Musk's Hunter Biden Twitter Reveal Comes in Barrage of Matt Taibbi Tweets

Twitter CEO Elon Musk turned to journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday to reveal the decision- making behind the platform's suppression of a 2020 article from the New York Post regarding Hunter Biden's laptop.

In October 2020, Twitter blocked users from sharing a report from the Post that alleged Joe Biden, then running for the White House against former President Donald Trump, had used his former position as vice president to benefit the business interests of his son, Hunter Biden. However, ongoing investigations by House Republicans have yet to prove that President Biden was involved in any potential missteps by his son.

Twitter received a slew of backlash for its censorship at the time, most notably from Trump's administration. The social media giant had claimed, however, that the Post article breached its Hacked Content Policy, and changed its approach to such content shortly after the decision.

In a 41-tweet thread posted by Taibbi on Twitter Friday, screenshots of past email exchanges among company employees showed that there was some confusion in the call to block the article from being distributed. In some conversations, past employees questioned if the article was really in violation of the company's policies.

Internal Twitter Tensions

According to Taibbi's thread, the decision to block the article was made under the direction of Vijaya Gadde, former head of Legal, Public Policy & Trust and Safety at Twitter. But in one screenshot, former U.S. policy Communication Manager Trenton Kennedy writes that he is "struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe."

The decision was reportedly based on what several of Taibbi's sources called a "general warning from federal law enforcement" about the possibility of the Post article stemming from foreign interference. The story was originally dismissed by several Democrats in 2020 as a "Russian disinformation operation," but as Newsweek previously reported, there has been no evidence to prove these claims.

"The problem with the 'hacked materials' ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack," Taibbi concluded toward the end of his report. "But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a 'whirlwind' 24-hour, company-wide mess."

Taibbi's thread also showed screenshots of Biden's campaign team requesting that the company "review" specific tweets in 2020. The report says that such requests from outside sources, whether celebrities or political organizations, became "routine" as Twitter attempted to combat issues like misinformation on its site. Taibbi also noted that both Republicans and Democrats "had access to these tools."

Musk Promises 'Episode 2' on Saturday

Taibbi's barrage of tweets started nearly three hours after Musk first announced that the information was forthcoming, and took about two hours for him to complete. The CEO had also promised to host a live Q&A regarding the report, but has since pushed it back to Saturday.

According to Taibbi's thread as well, Friday's report was "the first installment in a series," hinting at future examples of how Twitter decided to censor content on its platform.

Musk has repeatedly stated that he acquired the social media giant in order to protect free speech, and has reinstated several accounts that were suspended under Twitter's content rules. According to a tweet late last month, Musk vowed to "establish an even playing field" on Twitter, saying that "far left San Francisco/Berkeley views have been propagated to the world" on the platform.

On Friday, Musk responded to several users' reactions to the "Twitter Files" report, writing that if Twitter's decision to block the Post article "isn't a violation of the Constitution's First Amendment, what is?"

"Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is," Musk added.

He also told users to watch for "Episode 2 of The Twitter Files" sometime Saturday.

Newsweek has reached out to Twitter for comment.