First Twitter Files Drop of 2023

While conservatives still await the so-called “Fauci Files,” the 12th edition of the Twitter Files released Tuesday night continued to detail how the FBI became the “conduits” to amass censorship requests to feed through the “belly button” of the social media company.

The past Twitter Files have already called the FBI the “doorman” for myriad government agencies seeking to influence Twitter, but independent journalist Matt Taibbi’s latest edition details how a media pressure campaign caused frustration at Twitter, inundated it with government censorship orders, and forced it to request the FBI to feed requests through a single cord attached at the company “belly button.”

“By 2020, Twitter was struggling with the problem of public and private agencies bypassing them and going straight to the media with lists of suspect accounts,” Taibbi wrote to start his 40-post thread, which started to delve into the COVID-19 pandemic era of Twitter’s release of internal communications.

Former President Donald Trump administration’s State Department started an intelligence group called the Global Engagement Center (GEC) that did not sit well with anti-Trump Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth, who was also growing frustrated with media reports attacking Twitter for not monitoring COVID-19 narratives.

“Twitter was also trying to reduce the number of agencies with access to Roth,” Taibbi wrote. “‘If these folks are like House Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them a direct contact with Yoel, they will want to come back to him again and again,’ said policy director Carlos Monje.”

The frustration boiled over at Twitter when the Trump administration sought to decouple social media from accounts tied to the China amid the breakout of COVID-19, which included Canada and CNN accounts.

“When the State Department/GEC – remember this was 2020, during the Trump administration — wanted to publicize a list of 5,500 accounts it claimed would ‘amplify Chinese propaganda and disinformation’ about COVID, Twitter analysts were beside themselves,” according to Taibbi.

“Roth saw GEC’s move as an attempt by the GEC to use intel from other agencies to ‘insert themselves’ into the content moderation club that included Twitter, Facebook, the FBI, DHS, and others,” he continued.

Problems continued when Roth’s hesitancy to accept GEC’s recommendations versus others led to the GEC to further leverage the media to force Twitter’s hand.

But the anti-Trump Roth did not like working with the Trump State Department, effectively choose to cut the GEC out of influencing Twitter’s censorship regime.

“A deeper reason was a perception that unlike the DHS and FBI, which were ‘apolitical,’ as Roth put it, the GEC was ‘political,’ which in Twitter-ese appeared to be partisan code,” Taibbi wrote. “‘I think they thought the FBI was less Trumpy,’ is how one former DOD official put it.”

“After spending years rolling over for Democratic Party requests for ‘action’ on ‘Russia-linked’ accounts, Twitter was suddenly playing tough,” Taibbi continued. “Why? Because, as Roth put it, it would pose ‘major risks’ to bring the GEC in, ‘especially as the election heats up.'”

Amid the fight between government and Twitter, the Roth-comfortable FBI proposed to be the “conduits” to feed the requests through the “belly button” of the private Big Tech company, because Roth wanted a small “circle of trust.”

Once the FBI spigot was fully connected, Twitter became bloated with censorship requests.

“Requests arrived and were escalated from all over: from Treasury, the NSA, virtually every state, the HHS, from the FBI and DHS, and more,” according to Taibbi.

It even ventured into the absurd, as anti-Trump Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., sought to have a journalist he did not like to be banned, Paul Sperry. Twitter responded “we don’t do this,” but ultimately it would relent and ban Sperry anyway.

Eventually, the FBI umbilical cord was fully effective in receiving bans, according to Taibbi.

“They were even warned about publicity surrounding a book by former Ukraine prosecutor Viktor Shokhin, who alleged ‘corruption by the U.S. government’ – specifically by Joe Biden,” Taibbi continued.

Twitter was inundated, and confused, leaving the FBI frustrated it would not get immediate results on censorship requests.

