Matt Taibbi, the Substack journalist who disseminated the so-called "Twitter Files" that shed light on the tech giant's suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, told his readers he had to agree to "certain conditions" to receive the major scoop from Elon Musk.
In a note to "TK" readers published ahead of his viral Twitter thread, Taibbi wrote: "Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too."
"The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life… There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway," Taibbi wrote. "What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions."
He continued: "Those of you who’ve been here for years know how seriously I take my obligation to this site’s subscribers. On this one occasion, I’m going to have to simply ask you to trust me. As it happens, there may be a few more big surprises coming, and those will be here on Substack. And there will be room here to discuss this, too, in time."
Taibbi did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.
ELON MUSK REVEALS WHAT LED TO TWITTER SUPPRESSING HUNTER BIDEN STORY IN 2020
After a lengthy delay following his big announcement, Elon Musk revealed he had outsourced his findings to Taibbi about what was behind Twitter's decision to censor the New York Post's bombshell reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election. Twitter alleged the Post's story had violated its "hacked material" policy.
Taibbi tweeted "there’s no evidence — that I've seen" that the federal government had a role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, but that "the decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role."
"'They just freelanced it,' is how one former employee characterized the decision. ‘Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it,’" Taibbi wrote.
Taibbi then shared a screenshot of an exchange purportedly between Gadde, Twitter's former Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth and former Twitter spokesman Trenton Kennedy, who wrote, "I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe… "
"… can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?" Twitter's former Vice President of Global Communications Brandon Borrman similarly asked at the time, according to a separate screenshot shared by Taibbi.
Twitter's former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker replied, "I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked," Taibbi's screenshot showed.
He added: "… it's reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted."
Taibbi teased: "There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more."
Musk had been vocal about being transparent regarding Twitter's past and present actions it takes when it comes to curating content on the platform, including censored content.
Twitter famously blocked its users from sharing the New York Post's reporting of Hunter Biden's laptop in tweets and in direct messages.
At the time, Twitter Safety alleged the articles were in violation of its "hacked materials policy." Twitter's then-CEO Jack Dorsey admitted his company's actions were a mistake.
Many critics believe the suppression of the Hunter Biden scandal by Big Tech and the media at large was enough to sway the election in favor of his father.
