Journalist Paul Sakhar has published a new edition of his famous “Twitter Files” X account, in a lengthy thread in which he questions the independence of the aforementioned social network under the Biden administration. Sakhar details a love triangle between the social network, the State Department, and a company founded by Madeleine Albright, who served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.
“Democrats and the media insisted that Twitter 1.0 was a ‘private company’ making its own decisions, despite pressure from the Biden administration to censor,” the journalist began writing in a piece that quickly went viral.
“How can businesses rely on government advice but still make decisions independently of government?”
Indeed, during the first months of Joe Biden’s administration, Twitter hired the Albright Stonebridge Group, a “commercial diplomacy and global strategic advisory services” firm, to “seek assistance from the State Department in addressing Indian censorship pressure,” he explains.
As POLITICO reported, the organization has placed at least 10 veterans in key positions in the Biden administration.
To resolve the dispute in India, Twitter sought the help of Albright Stonebridge Group, which in turn contacted the State Department. This, Tucker said, casts doubt on those who claim that “Twitter did not collude with federal agencies and was not pressured by the Biden administration to make censorship decisions on its own.”
The group then contacted Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Laura Stone, and it was Senior Vice President John Hughes who asked Stone if she would be willing to attend a breakfast with Global Public Policy Chief Monique Meche to “avoid further tensions” with India.
“India’s censorship of social media has pushed Twitter under the umbrella of the Biden administration’s foreign policy expert lobby. How can a company rely on government advice and help make decisions independent of the government?” he added.
Emmanuel Alejandro London
Stacey Plaskett, the British Virgin Islands representative and ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee, argued that “the actual evidence shows that there was no coordination between Twitter and the federal government.” Stacey Plaskett, the British Virgin Islands representative and ranking member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee, argued that “the actual evidence shows that there was no coordination between Twitter and the federal government.”
“That’s completely absurd. Twitter relied heavily on the advice and assistance of the Biden administration and its allied lobbyists to address its issues in India, the company’s third-largest market,” Tucker countered.
According to the email dated May 24, 2021, Stone was asked to meet with government officials “again” to get an update on India’s actions against Twitter.
Meshe Stone told him that Stone went on to issue an “emergency block order” to remove more than 100 tweets critical of the administration’s response to the coronavirus, after which Stone responded that the State Department was reaching out to the embassy for more information.
That led to an extensive exchange of messages on Twitter and among State Department officials calling for faster communication, including from both Stone and Carla McDonald, deputy assistant secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.
Both were later nominated as ambassadors by President Biden and subsequently confirmed by the Senate.