“It all led to the situation described by @ShellenbergerMD two weeks ago, in which Twitter was paid $3,415,323, essentially for being an overwhelmed subcontractor,” Taibbi concluded. “Twitter wasn’t just paid. For the amount of work they did for government, they were underpaid.” source

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly promised Twitter it would be “the belly button” for requests from intelligence agencies to the tech industry, newly released documents show.

“Will the industry partners rely on the FBI to be the belly button for the USG? We can do that as well,” FBI Agent Elvis Chan reportedly asked former Twitter Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth in an email, according to the latest “Twitter Files” installment reported by journalist Matt Taibbi.

Chan was reportedly asking Roth about monthly calls between intelligence agencies and the tech industry led by the FBI, Taibbi said. Chan was reportedly pushing for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to be included in the weekly call, according to emails shared by Taibbi.

Twitter reportedly pushed back against including the GEC in the meetings because it was “political” unlike the “apolitical” intelligence agencies. Roth expressed concerns about the GEC being “press happy” and said it would be a “major risk” to bring it into the weekly call, Taibbi reported.

Chan proposed a compromise to Twitter and Facebook where the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would serve as “conduits in and out from the USG,” Taibbi continued.

Chan reportedly told Roth, “State/GEC, NSA, and CIA have expressed interest in being allowed on in listen mode only,” on a “one-way” channel with the FBI, DHS, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Taibbi’s thread showed.

Roth and Chan reportedly ended up agreeing to an industry call on Signal, an encrypted text messaging app, Taibbi added. Twitter reportedly frequently received requests from the FBI, DHS and other intelligence agencies, Taibbi found. The Treasury Department, Health and Human Services, National Security Agency and the State Department were reportedly among the government agencies sending requests to Twitter, according to Taibbi.

The latest installment of the Twitter Files revealed the FBI’s desire for Twitter to rely on it to be the belly button of the U.S. government (USG). The first Twitter Files installment of 2023 revealed shared the events that led up to the intelligence community’s influence on Twitter. Following that installment, journalist Matt Taibbi released another, which revealed the Global Engagement Center’s (GEC) role.

Taibbi described the GEC as “a fledgling analytic/intelligence arms of the State Department,” and screenshots revealed how this new entity would go directly to the media. In one such instance, a report titled, Russian Disinformation Apparatus Taking Advantage of Coronavirus Concerns, was released, which wrecked a bit of havoc for Twitter.

Twitter’s then Trust and Safety head, Yoel Roth, pointed out the motives of Clemson’s Media Forensic Hub when it complained that Twitter hadn’t “made a Russia attribution” in some time.

Roth told researchers like Clemson that Twitter would be happy to work directly with them instead of the media. He was unsuccessful. Simultaneously, Twitter was trying to reduce the number of agencies that had access to Roth. Twitter’s then-policy director, Carlos Monje, pointed out that once Twitter gave these agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security, access to Roth.

“If these folks are like House Homeland Committee and DHS, once we give them direct contact with Yoel, they will want to come back to him again and again,”  Monje said.

Taibbi noted that the GEC report appeared to be based on DHS data that was circulated earlier that week. The data included accounts that followed two or more Chinese diplomatic accounts and ended up with a list “nearly 250,000” names long. The list included Canadian officials and a CNN account.

In an email, Roth said that the GEC attempted to insert itself into conversations Twitter had with several government agencies, including the FBI and DHS. The GEC began to agree to loop Twitter in before going public; however, the agency used a technique that trapped Twitter previously.

“The delta between when they share material and when they go to the press continues to be problematic,” a comms official wrote, adding that they primed the media to be “curios and inquisitive of this dynamic, too.”

This led to Twitter’s disputing a State Department claim that China coordinated coronavirus disinformation accounts. The FBI then informed Twitter that the GEC wanted to be included in their regular “industry call” between companies like Twitter and Facebook and the DHS and FBI. At first, Twitter didn’t want to go this route. Executives at Facebook and Google were united with Twitter in its opposition to the GEC’s inclusion.

