SECOND VERSE SAME AS THE FIRST: JIM JORDAN BRINGS BACK THE SAME HACKS TO CONGRESS

House Republicans are desperately looking for ways to continue their attack against the Biden administration. Their strategy this time is to rinse and repeat the Twitter Files hearing from March. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan is bringing back a pair of witnesses who were previously found to lack all sense of credibility: Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger. The last time this duo testified in front of Congress they admitted to publishing cherry picked information and failing to fact-check their own claims. Michael Shellenberger claimed to “not find” evidence of the Trump White House attempting to moderate Twitter content, despite former Twitter executives previously testifying that they never received content moderation requests from the Biden administration, only from the Trump administration.

Right-wing figures, like Steve Bannon who exclaimed, “that literally could be Alex Jones testifying,” praised Matt Taibbi’s testimony. House Democrats went on prove Taibbi selectively published information and he was eventually called out for making factually incorrect claims during his testimony. Numerous publications reported on the Weaponization committee’s lack of credibility, yet Chair Jordan insists on retreading the same ground. The American public should expect the same results from this hearing as House Republicans aren’t even attempting to hide their bad faith tactics.

Jim Jordan Is Bringing Back The Same Witnesses That Admitted To Publishing Biased Claims, And Were Compared To The Likes Of Alex Jones

THE LAST TIME JORDAN BROUGHT SHELLENBERGER TO CONGRESS HE ADMITTED TO NOT FACT-CHECKING CLAIMS BEFORE PUBLISHING THEM

Michael Shellenberger Admitted To Rep. Dan Goldman That He Had A History Of Publishing Content Prior To Fact-Checking His Claims

Michael Shellenberger Admitted To Rep. Dan Goldman That He Did Not Look Into Evidence Debunking False Information Included In The Hunter Biden New York Post Story Before Claiming Publicly That Every Single Fact Of The Story Was Accurate. REP. DAN GOLDMAN: “You said in your Twitter files, am I correct, that every single fact in the New York Post [Hunter Biden Laptop] story was accurate?” SHELLENBERGER: “yes” […] GOLDMAN: “I’d like to enter into the record the Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report. 300 pages by the House intelligence committee, did you review this report before you said every fact in this [New York Post] story as accurate?” […] SHELLENBERGER: “Did I read that before I wrote the Twitter Files? No” GOLDMAN: “If you read this you would have known […] that story, not withstanding your allegations, was false.” [Hearing on Twitter Documents About Content Moderation Decisions, House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, CSPAN, 3/9/23] (VIDEO) (2:05:00-2:06:24)

Shellenberger Claimed To Have Not Found Evidence Of The Trump White House Attempting To Moderate Twitter Content…

Shellenberger Claimed He “Did Not Find” Evidence Of Right-Wing Elements Or The Trump White House Attempting To Moderate Twitter Content. “‘So when you release information, have you released any information of, for example, right-wing elements or the Trump White House attempting to moderate content at Twitter?’ Connolly pressed. ‘No, not the Trump White House per se, although I did report initially in the first Twitter Files that the Trump White House had made and requests and had been honored,’ Taibbi replied. ‘Mr. Shellenberger?’ Connolly asked. ‘I did not find that,’ Shellenberger replied.” [Mediaite, 3/9/23]

…Despite Prior Witness Testimony From Former Twitter Executives Claiming The Trump White House Requested Chrissy Teigen’s Tweet Referring To Trump As A “Pussy Ass Bitch” Be Removed

Rep. Connolly Pointed Out That During The Oversight Committee Twitter Hearing Four Witnesses Testified Under Oath To Having Never Received Content Moderation Requests Or Takedowns By The Biden White House, Only From Trump’s White House. “’You haven’t found it?’ shot back Connolly. ‘So we had a hearing the other day on Twitter, and we had four witnesses, three for the majority, one for the minority, and all four testified under oath. They had never received a request for content moderation or takedown by the Biden White House, but they did from Donald Trump’s White House.’” [Mediaite, 3/9/23]

