Joe Rogan on twitter files: what the evidence says · JRE #2223
SUBJECT: TWITTER FILES
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
We have 51 former intelligence agents saying that this is Russian disinformation, take it offline, and Twitter complied.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
On October 19, 2020, an open letter signed by 51 former senior intelligence officials, including James Clapper, John Brennan, Leon Panetta and Michael Hayden, stated the emergence of Hunter Biden laptop material had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," while explicitly saying the signatories did not know whether the emails were genuine and had no direct evidence of Russian involvement; a Politico story that day ran the headline "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say," a characterization the letter itself did not make. Twitter blocked links to the New York Post's original story a day earlier, on October 14, 2020, citing its policy against distributing hacked or private material, not the intelligence officials' letter, which had not yet been published; the company reversed the block within days and called the decision a mistake. Congressional testimony from former Twitter executives Yoel Roth and Vijaya Gadde in February 2023 confirmed the hacked-materials policy, applied amid general fears of a Russian "hack-and-leak" operation similar to 2016, drove the decision, and no evidence has surfaced that the 51-signatory letter itself caused Twitter's action. The claim conflates two separate, sequential events and overstates both the letter's content (suspicion, not confirmed disinformation) and its causal role in Twitter's suppression of the story.