“The GEC’s mandate for offensive IO to promote American interests. The relative lack of discretion and caution from senior GEC leadership in sharing reports/analysis based on shaky methodology. A limited track record of successful collaboration with industry.”

The Twitter Files: Part 9 – CIA, State Department, other Agencies Coordinated

Twitter Files part 9: Vast web of coordination between tech giant and CIA, State Department, other agencies

Latest batch of documents claim that the FBI was simply the ‘doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship’ across multiple agencies

Twitter Files Supplemental • Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi)

By Scott Whitlock | Fox News

Substack writer Matt Taibbi released the latest installment of the “Twitter Files” on Christmas Eve, detailing that coordination between the tech giant and government agencies went way beyond the FBI. In a massive series of tweets, Taibbi insisted that the FBI was simply the “doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”

The journalist explained that Twitter had so many interactions with OGAs (or “other government agencies” as they are called in the tweets), the company couldn’t keep them all straight: He explained, “Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track. Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying.”

He explained how some of the coordination developed, specifically growing out of FBI connections: “On June 29th, 2020, San Francisco FBI agent Elvis Chan wrote to [a] pair of Twitter execs asking if he could invite an “OGA” to an upcoming conference:”

Taibbi noted that it was an “open secret at Twitter that one of its executives was ex-CIA, which is why Chan referred to that executive’s ‘former employer.’” He added that “one of the most common forums was a regular meeting of the multi-agency Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), attended by spates of executives, FBI personnel, and – nearly always – one or two attendees marked ‘OGA.’”

What was discussed in these meetings? Usually “foreign matters.”

But Taibbi added, “Despite its official remit being ‘Foreign Influence,’ the FITF and the SF FBI office became conduit for mountains of domestic moderation requests, from state governments, even local police:”

Just as Twitter was having so many meetings with governmental agencies that it couldn’t keep them straight, the company was also inundated with FBI requests on “problem accounts.”

Less than six weeks before the 2020 election, FBI agent Chan contacted Twitter exec Stacia Cardille about having identified more “Twitter handles which appear to provide misleading information” in them.

Noting how unusual it all seemed, Taibbi remarked of what the latest batch of Twitter files uncovered: “It seemed to strike no one as strange that a ‘Foreign Influence’ task force was forwarding thousands of mostly domestic reports, along with the DHS, about the fringiest material.”

Taibbi revealed an October 1, 2020, e-mail, just over a month before the presidential election, an unnamed Twitter exec described being left “waiting for more evidence” when it came to Russian influence claims from the State Department. This person admitted, “Our window on that is closing, given that government partners are becoming more aggressive on attribution.

Taibbi offered his own paraphrase of what this could mean: “Translation: ‘more aggressive’ ‘government partners’ had closed Twitter’s ‘window’ of independence.”

The journalist concluded the latest edition of the Twitter Files by noting, “The CIA has yet to comment on the nature of its relationship to tech companies like Twitter. Twitter had no input into anything I did or wrote. The searches were carried out by third parties, so what I saw could be limited.”

Part eight of the Twitter Files showed how the platform “directly assisted the U.S. military’s influence operations. Part seven showcased the FBI’s attempts to discredit information about Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.

FBI blasted for dismissing Twitter Files as misinformation: ‘Chilling’

‘If the FBI was smart they wouldn’t have said anything about the Twitter Files,’ one user wrote

By Jeffrey Clark | Fox News

The FBI’s claim that the Twitter Files were the work of “conspiracy theorists” set off a firestorm online this week.

The FBI issued its controversial response after an installment of the Twitter Files found the agency regularly contacted employees at Twitter to flag accounts that were deemed as spreading “misinformation.”

It wasn’t long before the agency labeled the Twitter Files themselves as “misinformation.”

A split image of an FBI agent in an official windbreaker and the Twitter logo on a blue screen. (iStock and AP Photo/Gregory Bull, respectively)

“It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency,” the FBI wrote.

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley said the FBI’s response was “chilling.”

