Twitter Files: Company Changed Tune on Russia Due to Democrat Pressure

Elon Musk’s Twitter released another batch of internal discussions on Tuesday, which revealed how the company first found little Russian election interference on the platform, then buckled under pressure from Democrats intent on a witch hunt.

According to files published by journalist Matt Taibbi, In August 2017, after Facebook suspended 300 accounts with “suspected Russian origin,” Twitter employees initially decided that they did not have the same problem Mark Zuckerberg’s platform had.

https://t.co/mz7AFonNSn 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.

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

That following month, Twitter informed the U.S. Senate that it only had 22 potential Russian accounts, as well as 179 others with “possible links” to those accounts.

But after Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, held an immediate press conference to denounce Twitter’s report as “frankly inadequate on every level,” Colin Crowell, the company’s Vice President of Public Policy, warned that they could be pressured to “keep producing material.”

“Warner has political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and rest of industry to keep producing material for them,” Crowell wrote in an email to then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey after meeting with congressional leaders.

After that, Twitter deliberately exaggerated the extent of Russian influence on its platform in an attempt to appease the Democrats and media, which appeared to open the door to allow the intel committee to get involved.

“Senate Intel Committee is asking for a write up of what happened with these accounts from our perspective. Possible to whip something up?” Policy Director Carlos Monje wrote in an email to head of “Trust and Safety” Yoel Roth, to which Roth replied, “Yup. Will work on something now.”

As Breitbart News previously reported, Twitter Files published last month revealed that Roth and other executives at the social media company went on to meet with federal agencies amid the infamously censored Hunter Biden laptop story. The FBI had also reported tweets it didn’t like to workers at the company.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.