‘Not Really the Smoking Gun We’d Hoped For’: Miranda Devine Pours Cold Water on Musk’s Big Twitter Reveal, Spins Theory He Was ‘Leaned On’
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson brought on-air New York Post opinion columnist Miranda Devine to react to Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” dump on Friday, in which the Twitter owner vowed to expose the thought process behind the social media giant limiting engagement and eventually banning the Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 election.
As of 8 p.m. ET, Devine — who has relentlessly covered Hunter Biden — appeared to be unimpressed with the revelations coming from Musk, via journalist Matt Taibbi, and speculated that “I suspect that Elon Musk has been leaned on and he’s kept a little bit of information in reserve.”
“But we wanted to speak first to Miranda Devine. She is, of course, a New York Post columnist. We spoke to her at the time more than two years ago with the censorship of the story. She has since written a book about it called Laptop From Hell, which is excellent, she joins us tonight. Miranda Devine, you were at the very center of this story. What do you make of it?” began Carlson.
“Look, I think we’ve seen quite a bit that’s useful. It’s not really the smoking gun we’d hoped for,” Devine began, pouring cold water on the revelations.
“I feel that Elon Musk has held back some material in particular there’s a tweet in which Matt Taibbi says, well, he hasn’t seen any evidence that law enforcement specifically warned off Twitter from our story. But that’s just not correct. I’ve seen a sworn affidavit from Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s trust and safety. He was meeting every week before the election with FBI and other intelligence officials,” Devine continued, adding:
They warned specifically of what they called a hack and leak operation, a dump of Russian disinformation. And your report says that in those meetings, he was told there was a, quote, rumor that it was about Hunter Biden. So they seeded that information with the social media giants. If the FBI did. And that ensured that within hours of our story going live on October 14, 2020, 3 weeks before the election, it was censored.
Now we’re finding out a little bit more that there was discussion behind the scenes at Twitter. Quite an active argument about whether this was a First Amendment problem. But the other interesting thing is how little Jack Dorsey was involved. He was obviously just blindsided, it seems, by the people under him who were intent on censoring this. And I think we have to point the finger. You mentioned him already, Jim Baker, Twitter’s number one lawyer, who says he says their caution is warranted. Now, that’s coming from your top lawyer. You’re going to pay attention to it. He, of course, is former FBI general counsel very much involved in the Russia collusion hoax.
“What what’s interesting is for the purposes of today’s story, which, as I’ve said five times is still unfolding. But Elon Musk announced earlier that this release of documents was going to begin at 5 p.m. Eastern. We’re now more than 3 hours past that, and we still haven’t seen everything that they’re going to release, he said. Well, actually, at the last minute, we’re getting some facts straight. How likely is it, do you believe? Of course, it’s certain that he was leaned on by government agencies, just like everyone who tries to release all the information is leaned on by government agencies,” asked Carlson, striking a conspiratorial tone.
“Yeah, and the pressure has to have been immense. Remember, just yesterday, Wednesday, he met with Tim Cook from Apple, who had been threatening, even though Elon Musk now says he wasn’t threatening, but he was threatening, as was the White House, that Twitter would basically be wiped out by being removed from the Google and Apple app stores,” Devine responded.
“And so Elon Musk met in person with Tim Cook they had a stroll around the pond of Apple headquarters. And it came out of that saying, well, Apple is not going to do that and never was going to do that. Well, obviously, some sort of accommodation, you would think, was made between the two of them. And perhaps Elon Musk has given us a sort of a tailored or redacted version of all the material behind the scenes,” she speculated, adding:
Because I know from the lawyers who were involved in the deposition last week of FBI agent Elvis Chan that there’s much more to the story with the social media companies and that top Twitter people like Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety, basically the top censor, the top moderation guy. He he admitted that in one of those meetings that Hunter Biden’s name was brought up. So while Mark Zuckerberg’s been quiet about that and while in this particular dump of information from Twitter so far, 38 or something, tweets, so far there’s been no mention of Hunter Biden being mentioned, but we know he was mentioned by the FBI to the social media giants.
So will that come out in this feed from Elon Musk? Is he holding something back or is it just that Facebook really was first out of the blocks to censor The New York Post and Twitter followed suit. So I don’t know. I suspect that that I suspect that Elon Musk has been leaned on and he’s kept a little bit of information in reserve.
“Yeah, well, there are still thousands of pages of Warren Commission documents under seal, so that would be consistent with the way things work in this country. Miranda Devine, thank you so much. Great to see you tonight,” Carlson concluded, referencing the government investigation into the JFK assassination.
Watch the full clip above