“It is not clear what is more chilling: the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter’s censorship program or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role. This week saw another FBI ‘nothing-to-see-here’ statement to the Twitter files,” Turley wrote.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald summed up the FBI’s apparent position on the Twitter Files.

“Anyone who questions the FBI — or finds it disturbing that they’re ‘partnering’ with Big Tech on what should and should not be permitted to be said on the internet — is a hateful, crazy, unhinged anti-American conspiracy theorist,” he wrote.

“Un-freaking-real,” one user wrote in a mega-viral post with over 78,000 likes on Twitter.

“If the FBI was smart they wouldn’t have said anything about the Twitter Files,” human trafficking advocate Eliza Bleu wrote.

Another user reacted to the news: “When you thought the world couldn’t get any crazier, the FBI now claims that the words of its own agents in tons of emails revealed by #TwitterFiles are conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

Former Rolling Stone journalist and Substack writer Matt Taibbi shared hidden communications between Twitter and FBI employees in the days surrounding the contentious 2020 presidential election. The viral Twitter thread revealed several posts that the FBI flagged as concerning for Twitter employees.

Taibbi related a tweet from one of the accounts on Nov. 8: “I want to remind republicans to vote tomorrow, Wednesday November 9.”

Another tweet flagged by the FBI was an apparent joke about voting times: “Americans, Vote today. Democrats you vote Wednesday 9th.”

Taibbi argued that a third tweet, referenced in an email by an FBI employee, was satirical: “For every negative comment on this post, I’m adding another vote for the democrats” and “If you’re not wearing a mask, I’m not counting your vote.”

Three of the four accounts were suspended, according to the email chain, and the fourth account was subject to review by another Twitter employee, according to the email chain.

Fox News’ Jake Gibson and Adam Sabes contributed to this report.

FBI notified Twitter about users ‘potentially’ violating terms: Twitter Files

The FBI reportedly flagged accounts to Twitter that could ‘potentially’ violate the company’s terms

By Adam Sabes | Fox News

YOUR TAX DOLLARS PAID GOVERNMENT TO GO OVER YOUR POST ON TWITTER THEN CONTACT TWITTER FOR POSSIBLE TWITTER VIOLATIONS!

Employees at the Federal Bureau of Investigation regularly contacted workers at Twitter to notify them of accounts that “may” constitute violations of the company’s terms of service, new Twitter Files released Friday reveal.

Substack writer and journalist Matt Taibbi tweeted several internal emails between Twitter workers and FBI employees as part of the sixth installment of the Twitter Files.

“Hello Twitter contacts, FBI San Francisco is notifying you of the below accounts which may potentially constitute violations of Twitter’s Terms of Service for any action or inaction deemed appropriate within Twitter policy,” one email FBI employee wrote in an email on Nov. 10, 2022.

The email would go on to list several Twitter accounts that might violate the social media company’s terms of service.

In response, a Twitter employee said that three of the four accounts were suspended.

“I’ve reviewed this already from the TD perspective and suspended three of the accounts for multi-account abuse and ban evasion violations,” the Twitter employee wrote.

The Twitter employee asked someone else at the company to review the fourth account flagged by the FBI for “possible civic misinformation.”

Taibbi said that one of the accounts tweeted on Nov. 8 “I want to remind republicans to vote tomorrow, Wednesday November 9.”

One tweet flagged by the FBI states “Americans, Vote today. Democrats you vote Wednesday 9th.”

Another tweet flagged by the FBI in the email states that one user “claimed in her posts that she is a ballot counter in her state and, in additional posts, states ‘For every negative comment on this post, I’m adding another vote for the democrats’ and ‘If you’re not wearing a mask, I’m not counting your vote.'”

Taibbi said that the tweet from the user claiming to be a ballot counter was satirical.

Additionally, Stacia Cardille, a former attorney for Twitter, appeared to suggest in a summary of her meeting with government law enforcement agencies to Twitter’s former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker on Sept. 16, 2021, that the FBI could share classified information with the social media giant.

