In the introductory section of his statement Professor Turley makes this point: “The Twitter Files raise serious questions of whether the United States government is now a partner in what may be the largest censorship system in our history. The involvement cuts across the Executive Branch, with confirmed coordination with agencies ranging from the CDC to the CIA. Even based on our limited knowledge, the size of this censorship system is breathtaking, and we only know of a fraction of its operations through the Twitter Files.”

Joe Patrice attacked this basic and obvious point at Above the Law, where he is senior editor: “In fact, [Turley] has no knowledge. He’s repeating claims made in the ‘Twitter Files,’ the mostly inconsequential, misleading, and deceptively incomplete social media rants from Elon Musk’s hand-picked journalists who were given access to cherry-picked data. There might well have been shady stuff going on at legacy Twitter, but what the Twitter Files decidedly do not reveal is a ‘breathtaking’ ‘censorship system.’”

Patrice’s attack pathetically recapitulates Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schutz’s attack on Turley at the hearing.

[It’s the old “who you gonna believe, me or your own lying documentation” gambit. And it’s every bit as pathetic as Scott argues. There is a concerted effort to keep this from becoming a larger national story than it already is, and thus far that effort is succeeding. That makes the national media just as pathetic, and exposes them as corrupt, too. — Ed]