A recently discovered filing in a court case relating to Big Tech censorship revealed that the office of Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs coordinated with Twitter to censor election “misinformation” in January 2021.
The documents (pdf), filed on Aug. 31 in the case Missouri v. Biden and circulated Dec. 3 on Twitter, show that on Jan. 7, 2021, the communications director for Hobbs’ secretary of state office emailed the Center for Internet Security (CIS), a nonprofit cybersecurity organization, to report “Election Related Misinformation.”
The missive flagged two posts from a redacted Twitter account as being “of specific concern to the Secretary of State.”
“These messages falsely assert that the Voter Registration System is owned and therefore operated by foreign actors,” Hobbs’ communication director wrote. “This is an attempt to further undermine confidence in the election institution in Arizona. Thank you for your consideration in reviewing this matter for action.”
A CIS representative then forwarded the email to Twitter for review, writing, “Please see this report below from the Arizona SOS Office.”
A redacted Twitter employee replied that they would “escalate” the matter, and then followed up with a final email to both CIS and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirming that both tweets had been removed.
Hobbs, a Democrat and Arizona’s governor-elect, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her Republican opponent, Kari Lake—who has yet to concede the gubernatorial race to Hobbs—responded to the news on Twitter.
“Conflict of Interest, Coercion, Corruption,” she wrote.
Hobbs, as Arizona’s secretary of state, serves as the state’s chief elections officer. Leading up to election, she made waves when, despite concerns raised by Lake and former Arizona secretaries of state of the appearance of a conflict of interest, she chose not to recuse herself from her oversight duties relating to her own election.