“I participated in our monthly (soon to be weekly) 90-minute meeting with FBI, DOJ, DHS, ODNI, and industry peers on election threats. A few items to note:,” Cardille wrote. “I explicitly asked if there were any impediments with the ability of the government to share classified information or other relevant information with industry. FBI was adamant that no impediments to information sharing exist.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, a spokesperson for the FBI said “The FBI regularly engages with private sector entities to provide information specific to identified foreign malign influence actors’ subversive, undeclared, covert, or criminal activities. Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers after the FBI has notified them.”

Download PDF Twitter Files Part 9 Summary PDF and here is the PDF source

WASHINGTON (TND) — An almost 400-page deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the president’s chief medical advisor, was released Monday.

The deposition stems from a lawsuit launched in May by two state attorneys general seeking to uncover if any potential collusion between Fauci, or other members of the Biden administration, and social media companies took place.

READ MORE: “Biden admin colluded with social media companies to censor speech, state AGs say”

According to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who helped initiate the investigation alongside Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, Fauci said “I don’t recall” 174 times “including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information.”

“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech. In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it

became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors,” Schmitt said, according to a news release from his office. “I encourage everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born.”

During the deposition, which was conducted by Missouri Solicitor General John Sauer, Fauci was asked for his thoughts on whether people should be allowed to post opinions on social media.

“You say ‘allowed.’ I don’t know what the legal or other First Amendment issues are associated with that. That’s not my lane or my area of expertise,” Fauci responded. “As a physician and a scientist and a public health person, I’m very sensitive to the fact that disinformation, including some of the disinformation that we discussed that, for example, has people avoid lifesaving interventions, is dangerous to health.”

“How you – how you counter that I think is open to question,” Fauci continued. “My way of countering false information, and I’ve been on the record multiple times as saying that, is that my approach is to try to flood the system with the correct information as opposed to interfering with other people’s ability to say what they want to say.”

Earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the Biden administration to turn over communications between federal officials and social media companies.

According to Schmitt and Landry, the documents the Biden administration handed over indicated 45 federal officials at the Department of Homeland Security, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and the Office of the Surgeon General communicated with social media platforms about misinformation and censorship.

Dr. Fauci has been court-ordered to turn over emails regarding his potential collusion with Big Tech to censor viewpoints he deemed ‘misinformation’.

“All of America should be appalled that ‘America’s Doctor’ doesn’t want to divulge his communications with Big Tech.” pic.twitter.com/5J6L4AieGW

— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) September 8, 2022

Schmitt was recently elected to serve in the U.S. Senate for Missouri. His term will begin in early 2023.

by ALEC SCHEMMEL | The National Desk cited https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/fauci-says-i-dont-recall-174-times-during-deposition-about-collusion-with-social-media-missouri-attorney-general-eric-schmitt-louisiana-attorney-general-jeff-landry

Dec 5, 2022, 13:25 PM by AG Schmitt

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Today, Missouri and Louisiana are releasing the full transcript for the deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which was taken on November 23rd, 2022.

The deposition was taken as part of Missouri and Louisiana’s landmark lawsuit against the federal government and the Biden Administration for colluding with social media companies to censor speech.

“Missouri and Louisiana are leading the way in exposing how the federal government and the Biden Administration worked with social media to censor speech. In our deposition with Dr. Fauci, it became clear that when Dr. Fauci speaks, social media censors,” said Attorney General Schmitt. “I encourage everyone to read the deposition transcript and see exactly how Dr. Fauci operates, and exactly how the COVID tyranny that ruined lives and destroyed businesses was born.”

“Fauci’s recent deposition only confirmed what we already knew: federal bureaucrats in collusion with social media companies want to control not only what you think, but especially what you say,” said Attorney General Landry. “During no time in human history was this more obvious than during the COVID-19 crisis where social engineering tactics were used against the American public, not to limit your exposure to a virus, but to limit your exposure to information that did not fit within a government sanctioned narrative.”

