Per NY Post
Elon Musk fired Twitter lawyer James Baker, a former top FBI lawyer, after allegedly vetting internal Twitter documents before being sent to journalists, causing a delay in releasing critical material. Musk initially teamed up with Matt Taibbi to release behind-the-scenes information on President Joe Biden's son's laptop.
Baker allegedly suppressed information that Musk said was important to the public dialogue of the Hunter Biden laptop story. After questioning him and only obtaining "unconvincing" answers, the new Twitter CEO decided to fire him.
Musk: “In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,”
This is shocking news since the gravity of Baker's involvement allegedly caused the delay of the next installment of the Twitter Files. The Twitter Deputy General Counsel James "Jim" baker allegedly vetted the first batch without the new management knowing.
Taibbi notes that Musk was unaware of Baker's involvement until Bari Weiss, a former WSJ and NYT writer also reviewing the documents, discovered the former FBI lawyer's involvement.
Twitter Files involved Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi receiving information from a lawyer from Twitter's new management. After the initial batch was released, the latter said that things have been complicated as Weiss discovered that Jim Baker was in charge of releasing the files.
Taibbi described Baker as a "controversial figure" due to his involvement with FBI controversies back in 2016 before his exit in 2018. In June 2020, Twitter added Baker to help lead its legal team shortly after gaining flak for labeling Trump's rigged election tweets as a misinformation promotion.
Internal documents showed how Baker and other top Twitter execs were deliberating about the original Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop story by The Post in October 2020. The story was supposed to reveal alleged "influence-peddling schemes" but was blocked by the social platform under its policy of "hacked materials" despite the lack of evidence of a hack.
Matt Taibbi: “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it,”
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