Elon Musk Busts Adam Schiff Big Time Over Effort to Get Journalist Suspended

There were more Twitter files released on Tuesday night. These were focused on the intelligence community and an arm of the State Department trying to flag posts about COVID and things like talking about lab leaks as “Russian disinformation.”

But there were also requests to go after people they didn’t like, including a request from the office of the Chair of the House Intel Committee Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) to suspend journalist Paul Sperry.

27.They also received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned. Here, the office for Democrat and House Intel Committee chief Adam Schiff asks Twitter to ban journalist Paul Sperry: pic.twitter.com/SXI1ekqi13

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

28.“WE DON’T DO THIS” Even Twitter declined to honor Schiff’s request at the time. Sperry was later suspended, however. pic.twitter.com/9PX2Zw5Nzj

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) January 3, 2023

While Twitter said they don’t do that, they did say they would review those accounts again and Sperry was subsequently suspended.

According to the NY Post, the anger at Sperry might have been because of his reporting about Eric Ciaramella, the alleged “whistleblower” in the effort to go after President Donald Trump in the first impeachment.

In the article, Sperry said then-CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella was overheard talking in the White House with Sean Misko, a holdover staffer from former President Barack Obama’s administration.

A former official who reportedly heard the conversation told Sperry, “Just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.”

Misko later left the White House and joined the Intelligence Committee, which Schiff chaired, Sperry reported.

None of that had anything to do with QAnon conspiracies, the excuse for trying to go after Sperry. What it had to do with was things Schiff’s office didn’t want out there, about the effort to get Trump. Notice they were already de-amplifying people for “spreading QAnon conspiracies.”

Sperry responded and called out Schiff.

In an email Tuesday, Sperry told The Post, “I have never promoted any ‘QAnon conspiracies.’ Ever. Not on Twitter. Not anywhere.”

“Schiff was just angry I outed his impeachment whistleblower and tried to get me banned,” he said. “I challenge Schiff to produce evidence to back up his defamatory remarks to Twitter.”

Sperry also said, “This is a scurrilous smear, but par for the course for the unscrupulous Chairman Schiff.”

He said ultimately he was finally permanently suspended when he was tweeting about the raid on Mar-a-Lago. “Were there subsequent demands from Schiff? May explain why Twitter would never give me a reason for banning me,” he added.

Schiff’s office didn’t respond when the NY Post asked them for comment.

In addition to the constitutional problems of trying to suppress speech, the hypocrisy of Schiff is something else. He tweeted against Musk suspending some members of the media in December because they posted links to an account that was doxxing his plane. Schiff of course didn’t put out the real reason they were suspended, saying they posted something “unfavorable.”

Elon Musk calls himself a free speech absolutist, to justify turning a blind eye to hatred and bigotry on Twitter.

But when journalists report unfavorable news, they are banned without warning.

The devotion to free speech is apparently not that absolute. But the hypocrisy is.

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 16, 2022

That sounds like projection to me, that sounds like exactly what his office was trying to do — get someone suspended for exposing something unfavorable to Schiff.

Twitter head Elon Musk dropped Schiff for his hypocrisy.