According to the transcript, Dr. Fauci said “I don’t recall” 174 times, including when asked about emails that he sent, interviews that he gave, and other important information. cited https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2022/12/05/missouri-louisiana-release-full-fauci-deposition-transcript

The full deposition transcript can be found here or here: https://ago.mo.gov/docs/default-source/press-releases/135885afauci112322_full_redacted.pdf?sfvrsn=35f4a425_2

Forgetful Fauci’s Deposition: All Those Lies Are Hard to Keep Straight

A

nthony Fauci’s penchant for misleading the public about COVID-19 may be heading into a federal courtroom soon, owing to a lawsuit brought by the Attorneys General of Missouri, Louisiana, and the New Civil Liberties Alliance. On November 23, 2022, Fauci sat for a sworn deposition about his own actions in directing the United States’ pandemic response. Consistent with his past media appearances, Fauci displayed a penchant for bending the truth to fit his own narrative and, more specifically, denied his own involvement in suppressing the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) in October 2020. Only this time, it was under oath.

Just about a year ago, on the anniversary date of October 5, 2021 to be exact, we took what we thought would be our retrospective and dispassionate look at the GBD, as lockdowns dissipated and mask mandates faded away. Two months later, AIER discovered a shocking revelation in emails received from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Fauci’s office. In early October of 2020, Dr. Francis Collins, then Director of the National Institutes of Health, ordered Fauci and his trusted lieutenant Clifford Lane to wage “a quick and devastating published take down (sic)” of the Great Barrington Declaration’s premises.

Armed with a federal judge’s order, the Attorneys General in the Missouri et al lawsuit finally got a chance to question Fauci about his involvement in these attacks on the GBD. They were specifically investigating whether Collins and Fauci’s actions contributed to censorship of anti-lockdown arguments under the “COVID misinformation” policies of social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Fauci, the man who since 2020 has promoted himself as “America’s Doctor” and a walking embodiment of “the science,” responded by denying he ever meaningfully engaged with the GBD.

Fauci was asked about his own role in Collins’ “devastating take down” directive, which ended with the NIH Director’s question “I don’t see anything on line yet – is it underway?” Fauci answered the Attorneys General with a bluntly stated denial about his own involvement:

No. This is not something I would be involved in. As I told you, I have a very important day job that is running a $6.4 billion institute. I would not be involved in examining this and doing something that would quote counter it.

The Attorneys General pressed him further on what Collins’s email meant, if not a directive for Fauci and Lane to prepare an attack. Fauci pleaded innocence, suggesting that Collins was “likely talking about writing a scholarly article to contest some of the premises” of the GBD.

The problem with Fauci’s denials, and his speculation about an academic motive in Collins’ order, is that they are provably false. The original emails from AIER’s FOIA request show that Fauci and Collins jumped into action to smear and discredit the GBD in the media. They went directly to the national press, labeling its authors, Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya as “fringe epidemiologists” and branding the Declaration itself as “nonsense,” in Fauci’s words.

Fauci’s own answer to Collins came in an email sent a mere 10 minutes after he received the “devastating take down” order. Instead of examining the GBD’s scientific claims and making a scholarly counter-argument, Fauci enlisted the authority of a political writer with no scientific qualifications. He circulated an opinion piece from Wired Magazine, declaring the GBD false on the now-comical pretext that the lockdown phase of the pandemic was already behind us in October 2020. By then “three weeks to flatten the curve” had already become seven months, and there was no end in sight.

The email records show that Fauci and Collins quickly mobilized the national media against the GBD. Collins deployed the “fringe epidemiologists” line in an October 13, 2020 interview with the Washington Post. In a private email to Fauci, he boasted “my quotes are accurate, but will not be appreciated in the WH.” Fauci quipped in response that “they are too busy with other things to worry about this” – a possible reference to the fact that then-president Donald Trump tested positive for COVID a day earlier. But Fauci reiterated his agreement with Collins, stating “what you said was entirely correct.”