Vanity Fair: “Yes, The Trump White House Demanded Twitter Remove Chrissy Teigen’s Tweet Calling Trump A “Pussy Ass Bitch” [Vanity Fair, 2/8/23]

RIGHT-WING FIGURES, LIKE STEVE BANNON, PRAISED MATT TAIBBI’S TESTIMONY AND COMPARED HIM TO “ALEX JONES TESTIFYING”

HEADLINE: “Steve Bannon Gushes Over Matt Taibbi’s Testimony: ‘That Literally Could Be Alex Jones Testifying’” [Raw Story, 3/9/23]

Steve Bannon Aired A Portion Of Matt Taibbi’s March 2023 Testimony On His Podcast And Said “That Literally Could Be Alex Jones Testifying There.” “On his Thursday War Room broadcast, Bannon aired a portion of Taibbi’s testimony before a House committee on government ‘weaponization’ of social media. ‘That, in fact, is a key point of the Twitter files that is neither a left nor right issue,’ Taibbi said in the clip. ‘Following the trail of communications between Twitter and the federal government across tens of thousands of emails led to a series of revelations.’ Following the clip, Bannon welcomed Jones to the show. ‘Alex, you’ve been warning people — the reason I want to play that quote from Matt ‘s Taibbi opening,’ Bannon said. ‘You’ve warned about this. That literally could be Alex Jones testifying there. You’ve warned the nation about this for many, many years.’” [Raw Story, 3/9/23]

October 2022: A Judge In Connecticut Found Alex Jones Should Pay Nearly A Billion Dollars For His False Claims About The Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting. “The conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax, a jury in Connecticut decided Wednesday.” [PBS, 10/12/22]

Taibbi Was Hesitant When Responding To Questions On Whether Journalists Should Avoid Publishing Incomplete, Cherry-Picked Information

Taibbi Said “I Think It Depends,” When Asked Whether Journalists Should Avoid Cherry-Picked Information If It’s Likely To Be Slanted, Incomplete, Or Designed To Have An Invalid Conclusion. “Wasserman Schultz: ‘Mr. Taibbi, I want to ask about journalistic ethics and information sources. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics asserts that journalists should avoid political activities that can compromise integrity or credibility. Being a Republican witness today certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity. But a deeper concern that I have relates to the ethics of how journalists receive and present certain information. Journalists should avoid accepting spoon-fed, cherry-picked information if it’s likely to be slanted, incomplete or designed to reach a foregone, easily disputed, or invalid conclusion. Would you agree with that?’ Taibbi: ‘I think it’s — I think it depends.’” [Mediaite, 3/9/23]

Wasserman-Schultz Showed A Video Of Taibbi On A Podcast, Where He Seemingly Implicated Himself As A Hypocrite. “Wasserman Schultz then pointed to Taibbi’s December 2021 appearance on the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast, where he said: ‘Once you start getting handed things, then you’ve lost. They have you at that point and you gotta get out of that habit. You just can’t cross that line.’ ‘You violated your own standard,’ Wasserman Schultz said, over Taibbi’s objections.” [Huffington Post, 3/9/23]

Following Matt Taibbi And Michael Shellenberger’s March 2023 Appearance Before The Judiciary Committee, Rep. Stacey Plaskett Told The Washington Post That The Pair Had Selectively Released Emails To Prove Their Point. “The Early: Conservatives have criticized you for calling Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger ‘so-called journalists’ in last week’s hearing and describing them as ‘witnesses who pose a direct threat to people who oppose them.’ Do you believe they’re legitimate journalists? Plaskett: Well, I do believe that they have in the past engaged in legitimate journalism. I also believe that there’s conduct that journalists are supposed to have that they have not exhibited, particularly when it comes to ‘the Twitter Files.’ The fact that Taibbi and Shellenberger from their own admission have said that they have hundreds of thousands of emails, and yet they have selected 330-some-odd emails to share with the general public regarding the Twitter Files leaves one the question: [Are these] truly fair and impartial journalists who [are] following the truth and allowing it to lead them wherever it may?” [Washington Post, 3/17/23]

