The newest drop of The Twitter Files by Matt Taibbi shows that a U.S. State Department official, Mark Lenzi, a security engineer, urged Twitter, via email, to delete accounts that he claimed were controlled by the Russian government.
“The below are some Russian government controlled accounts that I think you will want to look into and delete,” Mark Lenzi, a security engineer, wrote in a 2020 email to an official at the social media platform.
Lenzi said he was able to ascertain that the accounts were Russian-controlled because of “obvious mistakes (including grammar) that don’t make any sense if you were really a Republican,” as well as “distinct increases in their tweeting around the Iowa caucuses and [New Hampshire] primary.”
Lenzi listed 14 accounts; six have been suspended and one other no longer exists.
TWITTER FILES #16
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
Comic Interlude: A Media Experiment pic.twitter.com/Knp0UjfaMp
2. The #TwitterFiles have revealed a lot: thousands of moderation requests from every corner of government, Feds mistaking both conservatives and leftists for fictional Russians, even Twitter deciding on paper to cede moderation authority to the “U.S. intelligence community”: pic.twitter.com/njklzvX0n1
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
3. These and at least a dozen other newsworthy revelations produced exactly zilch in mainstream news coverage in the last two months: pic.twitter.com/aZO9msFCtM
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
4. Then House hearings were held last week, at which one witness told a story about Donald Trump asking to remove a mean tweet by Chrissy Teigen.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
The press went bananas. Now THAT was big news! pic.twitter.com/8ynYaD0lBb
5. Purely to show the bankruptcy of media in this area, let’s introduce a pair of loud new data points, and see if any press figures at all cover either of them.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
6. If a president freaking out about one tweeter is news, surely a U.S. Senator finking on three hundred-plus of his constituents also must be? pic.twitter.com/dUtLV8TlmV
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
7. Here’s Maine Senator Angus King writing to Twitter to call a slew of accounts “suspicious” for reasons like:
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
“Rand Paul visit excitement”
“Bot (averages 20 tweets a day)”
Being followed by rival Eric Brakey
Or, my personal favorite: “Mentions immigration.” pic.twitter.com/uoJRlfrlOp
8. King’s office declined comment. If Dick Nixon sniffed glue, this is what his enemies list might have looked like: https://t.co/GuH4v7EnoQ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
9. So as not to focus only on Dems or those who caucus with Democrats, here’s a contribution from Republican Mark Lenzi, a State Department official most famous for offering to donate his brain to science after a claimed brush with Havana syndrome. pic.twitter.com/VKlY7oRbp1
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
10. Lenzi wrote to Twitter bluntly asking to remove 14 accounts distinguished among other things by skepticism of Russiagate: “The below are some Russian controlled accounts that I think you will want to look into and delete.” pic.twitter.com/EWmStMTRpr
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
11.A government official, writing from a State department email, asks to “delete” 14 accounts that are engaged in legit speech and for which no evidence is shown they’re Russian controlled or bots (in fact, we at Racket know some of these people). A clear First Amendment issue.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
12. I noted before there were many crazy requests in Twitter records from officials wanting foes taken off Twitter, with Californian Adam Schiff’s effort to ban a reporter and stop “any and all search results” about a staffer making Angus King’s spreadsheet gambit look tame. pic.twitter.com/VVp1lwVI1T
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
13. The fact that mainstream outlets ignored the Schiff story but howled about Teigen shows what they’re about. Responses like this are designed to keep blue-leaning audiences especially focused on moronic partisan spats, obscuring bigger picture narratives.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
14. The real story emerging in the #TwitterFiles is about a ballooning federal censorship bureaucracy that’s not aimed at either the left or the right per se, but at the whole population of outsiders, who are being systematically defined as threats.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
15. Beginning in March, we’ll start using the Twitter Files to tell this larger story about how Americans turned their counterterrorism machinery against themselves, to disastrous effect, through little-known federal agencies like the Global Engagement Center (GEC).
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
16. Until then, if you found yourself on King’s list, please DM or write in to https://t.co/FCrKr0tMPX. I’m on vacation next week, but we’ll mock up “Angus King Told Twitter I Was Suspicious, And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” shirts when I get back.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
17. Thanks to #TwitterFiles contributors like @ShellenbergerMD and @LHFang, and thanks also to Racket researchers. Searches were performed by a third party and material may have been left out.
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) February 19, 2023
