- Matt Taibbi on Friday posted new internal communications from Twitter staffers
- They primarily focus on the months leading up to Trump’s 2021 ban from Twitter
- Show former head of safety Yoel Roth mentioning ‘weekly sync’ with FBI
- One message mentions ‘a report from the FBI concerning 2 tweets’
- Taibbi promised more internal document releases over the weekend
Newly released internal documents suggest that Twitter’s former head of safety Yoel Roth was meeting weekly with the FBI, and show instances of the FBI flagging tweets related to the 2020 election for deletion.
Journalist Matt Taibbi shared the claims in a new Twitter thread on Friday night, one week after sharing the first tranche of so-called ‘Twitter Files’ turned over by the company’s new owner Elon Musk.
In an undated chat on the messaging app Slack that Taibbi says took place after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Roth is seen joking about a mysterious meeting on his calendar, saying it is ‘DEFINITELY not a meeting with the FBI I SWEAR’.
Other messages show Roth mentioning a ‘weekly sync with FBI/DHS/DNI’ regarding election security in October 2020, and a separate mention of ‘a report from the FBI concerning 2 tweets,’ which appeared to relate to false claims about ballot fraud in the November 2020 election.
Roth, who quit his role at Twitter last month following Musk’s takeover, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Friday evening.
Taibbi said the new release of files was part of a three-part series about the events surrounding then-President Donald Trump‘s ban from Twitter, which Musk lifted last month after buying the company.
Prior to the ban, days after the Capitol riot, the internal document also show staffers at the company argued that ‘historical context’ and ‘current climate’ should factor into the decision.
‘The world knows much of the story of what happened between riots at the Capitol on January 6th, and the removal of President Donald Trump from Twitter on January 8th,’ Taibbi wrote.
‘We’ll show you what hasn’t been revealed: the erosion of standards within the company in months before J6, decisions by high-ranking executives to violate their own policies, and more, against the backdrop of ongoing, documented interaction with federal agencies,’ he added.
Taibbi said that his posts on Friday would cover the period between the 2020 election and January 6, to be followed by additional publications of internal Twitter documents by Michael Shellenberger on Saturday and Bari Weiss on Sunday.
Shellenberger is an author who focuses on contrarian views on climate change, and Weiss is an independent journalist who runs the Substack newsletter Common Sense, which she recently rebranded as The Free Press.
Developing story, more to follow.