Taibbi Was Unsure On Whether Kanye West’s Anti-Semitic Tweet Depicting A Swastika Should’ve Remained Publicly Accessible

Taibbi Said “I Think It’s A Difficult Question” When Asked Whether Kanye West’s Tweet Depicting A Swastika In The Middle Of A Star Of David Should’ve Been Taken Down By Twitter. “‘It’s a, would you describe it? As a Star of David with the swastika in the middle of it? Should those tweets have been taken down by Twitter?” Allred asked. ‘I think it’s a difficult question. Hate speech is protected in the United States,’ Taibbi responded, adding.” [Mediaite, 3/9/23]

Taibbi Was Skeptical Of The FBI’s Efforts To Curtail Russian Disinformation Despite The Country’s History Of Hacking Attacks Against The United States

Taibbi Admitted To Rep. Dan Goldman That He Was Skeptical Of The FBI’s Efforts To Deter Russian Disinformation And Referred To It As Not “Actual Interference.” “The Twitter Files provided evidence that the FBI had reached out to social media companies with a warning about the Hunter Biden laptop story published by The New York Post just before the 2020 presidential election. The agency worried that the story could be part of a Russian disinformation campaign to influence the election, as foreign adversaries did in 2016. Asked whether he believed it was ‘a legitimate objective’ for the FBI to try to “stop foreign interference in our elections,’ Taibbi said: ‘I think it’s a legitimate objective to stop actual interference.’ ‘OK. I don’t know what the difference is, but that’s fine,’ Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) responded.” [Huffington Post, 3/9/23]

On July 13, 2018, A Federal Grand Jury In Washington D.C. Indicted 12 Russian Military Intelligence Officers Over Allegations That They Interfered With The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. “On July 13, 2018, a federal grand jury sitting in the District of Columbia returned an indictment against 12 Russian military intelligence officers for their alleged roles in interfering with the 2016 United States (U.S.) elections. The indictment charges 11 defendants, Boris Alekseyevich Antonov, Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, Nikolay Yuryevich Kozachek, Aleksey Viktorovich Lukashev, Artem Andreyevich Malyshev, Sergey Aleksandrovich Morgachev, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk, Aleksey Aleksandrovich Potemkin, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov, Pavel Vyacheslavovich Yershov, and Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, with a computer hacking conspiracy involving gaining unauthorized access into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, stealing documents from those computers, and staging releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, accessed 3/12/23]

Following Taibbi’s Congressional Testimony, MSNBC Host Mehdi Hasan, Went On To Point Out More Of Taibbi’s Factual Mistakes

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Pointed Out How Matt Taibbi Misreported The Number Of Flagged Tweets By 21,997,000. “‘You said the EIP was founded as a response to the government dropping its proposal for a disinformation governance board,’ the MSNBC host declared while displaying Taibbi’s tweet on the topic. ‘It wasn’t, it was formed two years earlier. You suggest it was government funded, even though during the 2020 election you’re covering, it wasn’t.’ Hasan continued: ‘You say they labeled 22 million tweets as misinformation in the run-up to the 2020 vote—they didn’t. They flagged 3,000 election misinformation tweets for labeling, so you were only 21,997,000 off.’” [Daily Beast, 4/7/23]

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Also Called Out An Error In Taibbi’s Reporting Where Taibbi Confused A Government Agency With A Non-Profit. “The Win Every Argument author further pointed out that Taibbi claimed ‘the EIP was partnered with the government Cybersecurity Infrastructure Agency—CISA—to censor Twitter,’ but the reporter mixed up the government agency with the nonprofit firm Center for Internet Security.” [Daily Beast, 4/7/23]