by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 3, 2023) — On Tuesday afternoon, independent journalist Matt Taibbi released a new batch of “Twitter Files” titled, “How Twitter Let the Intelligence Community In” revealing the company’s formation of a “Russia Task Force” in 2017.
In previous releases, Taibbi illustrated extensive, long-running communication between Twitter and the FBI, CIA, DHS, DOJ and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, with the FBI leading requests for account suspensions after identifying alleged violations of Twitter policies.
Taibbi’s disclosure begins with background on Facebook wherein he reported, “In August 2017, when Facebook decided to suspend 300 accounts with ‘suspected Russian origin,’ Twitter wasn’t worried. Its leaders were sure they didn’t have a Russia problem.”
In an internal email dated September 6, 2017, Twitter Vice President of Global Public Policy & Philanthropy Colin Crowell wrote, apparently to 11 colleagues, “Now that the story is out it seems like the focus is on the purchasing of $100K of Facebook ads by these Russian accounts. Understanding that we did not see a big correlation on our platform that FB found on theirs, have we run the analysis of whether the accounts we did have purchased Twitter promoted products?”
In the following screen below Taibbi’s text, an email Crowell sent to then-General Counsel and head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde stating he and others were “in contact with FB” and received “a list” of apparent Russian operatives which Crowell reported did not constitute any “larger patterns” or raise concerns over potential violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service (TOS).
Approximately “25” accounts might be so identified, Crowell told Gadde.
At the time, then-President Donald J. Trump’s 2016 campaign, and Trump himself, were under investigation by Congress as well as Special Counsel Robert Mueller for what the FBI alleged was “collusion” between the campaign and the Russian government with the intent to tip the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.
Those allegations were deemed unsubstantiated by Mueller’s team when it released a final report in March 2019. Rather, the idea of painting Trump as in league with the Russians was later shown to have originated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which together with the DNC used law firm Perkins Coie to hire an intermediary, Fusion GPS, to perform opposition research which it accomplished through its commissioning of former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele.
It was also widely reported that a breach of the DNC’s servers was found by a California-based company hired by the DNC, CrowdStrike, to have been accomplished by Russians.
At the time, Twitter’s intent was to “keep the focus on FB,” Crowell further wrote to his coworkers.
On the same day, Crowell again addressed colleagues to say that a “FB announcement today is going to draw us into conversations w/Congress on this and we need to duly assess what we know and be responsive to inquiries from Capitol Hill.”
As “Important Context,” Crowell added that, “Twitter is not the focus of inquiry into Russian election meddling right now – the spotlight is on FB because FB has better targeting ability than we have for campaign-related advertising; and, because the Trump campaign spent massively on FB during the election compared to what they spent w/us.”
One of the questions to which congressional investigators were seeking answers was, according to Crowell, “was there any direct or indirect coordination with the Trump campaign?”
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The Post & Email will continue its reporting on Taibbi’s latest “Twitter Files” tranche.