ne's back uh the chair I recognize the gentle lady from New York Miss stanic five thank you Mr chairman it has been almost one year since the first bombshell Twitter files looking back now and my questions are for Mr taibe and Mr shellenberger what was the most alarming thing that you came across during your review of internal Twitter documents and I have a number of followup questions so keep it short sure um thank you for the question um I think the most alarming thing that we we saw was the regular stream uh organized stream of communication between uh the FBI uh the Department of Homeland Security and the largest tech companies in the country uh they had an organized system for flagging content uh not occasionally but in enormous numbers uh involving spreadsheets of accounts that ran to the hundreds and thousands um and this was shocking to us and to the congressman's point this isn't crazy conspiracy theory we've already had four federal judges uh rule that they believe this violate this activity violates the First Amendment uh this is quite serious we didn't know whether it was against the law but we certainly thought it was shocking uh enough to be in the public interest and that for me was the most serious thing yeah for me it was seeing the uh so-called former FBI officials within Twitter uh and working with and other groups including this Aspens to participate in an effort to so pre-b Punk the hunter B and laptop before it was ever published in the New York Post and then to get it censored uh by Twitter in violation of Twitter's own terms of service whose internal staff had concluded that the New York post Tweet had not violated their terms of service and they censored it anyway Mr shellenberg I want to ask you further that revolving door between the FBI and Twitter and I also want to ask about those thirdparty essentially government proxies you referenced the Aspen Institute can you delve deeper into both of those questions both of those topics sure it was the former general counsel of the FBI Jim Baker and the former uh deputy director of the FBI had both taken jobs at Twitter there were so many FBI people uh at uh Twitter that they had their own internal group um and their own little uh crib sheet to describe the the difference between the terms that they use at the FBI versus at Twitter CIA had it as well yeah CIA as well had their own little internal group um and I'm sorry what was the the second question the thirdparty proxies oh yeah well then the Aspen in this was the weirdest thing we discovered that Aspen Institute had created a workshop that was attended by basically all of the major media including as well as all the major social media platforms to basically pre-b buunk in advance the hunter Biden laptop even though it had not been there was no evidence that that that that that it existed outside of the fact that the FBI knew that they had it because they got it in December 2019 so to have the Aspen Institute trying to persuade people not to cover the hunter bu and laptop story in August and September of of uh 2020 was quite chilling and disturbing to see um these content moderators at social media platforms like Twitter wield an enormous amount of power in terms of determining not only what Americans can say but also what Americans can see do you believe Mr taibe and Mr shellenberg that it's appropriate for unelected bureaucrats or these tech companies to collude to influence what Americans can say or read absolutely not and you know wanted to stress again that all this was happening secretively with the blessing of the Department of Homeland Security with them sending uh things to uh from this is from the EIP at Stanford to uh you know to to Twitter and Facebook saying we repeat our recommendations that this account be suspended we recommend labeling all instances of this article we recommend that you flag us false this all these demands being made secretly without any any public review my view is that we don't uh the government doesn't decide who can speak in the in the Town Square why should the government be deciding who can speak on social media platforms we the people should decide our own content as adults legal content it should not be decided by either government or big Tech and Mr tyy and Mr shellberg do you believe that this censorship is a form of election interference I absolutely it is there's no question in my mind Mr taibi yes I think it it certainly can be um in the latest story that we uh did on the CTI League uh we saw the overt partisanship of the people involved in this uh or operation that was actually the reason the Whistleblower came forward uh the people involved just to one of the quote was they assumed everyone who was smart thought the way they did um they talked about the potential election of Donald Trump being an end of the world event um they talk about the wackadoodles who actually watch Fox Fox News um and you know even as someone who doesn't votee for Republicans it was shocking to me to see this and I think this was a consistent theme of of not just the CTI league but most of the censorship organizations that we looked at they all tend to drift in One Direction y back gentle lady goes back the chair