Something strange happened the day that investigative journalist Matt Taibi testified before a U.S. House committee about the government’s abuse of power to censor and control social media.
Coincidentally, a legman for the Internal Revenue Service visited Taibbi’s home.
And so in a letter to the head of the Internal Revenue Service and Deep State Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — chairman of that committee, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — gave the two a little more than two weeks to explain the visit.
Taibbi has been the key reporter exposing the government’s illegal and unconstitutional effort to crush conservative dissent on social media, censor even accurate information that challenged the China Virus narrative, and, most significantly, kill the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Now we learn that the IRS, the most feared collection agency on the planet, by complete coincidence, targeted Taibbi the day he spoke to Jordan’s committee.
The IRS is the second key government agency accused of harassing, if not intimidating, journalists. The Federal Trade Commission demanded that Twitter provide information on all journalists involved in Twitter Files exposé.
In this case, though, the attempt could be a felony.
The Letter
In December, Taibbi and other journalists began unspooling the files released by then new-owner Elon Musk, who called the social-media outfit a “crime scene.”
On March 9, Taibbi and Twitter Files collaborator Michael Shellenberger testified about the federal government’s myriad abuses in trying to control what was said on social media, particularly what was said by conservatives.
“During the hearing, Mr. Taibbi described the serious government abuse on which he had been reporting and on which he testified to the Select Subcommittee,” Jordan wrote to IRS chief Daniel Werfel.
Taibbi explained that the “The original promise of the internet was that it might democratize the exchange of information globally,” but instead, “what we found is in the [Twitter] files was a sweeping effort to reverse that promise and use machine learning and other tools to turn the internet into an instrument of censorship and social control.”
Worse still, Taibbi continued, “our own government appears to be playing a lead role.”
“This is a grave threat to people of all political persuasions,” he averred.
Taibbi later told another congressman that the Twitter Files story “is by far the most serious thing that I’ve ever looked at, and it’s certainly the most grave story that I’ve ever worked on, personally.”
Understandably, the release of the files terrified the Deep State apparatchiks who were policing speech and tracking the activities of law-abiding Americans on social media.
“The Committee has learned that while Mr. Taibbi was describing his findings of government abuse and civil liberties violations, an IRS revenue officer appeared at Mr. Taibbi’s personal residence in New Jersey — leaving a note for Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later,” Jordan continued:
When Mr. Taibbi called the IRS, the IRS informed him that the reason for the visit was because his electronic 2018 and 2021 tax return filings had been rejected due to concerns of identity theft. According to Mr. Taibbi, the IRS notified his accountant that the IRS had accepted his 2018 filing, and in the four-and-a-half years since then, the IRS has never notified Mr. Taibbi or his accountant of any issue with this return — until the day he was testifying before Congress. With respect to his 2021 return, the IRS rejected Mr. Taibbi’s electronic filing twice, even after his accountant filed with an IRS-provided pin number. In both cases, the IRS informed Mr. Taibbi after the agency visited his home that the problems were not “monetary”; in fact, the IRS apparently owed Mr. Taibbi a “considerable” tax return.
Jordan described the visit as “incredible,” and “all the more concerning in light of Mr. Taibbi’s assertions that the IRS informed him the problems were not ‘monetary’ and he had never received any prior indication of any issues with his 2018 return.”
The obvious implication, Jordan wrote, is that the visit was “thinly veiled” witness intimidation.
Witness tampering is a federal felony.
Thus did Jordan demand that the IRS provide any and all documents connected to the visit to Taibbi’s home by April 10.
FTC Demand
But the knock at Taibbi’s door isn’t the only example of government intimidation.
As The New American reported, the day Taibbi and Shellenberger appeared before the select subcommittee, the FTC demanded that Twitter “[i]dentify all journalists and other members of the media to whom” Twitter gave access to the incriminating files.
As a committee report on the FTC harassment against Musk reported, the out-of-control agency sent 12 letters to Twitter that contained more than 350 demands for information. That attempted dragnet shows that the FTC “has been attempting to harass Twitter and pry into the company’s decisions on matters outside of the FTC’s mandate,” the report concluded.
“The FTC didn’t need to know every journalist with whom Twitter was engaging,” Jordan rightly explained, and “while the FTC’s inquiry would be inappropriate in any setting, it is especially inappropriate in the context of journalists disclosing how social media companies helped the government to censor online speech.”
For more on the Twitter Files:
Twitter Files: Amateurs Targeted “Disinformation,” Labeled Conservatives Extremists
Twitter Files: Pfizer Exec Pressed Platform to Ban Vax Skeptics
Twitter Helped Run Pentagon Psywar Ops, Propaganda Campaigns
FBI Paid Twitter $3.4M for Censorship Operation, Bureau Alumni Packed Payroll
Twitter a “Subsidiary” of FBI, Censored on Bureau’s Orders
Twitter Banned Trump, but Not Leaders Who Advocated Violence, Genocide
Key Twitter Exec Behind Trump Ban Was GOP, Trump-hater Roth
Twitter Files Detail Trump Suspension, Regular Meetings With FBI, DHS
Twitter Blacklist Operation Exposed in Second Dump of “Twitter Files”
Musk Fires Former FBI Attorney Who Vetted Twitter Files, Helped Suppress Hunter Biden Laptop Story
Musk: Twitter Might Have Interfered in Brazil’s Election, Too
Musk Releases “Twitter Files” That Detail Effort to Block Hunter Biden Laptop Story
