Trump Camp Worked With Musk’s X to Censor My Reporting

Trump collusion scandal targets your right to know

The Trump campaign coordinated with Elon Musk’s X (née Twitter) to kill circulation of my publication of the J.D. Vance Dossier, The New York Times reported today. Simply put, X colluded with a political campaign to restrict the public’s access to information about a Vice Presidential candidate just weeks before the election.

Millions of Americans like myself rely on social media platforms like X to participate in the political process, whether by active discussion or simply consuming political content. X’s decision to remove my article and permanently suspend my account demonstrates the awesome power concentrated in these platforms and their billionaire owners.

The Trump campaign claims that my publication of the Vance dossier constitutes election interference. The real election interference here is that a social media corporation can decree certain information unfit for the American electorate. Two of our most sacred rights as Americans are the freedoms of speech and assembly, online or otherwise. It is a national humiliation that these rights can be curtailed by anyone with enough digits in their bank account.

When Musk purchased Twitter in 2022 for an eye-popping $44 billion, it was unclear how the business mogul would manage to make the investment profitable. Initially, he promised no censorship or suppression and restored several previously banned accounts, including that of former president Donald Trump. But now that Musk has become an outspoken advocate of Trump’s presidential campaign, it is clear that his investment was always about political influence. Now, he is wielding that influence in increasingly brazen ways. Here’s how the Times put X’s collusion with the Trump campaign:

“After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.”

The Trump campaign and Musk did exactly what they’ve repeatedly condemned Twitter’s previous owners for doing with the Hunter Biden laptop story: suppress, manipulate, ban. All for your own good, of course.

This story is much bigger than me. Boo hoo, I lost my account. That is not the point.

Next month, millions of Americans will decide who will be the next president. The decision will be made not just without knowledge of the contents of the J.D. Vance dossier, but also without knowledge of any of the other allegedly hacked documents the news media is apparently too afraid to cover.

The media’s decision not to report on the dossier’s contents — and what it says about Vance — is the result of government pressure and interference. The media blackout laid the groundwork for X to actively suppress my story when I decided to publish the dossier in full, empowering the Trump campaign to successfully push for having links to my article taken down not just from X but also from Instagram, Facebook, and Google Docs. Even the major media, which are plenty critical of Trump, would not cover the clearly newsworthy document. Why? Because they are reluctant to break from the position taken by the Intelligence Community, the White House, the political campaigns, and the social media and Internet companies. These virtual censors have profound influence over what the public can and cannot see.

These are the stakes. The standard for publication used to be whether the document is in the public interest. Now media outlets ask whether the document is in the national interest, as defined by the national security state.

A prominent national security lawyer informed us that he did not receive a single inquiry from any news media outlet for legal advice on publishing the hacked documents. Compare that to the frenzy of media interest in the actual classified and sensitive disclosures of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning during the Obama administration.

At some point the public needs to say enough is enough and reclaim their authority to determine what is in their interest — the public interest. In our capacity as members of the public, we’re going to keep publishing what we determine to be in the public interest, rather than what the government claims. We hope you’ll help us do that work by becoming a subscriber.

— Edited by William M. Arkin

— Copyedited by Devon Welsh