The right-wing Trump acolytes love a conspiracy theory, many of which they refuse to believe are nonsense even when they’ve been repeatedly debunked, conspiracies like Pizzagate, the “stolen” 2020 presidential election, the “death panels” created by the Affordable Care Act, the Jade Helm conspiracy, QAnon, and the “crisis actors” involved in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting are just a few examples.
The latest is being referred to by right-wing followers as “the Twitter files,” or a trove of screenshots shared on Twitter by new CEO Elon Musk, shared by “journalists” that Musk selected to share the “files” with.
FBI issues statement blasting the Twitter Files, calls the journalists posting the information “conspiracy theorists”. pic.twitter.com/jNChBq7fuf
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) December 21, 2022
The screenshots of emails between Twitter employees and executives, according to the right-wing conspiracy, are out-of-context communications spun to insinuate some sort of collaboration between the FBI and Twitter executives to suppress conservatives and hide damning information about Democrats, particularly President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.
After a laptop purported to be Hunter Biden’s showed up in the hands of a computer repair shop owner, who just happened to be friends with discredited Trump lawyer and former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani, a decision was made to prevent the story from being spread before it could be investigated. If the files were actually taken from a laptop owned by Biden’s son was legitimate, publishing information found on the computer was a form of doxxing, which violates the terms of service that govern the social media website.
According to NPR:
‘That’s all been publicly known and widely reported on over the past two years. The material shared by Musk paints a more vivid picture of the scramble inside Twitter to figure out what to do — but does not fundamentally alter that picture. And it does not show any evidence that there was government involvement in the move to block the New York Post story, despite assertions by Musk and others.’
The FBI responded on Wednesday to the growing conspiracy theory, calling it “misinformation.”
‘The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the FBI told The Post in a statement in response to the latest jaw-dropping revelations from the “Twitter Files. As evidenced in the correspondence,” the bureau went on, “the FBI provides critical information to the private sector in an effort to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public,” the statement concluded. “It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.’
While the response was met with right-wing anger, who insisted that the FBI was lying to cover their own tracks, more sensible minds prevailed in the comment sections. Read some of Twitter users’ responses below:
