Tipsheet

'Insanely Illegal': We're Learning More About the Biden FTC's War Against Twitter

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  July 13, 2023 12:00 PM

Earlier this year, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report outlining how the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had targeted Twitter following Elon Musk's takeover with harassment and bureaucratic red tape. 

But now, thanks to a new legal motion filed on Thursday, we know the FTC's harassment of Elon Musk's Twitter was even greater than previously thought and looked more like an ideologically driven shakedown than a legitimate inquiry based on justifiable concerns. 

The motion for a protective order filed by Musk's X Corp, which owns Twitter, "asks the Court to rein in an investigation that has spiraled out of control and become tainted by bias, and to terminate a misfit consent order that no longer can serve any proper equitable purpose."

Specifically, the motion seeks to have the Court terminate the FTC's consent order imposed on Twitter in 2022 as Musk took the reins following the completion of his deal to buy the social network and take it private.  

According to the filing, "the FTC has engaged in conduct so irregular and improper that Ernst & Young (“EY”)—the independent assessor designated under a consent order between Twitter and the FTC to evaluate the company’s privacy, data protection, and information security program—'felt as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the engagement before it had started.'"

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X Corp's motion notes that "[r]ecent sworn testimony details how the FTC, through a series of interactions with EY immediately after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, attempted to co-opt EY’s independent assessment in order to generate evidence of 'deficiencies in Twitter’s privacy and information security program.'" 

"These efforts included dictating to EY 'very specific types of procedures that they expected' EY to perform and '[conveying] expectations … about what th[e] results should be before [EY] had even begun any procedures,'" the motion states.

Apparently, the FTC's "expectations" were more like demands, causing EY's leadership to worry that they might draw the ire of the FTC themselves if they did not complete the assessment as the Biden FTC desired.

"The FTC was so 'adamant' with EY, conveying that 'this is absolutely what you will do and this is going to occur, and you’ll produce a report at the end of the day' that would be negative about Twitter, that senior EY leaders feared that, if EY resigned as the independent assessor, '[t]he FTC [would] take[] exception to [EY’s] withdrawal and create[] ‘other’ challenges for EY over time.'"

As X Corp's motion depicts, the federal government is weaponized to go after ideological and political dissenters and platforms that allow them to express their views — and even uses fear of retribution as a bludgeon to force private entities to accomplish its aims. 

Musk chimed in after the motion was filed, slamming the Biden FTC for engaging in "[i]nsanely illegal overreach."