises eyebrows, while withholding other information that would be truly damning, illegal, or unethical. And that may be exactly what Baker was doing in his vetting of the Twitter Files, though we won’t know for sure until Weiss’ release of additional documents occurs that may include more on how the social media company tried to keep information about the Bidens from spreading.
Following Weiss’ discovery of the clear conflict of interest to have someone involved in a situation that’s being exposed in charge of vetting the information that gets released. Elon Musk took quick action and “exited” Baker while Weiss and Taibbi are continuing to review the Twitter Files for continued disclosure.
What Musk did is instructive for Republicans the next time they’re in power over the DC swamp: Disclose everything related to controversy and alleged wrongdoing to trusted partners in truth-telling, and kick those who have previously and continue to try obfuscating the truth to protect their power straight to the curb.
Sure, Musk has more leeway to make such decisions as the new boss at Twitter than a president of the United States has, but the principle is sound as far as it can go. If there’s wrongdoing, it will be exposed and can be corrected and/or punished. If there was no funny business going on, then concerns will be assuaged. But under no circumstance should the swamp creatures that hide the truth, work to undermine oversight, or scramble to prevent accountability be allowed to continue covering for themselves and their fellow deep staters as gatekeepers for information that goes public.
The status quo of ‘we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing by us’ can’t continue. Providing accountability and transparency is an uphill battle, as Musk and Taibbi have already discovered. But it’s necessary if Americans’ trust in government and other institutions is to be rehabbed at all. So far, Elon Musk has presented a great strategy to follow in other arenas, and Republicans would be wise to do so, even if just as the majority party in the House of Representatives beginning in the new year.