 

Fauci and Collins’ actions over the next several days

 

Fauci and Collins’ actions over the next several days show no signs of either man working on a scholarly article to answer the GBD in a scientific journal. They do, however, show the pair waging an aggressive campaign in the national news media to attack and discredit the GBD scientists. A day after Collins’s Washington Post interview, Fauci emailed his team in apparent response to a thread entitled “Quote re Barrington Declaration.” He likened the document to the “AIDS denialist days” of the 1980s – an ironic claim, given that Fauci himself spread egregious misinformation about the transmission of AIDS/HIV and sparked a panic that led to public discrimination against AIDS victims.

At this point, the correspondence between Fauci and Collins disappears behind the veil of redaction. The original set of emails contains a multi-page message between the pair containing the keywords “Great Barrington Declaration” and dated sometime between October 14 and 16, 2020 but it is completely blacked out. The NIH claimed that the email was exempt from FOIA because it contained material from unspecified private deliberations.

When the records resume on October 16, 2020, they contain a partially redacted email to Deborah Birx in which Fauci speculates that Scott Atlas, his anti-lockdown foil on the White House COVID Task Force, would attempt to sway the White House into endorsing the GBD. “Over the past week I have come out very strongly publicly against the “Great Barrington Declaration,” Fauci declared – an action that he conveniently has no memory of doing, according to his statements under oath from the Missouri lawsuit deposition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fauci-Collins onslaught against the GBD continued. At some point in the next week, Fauci apparently directed his chief of staff Greg Folkers to round up a list of political op-eds against the GBD. Folkers responded on November 2, 2020 in an email entitled “As discussed.”

When the Attorneys General questioned Fauci about this request and its connection to the “devastating take down” order, his memory suddenly failed him. “I don’t recall,” Fauci answered. “Greg would probably send me something that I’ve asked for. So somehow, back then, a couple of years ago, I asked for articles concerning herd immunity and I believe he sent them.”

We will likely never know the full extent of the “take down” campaign due to the NIH’s heavy use of redactions and delay tactics to hide the contents of the requested emails. Their initial batch of FOIA documents stops in early November 2020. Just last week, AIER received a second batch of records from the agency covering Fauci and Collins’s correspondence in this same time period with their counterparts in the UK. A full 58 out of 61 requested pages of records were blacked out under specious invocations of FOIA exemption rules. The agency has yet to respond to our other FOIA requests, submitted almost a year ago.

That said, the email records we do possess contain ample evidence of Fauci’s involvement in the “take down” order, plainly contradicting his sworn deposition. In those emails we see Collins colluding with Anthony Fauci (while fantastically CCing Lawrence Tabak, Deputy Ethics Counselor at NIH) to craft talking points against the GBD in the media. Behind the scenes, we see them working with Deborah Birx to keep the GBD off of the White House COVID Task Force agenda. And we see Fauci’s instructions to Folkers to assemble a list of media op-eds attacking the GBD, with the apparent intent of parroting them back to the very same press as official talking points from the NIH.

Think about that for a minute. The Director of the National Institutes of Health all but ordered the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to put together a smear campaign aimed at three distinguished scientists, each from an elite institution (Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford if you are keeping track at home), who were simply going where the science took them.

But Anthony Fauci decided that he himself was the representative of science, and no other opinions would be welcome in the public sphere.

And it’s really not much of a surprise now that Fauci wants to forget about all of this. It’s unseemly after all, that the Representative of Science would target fellow scientists trying only to do their jobs. But he will not be able to brush this mess under the carpet in his retirement from the NIH. As his recent performance in the sworn deposition indicates, Fauci’s evasions leave us with more questions than answers – and more clues that he used his position as a top official at a powerful government agency to persecute and suppress dissenting scientific beliefs.

Phillip W. Magness James R. Harrigan  cited https://www.aier.org/article/forgetful-faucis-deposition-all-those-lies-are-hard-to-keep-straight/