Fang noted that Plaskett based her accusations primarily on claims made by MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hassan during a recent heated interview between Hassan and Taibbi – accusations Fang had already refuted in a recent post on his Substack blog. Fang obtained and published a copy of the letter from the Virgin Islands representative.
Plaskett’s assertion that Taibbi intentionally conflated CISA (the Homeland Security subsidiary, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and CIS (the Center for Internet Security) in order to portray a falsely cozy relationship between the Department of Homeland Security and Twitter was based on a single tweet, which Taibbi deleted after realizing his mistake and was unrelated to his testimony on March 9 before the House Subcommittee on Government Operations.
The Twitter Files ultimately revealed the platform was working with both CIS and CISA in the same way, as Taibbi pointed out to GrayZone journalist Aaron Maté on Friday. That comment, however, only referred to one of many well-documented connections between DHS, its contractors (such as CIS and the Election Integrity Partnership), and Twitter.
Plaskett, who referred to Taibbi as a “so-called journalist” and accused him of posing a threat to those who disagreed with him during the subcommittee hearing, concluded her letter with seven questions and demanded responses by this past Friday regarding the penalty for being charged with perjury, which carries a five-year prison sentence. Taibbi, however, said that he did not even get the communication till the deadline had passed. Fang examined the paper and found that it was co-written by aides to Jerry Nadler, the former head of the House Judiciary Committee, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
To report on internal conversations that confirmed the extent of the coordination between a dozen US government agencies and the main social media companies to quell dissent and advance narratives favored by Washington, Taibbi was the first journalist personally chosen by Twitter CEO Elon Musk. A tax agent visited his house while he was in Washington, D.C., giving testimony to Congress, and left a letter, which Republican legislators have criticized as an intimidation ploy by their political rivals.
