WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reportedly made more than “350 specific demands” of Twitter after free-speech advocate Elon Musk took over the company, according to newly released documents.
Among those demands were calls for Musk to explain why he allowed journalists to access the so-called “Twitter Files,” and to provide the government with a list of the journalists who viewed those documents.
The “Twitter Files” refers to the tranches of internal documents and messages that have been released following Musk’s takeover, and which have revealed pre-Musk Twitter’s suppression of certain conservative accounts, throttling of the Hunter Biden laptop story, and its collaboration with the federal government to control the narrative surrounding COVID-19.
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The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the revelations Tuesday, noted that the FTC and its lawyers sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter in the wake of the tech entrepreneur’s buy-out of the platform.
In those letters, according to the report, the FTC “asked the company to ‘identify all journalists’ granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service.”
The FTC’s requests were revealed in an interim staff report from the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which was established in January to examine the ways in which the Biden administration has allegedly used its executive powers to target its ideological adversaries.
In the 113-page report, lawmakers said they had “recently obtained new, nonpublic information that falls directly within the Committee’s mandate to investigate and report on instances of the federal government’s authority being weaponized against U.S. citizens.”
The subcommittee, headed up by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, said the FTC made over “350 specific demands” of Musk’s Twitter in “less than three months following Musk’s acquisition” of the Big Tech company.
“[T]his information shows how the FTC has been attempting to harass Twitter and pry into the company’s decisions on matters outside of the FTC’s mandate,” the subcommittee said.
Moreover, the ”timing, scope, and frequency of the FTC’s demands to Twitter suggest a partisan motivation to its action,” the lawmakers argued in the report and a Wednesday press release highlighting the findings.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 7, 2023
Specifically, the Republicans in the subcommittee contended that it was Musk’s efforts to “reorient Twitter around free speech” that provoked the FTC to take further action, which it did by issuing “a new demand letter.”
“The ostensible legal basis for the demand letters—including monitoring Twitter’s privacy and information security program under a revised consent decree between the company and the FTC—fails to provide adequate cover for the FTC’s action,” the subcommittee argued, adding some of those “demands have little to no nexus to users’ privacy and information.”
As an example, the lawmakers pointed to a request they said was made by the FTC for “Information relating to journalists’ work protected by the First Amendment, including their work to expose abuses by Big Tech and the federal government.”
In addition, the FTC reportedly wanted to have access to “[e]very single internal communication ‘relating to Elon Musk,’ by any Twitter personnel—including communications sent or received by Musk—not limited by subject matter, since the day Musk bought the company.”
READ: Elon Musk officially takes over Twitter, reportedly wastes no time firing top executives
While the subcommittee said it doesn’t “dispute that protecting user privacy and mitigating information security risks are important duties,” it argued that “the FTC is currently imposing some demands on Twitter that have no rational basis in user privacy.”
“There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” the lawmakers argued. “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”
Author Michael Shellenberger, who produced “Part 4” of the Twitter Files focusing on the platform’s decision to shut down former U.S. President Donald Trump’s account, reacted to The Wall Street Journal’s report on the findings in a Wednesday tweet, arguing the FTC’s demands amounted to an assault on First Amendment rights.
“The Biden administration is demanding that [Elon Musk] explain why he allowed journalists access to the Twitter Files,” Shellenberger said. “This is an outrageous attack on the First Amendment.”
Responding to Shellenberger, Musk agreed the report’s findings were “shameful” and that they represented the sort of government behavior the select subcommittee was set up to combat.
“A shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!” Musk said.
A shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, the first journalist to publish a Twitter Files thread, are slated to testify Thursday before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government during its second hearing.