Facts:
- “Twitter Files” reporters Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the House as witnesses in a hearing for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government on Thursday.
- Tensions were high as House Democrats grilled Taibbi and Shellenberger, referring to them as “so-called journalists” while demanding they reveal their sources at the hearing.
- Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) criticized the “cozy relationship” between Big Tech and government agencies, which the Twitter Files disclosed in leaks regarding the suppression of the Hunter Biden Laptop Story and coordination between Twitter and intelligence agencies.
- Just before testifying, Taibbi released a new installment of the Twitter Files about the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” which characterized agencies such as the FBI and Dept. of Homeland Security as well as large non-governmental organizations as regularly consulting with Twitter to suppress information that may have led to COVID vaccine hesitancy.
- After referring to the two reporters as “so-called journalists,” ranking Democrat from the Virgin Islands, Stacey Plaskett, called Taibbi and Shellenberger “two of Elon Musk’s ‘public scribes’” while questioning how they accessed Twitter’s data.
- Taibbi gained recent national recognition for his reporting in the Twitter Files with his first leak on Hunter Biden’s laptop recording 143M impressions and 30M engagements. He, along with Shellenberger and Bari Weiss, has come under fire from Democrats and left-leaning outlets for his reporting.
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