Taibbi and Musk missed something big about those Hunter Biden porn tweets Twitter took down in 2020. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Twitter suppressed the NYPost's Hunter Biden story in Oct 2020, an error. But they also suppressed nonconsensual tweets showing Hunter Biden's penis. And Taibbi and Musk also attacked those deletions. Musk said deleting them violated the First Amendment. thebulwark.com/no-you-do-not-…
But look at who was positing these Hunter Biden dick pics that Musk said are vital speech, contributing to Trump, paradoxically, to call for terminated the Constitution. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Of three tweets deleted at the Biden campaign's request in this screenshot Taibbi shared last week, all three that the Internet Archive can recover include Hunter selfie in which he's standing in front of a mirror, with his penis out. (I cropped out.)
The first was from a user with a sketchy address who also had the handle "ding_gang."
Wang Dinggang, known as "Lude," in '20 was a top ally of Bannon patron Guo Wengui, and made wild false claims about Hunter while releasing his explicit pics/videos. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
The third deleted tweet, with the same Hunter pic, was from from this user. The same person, with a Chinese handle that means "fitness training" is still on Twitter, and identifies himself as a member of Bannon and Guo's New Federal State of China.
The same guy in another social media account also identifies himself as a member of a group of Guo followers based in Long Island. (They're called "Mountains of Spices," or MOI.) A former Guo org person told me this guy uses the name Wenyang, and volunteers posting stuff for Guo.
The particular picture of Hunter that was in three of the tweets that Musk said were vital free speech was part of the material Bannon had sent to Guo (among comms I later obtained). It was in a Dropbox file called “Salacious Pics Package_EDITED." motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Guo had his assistant send the contents of "Salacious Pics Package_EDITED" to a bunch of his followers on October 24. They posted it in various places. Lude and Wenyang tweeted the same day.
That picture was disseminated as part of an organized international effort to spread purely salacious pictures of Hunter. And from the beginning, Guo had his people accompany the pictures with crazy lies. That's a disinformation campaign, if anything is. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Guo people carried out that effort, but Bannon was behind it. He praised Guo follower's lies about Hunter in a October 31, 2020 meeting, lauding their “editorial creativity over the pictures.” motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Twitter deleting consensual dick pics is not a conspiracy or even controversial. In 2020 they explicitly barred that kind of thing, and continue to. help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-p…
Twitter has also barred"coordinated harmful activity," since before fall 2020. web.archive.org/web/2020101502…. The New Federal State of China deliberately spreading salacious pictures and disgusting lies about Hunter Biden seems like exactly the kind of effort that policy aimed to stop.
Taibbi got back to me and basically argued all this doesn't matter, because the Biden campaign, and the Trump White House, had special access to Twitter execs. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
But with Musk citing these particular tweets while screaming about the First Amendment, I think most people would conclude their details, as well as the context in which they were posted, matters. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
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Remember when Trump abruptly caved to Erdogan and said it was fine for Turkey to invade Syria? Seems a bit forgotten, maybe because Trump pressing DOJ not to charge a Turkish bank for helping Iran evade US sanctions was more corrupt. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
This is from a series we have on somewhat overlooked Trump misdeeds. I also wrote about how Trump very much did try to prosecute Hillary and other political foes while in office. So we should believe his pledges to use DOJ to target critics if he wins. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
I updated my story about Ya Li, or "Mulan," the high-level Guo Wengui assistant who testified against him last week, to note that Li, at Guo's behest, played a role in disseminating sexually explicit from Hunter Biden's laptop. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
This is the effort led by Bannon in which Guo operatives, including Li, spread Hunter Biden dick pics and sex videos. At Guo's behest, some of his followers also falsely claimed the laptop included images of Hunter having sex with underage Chinese girls. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Guo and an underling named Wang Dinggang, known as "Lude," used real material to push false claims that Hunter had sex with minors and that China used the material to blackmail JOE Biden. That was a fairly successful bid to spread false rumors by mixing them with legit material.
Here’s a long mag story I wrote explaining Guo’s movement. I think it broke ground outlining how his supposed anti-CCP stance and various kooky conspiracy theories led to his allegedly defrauding his backers, ie how Guo monetized “Take down the CCP.” motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
Trump aide Jason Miller, when he was Gettr CEO, said Guo didn’t run it. Audio messages we got belied that. motherjones.com/politics/2022/…
People may recall the mysterious fire that started in the luxury penthouse of Chinese fugitive mogul and Bannon patron Guo Wengui last year hours after his arrest for fraud. Today, just before his trial starts, feds revealed new evidence about the fire. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
Feds describe how an unnamed person who lives with Guo (they don't say if it's his wife) got permission to go into a bedroom just after Guo's arrest. FDNY/ATF investigation, previously undisclosed, found the fire started in a closet "next to" the bedroom. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
Prosecutors also cite Guo's many calls, in the months before his arrest, for a "flame revolution." He literally called for arson, albeit against, seemingly, the CCP. I reported on this last year. motherjones.com/politics/2023/…
Yvette Wang, the former chief of staff for Miles Guo and his codefendant in a sweeping fraud case, is changing her plea to guilty ahead of their trial, scheduled to start in three weeks.
New legal problem for Bannon as feds call him a "co-conspirator" in a massive federal fraud case. (Not the one he's already indicted in.) motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
Buried in a recent government filing ahead of Guo Wengui's upcoming fraud trial, is this bad news for Bannon. motherjones.com/politics/2024/…
Despite the "co-conspirator" label, Bannon, who already faces fraud charges in NY and a four-month sentence for contempt of Congress waiting on his appeal, is probably not gonna be indicted soon in the Guo case. Feds are naming him to get evidence included at next month's trial.