[FoxNews] Matt Taibbi also reports on the Trump State Department's eagerness to engage with Twitter.
It was revealed in the latest "Twitter Files," that the office of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., made requests for Twitter to suspend certain accounts.
In the second of two back-to-back batches of Elon Musk's "Twitter Files" shared on Tuesday by Substack writer Matt Taibbi, he reported that Twitter "received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned."
An example he shared was one sent in November 2020 by Schiff's office, who contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take action regarding "alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists" against Schiff's staff, including aide Sean Misko.
"Remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service- to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content," the request to Twitter read. "Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies."
Schiff's office also requested that Twitter "stop the spread of future misinformation on Twitter" regarding committee staff and "label and reduce the visibility of any content."
"Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff's request at the time," Taibbi wrote, noting Twitter's responses to Schiff's office repeatedly saying "we don't do this." As Taibbi noted, though, Sperry was later suspended.
Schiff's office did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
Much of the twelfth installment of the "Twitter Files" was focused on eagerness from the State Department's Global Engagement Center (GEC), which Taibbi described as a "fledgling analytic/intelligence" arm to participate in guiding Twitter's moderation of content and how it often used the media to clash with the tech giant beginning in February 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic was underway.
"The GEC flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA,’" Taibbi wrote. "State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode 'led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.' ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin."
Yoel Roth, Twitter's then-head of trust and safety, push backed at GEC's own analysis allegedly based on data from the Department of Homeland Security that "nearly 250,000" Chinese-linked accounts were peddling propaganda and disinformation about COVID. Roth saw GEC's report partly as "an attempt to insert themselves" into conversations Twitter has had with intel agencies including the DHS and FBI.
The GEC eventually agreed to "loop in Twitter" before going public with its own findings, but the conflict continued between Twitter and the State Department arm. As Taibbi reported, tech giants including Twitter, Facebook and Google opposed the GEC's inclusion in government talks. Roth at the time saw the GEC as "political" unlike the FBI and DHS. Roth also saw "major risks" for Twitter being chummy with the GEC "especially as the election heats up," according to an email.
Roth at the time saw the GEC as "political" unlike the FBI and DHS. That, right there, tells you what a willing fool Roth was
Roth further expressed his distrust in the "press-happy" GEC to FBI special agent Elvis Chan, who had constant communication with Twitter. Taibbi wrote, "Chan reassured him it would be a ‘one-way’ channel, and ‘State/GEC, NSA, and CIA have expressed interest in being allowed on in listen mode only.'"
Taibbi continued quoting the FBI agent, "'We can give you everything we’re seeing from the FBI and USIC agencies," Chan explained, but the DHS agency CISA ‘will know what’s going on in each state.' He went on to ask if industry could 'rely on the FBI to be the belly button of the USG.’ They eventually settled on an industry call via Signal."
"Twitter was taking requests from every conceivable government body, beginning with the Senate Intel Committee (SSCI), which seemed to need reassurance Twitter was taking FBI direction. Execs rushed to tell "Team SSCI" they zapped five accounts on an FBI tip," Taibbi tweeted with screenshots of emails. "Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more."
"Twitter honored almost everyone else’s requests, even those from GEC – including a decision to ban accounts like @RebelProtests and @BricsMedia because GEC identified them as ‘GRU-controlled’ and linked ‘to the Russian government,’ respectively," Taibbi added.
By 2020, requests from the intel community "came in bulk" and carried on into the Biden administration. According to Taibbi, one memo from the 2020 showed that Twitter was "warned about publicity surrounding a book by former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokhin, who alleged ‘corruption by the U.S. government’ – specifically by Joe Biden."
In the eleventh installment reported earlier in the day by Taibbi, Twitter had undergone a "PR crisis" following the 2016 presidential election as it was being pressured by Democrats to take action on alleged Russian influence on the platform as Facebook was doing in 2017, something Taibbi concluded influenced Twitter to embrace the intel community. 
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