Elon Musk vows ‘more smoking guns’ to be revealed by Twitter after Hunter Biden bombshell
One day after Twitter’s new CEO Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi released a bombshell report on political censorship at Twitter, Musk said that there are “more smoking guns” he plans to reveal in the future.
He said he hopes that by showing how Twitter worked to suppress information — like it did with The Post’s expose on Hunter Biden’s laptop in 2020 — it will force mainstream media to be more committed to the truth.
“We’re just gonna put all the information out there try to get a clean slate we will be iteratively better and it will force other media companies to also be more truthful or else they’ll lose their readership,” Musk said in a live Twitter Space Question and Answer session, which tens of thousands of users tuned into.
On Friday, Taibbi published a shocking collection of internal communications revealing that Democrat insiders communicated with Twitter to suppress The Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
Musk said Saturday that he believes there are “more smoking guns” at Twitter he wants to share with the public — but said it’s not clear when the information will be released.
However, he noted that he has “not been poring over the Twitter files personally,” he said, instead leaving that to Taibbi and journalist Bari Weiss.
Despite not reviewing the documents themselves, Musk said it appears there were “a very different standard applied to Republican candidates in the US versus a Democrat candidates,” on Twitter.
“I’m not saying this is definitely the case. There appears to have been a double standard where Democrats were not censored … and Republicans were and it was and I think this is frankly obvious to anyone who uses Twitter.
“It’s frankly the the behavior that is to be expected from an organization that is that is based in San Francisco which is far left,” he said, noting that political contributions from Twitter were over 99% Democrat.
“Well, what kind of viewpoint would you expect people to have then? It’s the behavior you would expect from a company that is essentially a distillation of San Francisco politics.”
Twitter’s former chief censor Vijaya Gadde will come under Judiciary Committee scrutiny when Republicans take control of the House in January — as fallout from the first installment of Musk’s findings of political favoritism and censorship at Twitter continues to mount.
Catch up on Twitter’s censorship of The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story
- Happening now: Email found on Hunter’s laptop reveals Joe Biden named in 2017 message seeking China natural gas deal
- Our original report: Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad
- Editorial: Why has the public turned against “experts”? Twitter’s secret shadow bans show why
- Dorsey bows out: Musk warns Dorsey evidence of Twitter censorship “may have been deleted”
- Musk’s musings: Elon Musk: Twitter blacklisting proves “the inmates were running the asylum”
“We’re tracking Vijaya Gadde’s role in the suppression of the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop,” a committee spokesperson told The Post on Saturday. “We absolutely plan to investigate this more. Stay tuned.”
Gadde, 48, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust, played a “key role” in suppressing The Post’s Hunter Biden coverage, Taibbi wrote after his review of the social media company’s internal communications for a report he called “The Twitter Files.”
The ex-exec, who also played an instrumental role in the company’s decision to ban former President Trump from the platform, was fired by Musk in October shortly after he purchased the company for $44 billion.
Gadde — who landed an influential administration post in an advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency while still a Twitter employee — reportedly earned $17 million in 2021.
Musk reveled in the traffic that Taibbi’s Friday document drop was generating for his newly acquired site.
“Twitter servers are running at Warp 9!!” he exulted early Saturday.
Taibbi’s report revealed that a small group of top-level execs chose to label The Post’s story about the son of then-candidate Joe Biden as “hacked material” without any evidence — and repeatedly bowed to Democrats’ demands to excise all discussion of the explosive report from the site.
According to Taibbi, the social media company “took extraordinary steps to suppress” the laptop story, removing links to the expose shared by users and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.”
In other news:
- Mainstream journalists — in lockstep with Democratic strategists — smeared Taibbi as a “sad” “fraud” for working with Musk to substantiate the internal documents. “Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth,” Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali posted. “Matt Taibbi always was, and still remains, a fraud,” wrote Dem pollster Matt McDermott.
- Both the New York Times and the Washington Post refused so far to cover the Twitter firestorm, earning Musk’s ire. “The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far-left politicians,” Musk wrote on Twitter after radio host Clay Travis pointed out the glaring absence from the two newspapers’ websites.
- Furious Republicans blasted Twitter’s partisan censors. “Leftists hate your freedom,” tweeted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who compared their suppression to that of the Chinese Communist Party. “They want to silence all dissent.” Meanwhile, tech investor and GOP donor Peter Thiel cheered the report. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant!” Thiel told The Post.
- Actor James Woods, who Taibbi found was targeted for Twitter censorship at the behest of the Democratic National Committee, threatened to lead a class action lawsuit against the social media giant and the DNC. “How would you like to fund a class action suit for those who were suppressed?” Woods asked Musk in a tweet that thanked the billionaire for making the documents public. “I’ll be happy to be lead plaintiff.”
- Twitter may have interfered in another national election as well, Musk said: the Oct. 30 contest in Brazil, where left wing stalwart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ousted far right President Jair Bolsonaro.. “It’s possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left wing candidates,” Musk tweeted early Saturday in response to a user who asked him to find out whether the platform had meddled in any other nation’s politics.
- French President Emmanuel Macron met with Musk during his tour of New Orleans late Friday, pressing him to reinforce Twitter’s content moderation. “We will work with Twitter to improve the protection of children online,” Macron posted. “Elon Musk confirmed it to me today. Let’s better protect our children online.”
Musk, 51, the world’s richest man, purchased Twitter last month in order to transform it into a haven for free speech.
Musk has insisted full disclosure is needed on the company’s controversial choice to block The Post’s bombshell report about President Biden’s son ahead of the 2020 election — and has been teasing the release of the internal files for days.
After Musk’s blockbuster takeover of Twitter, its top advertisers fled the site, devastating the company’s revenue. On Saturday, Musk confirmed that Apple — the platform’s historically and presently biggest advertiser — had returned, among others.
“I think we’re starting to see a lot of other advertisers also resume their spending,” Musk said in the Twitter Space Q&A. “I think that the problem is that they would read all these stories in the media and then think that they were true and they’re not true.”
Musk said advertisers are returning as “it’s becoming clear that the media stories about Twitter being some sort of, like, right wing hellscape, which it absolutely isn’t,” are unfounded, adding that he’s “cautiously optimistic about the future” of the company.
