Newly appointed White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds her first news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on May 16, 2022 in Washington, DC. Jean-Pierre stepped into her new role after former Press Secretary Jen Psaki left the White House to reportedly take a job with MSNBC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 5:21 PM PT – Tuesday, December 6, 2022
The White House weighed in on the release of the Twitter Files, the internal documents exposing the platform’s handling of certain information.
On Monday, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was specifically pressed on the suppression of news reports in 2020 about the Hunter Biden laptop story. On Friday, independent journalist Matt Taibbi unveiled the Twitter Files in a lengthy thread.
“So, look, we see this as an interesting, uh, a coincidence,” Jean-Pierre said. “If I may, that he would so haphazardly push this distraction, that is, uh, full of old news, if you think about it.”
In his tweet, Taibbi cited specific moves used by Twitter to suppress certain posts by labeling them as un-safe and blocking users from sharing links to the story through direct messages. The social media company claimed that those tweets violated its hacking policy.
The Twitter team would censor accounts that re-tweeted the Hunter story, including the account of President Trump’s Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
However, the current press secretary claimed that the release of the Twitter Files was CEO Elon Musk’s attempt draw attention away from itself.
“At the same time, Twitter is facing very real and very serious questions,” Jean-Pierre said. “About the rising volume of anger, hate, and antisemitism on their platform.”
Meanwhile, Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said the big data dump showed that Twitter executives were working directly with the Biden administration.
“This is Twitter acting as an arm for the Biden campaign,” Senator Cruz explained. “Look, that’s almost how you task an employee. Hey, here’s five more to take care of. Handle these. Done.”
Cruz said that the internal communications bombshell is proof that Democrats and big tech are in cahoots. This could explain why many other high-profile figures are now coming forward demanding how Twitter may have censored them.
Whether or not Musk decides to release more Twitter files in the future remains to be seen.
Firearms are displayed at a gun shop in Salem, Ore., on Feb. 19, 2021. A federal judge in Portland, Ore., ruled Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, that a new voter-passed ban on high-capacity gun magazines can go into effect Thursday, Dec. 8, but placed a 30-day hold on a permit-to-purchase requirement after local and state law enforcement agencies said they could not have a permitting system ready in time. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File)