forcefully rejecting any suggestion that the Twitter Files show what Musk and many Republicans assert they contain.
In a court filing last week, Twitter’s attorneys contested one of the most central allegations to emerge from the Twitter Files: that regular communications between the FBI and Twitter ahead of the 2020 election amounted to government coercion to censor content or, worse, that Twitter had become an actual arm of the US government.
The Twitter Files also show the Trump administration made its own requests for removal of Twitter content. And the payments to Twitter have also been identified as routine reimbursements for responding to subpoenas and investigations, not payments for content moderation decisions.
“
Nothing in the new materials shows any governmental actor compelling or even discussing any content-moderation action with respect to Trump” and others participating in the suit, Twitter argued.
The communications unearthed as part of the Twitter Files do not show coercion, Twitter’s lawyers wrote, “because
they do not contain a specific government demand to remove content—let alone one backed by the threat of government sanction.”
“Instead,” the filing continued, the communications “show that
the [FBI] issued general updates about their efforts to combat foreign interference in the 2020 election.”