Governor-Elect Hobbs Dictated Twitter Speech While Secretary of State

Editors’ Note: Americans are learning more each day about the role of Twitter (thank you Elon Musk!!) in 2020 and 2022 election interference and the role of almost all social media platforms and search engines (especially FaceBook, Google and YouTube) as state actors and arms of the Democrat party. Note especially the sentence below about the Center for Information Security (CIS) ‘tapping’ Twitter to remove tweets by direction of Katie Hobbs. Also note that ‘CIS works with all 50 states in over 2,900 election offices nationwide’ and that CIS has received almost $200 million in federal grants since early in the Obama administration. Does this information explain or suggest that elections in America are no longer the critical instrument for citizens to be governed ‘by their consent’ as conceived by our Founders and the U.S. Constitution? 

 

Court filings reveal that Governor-elect Katie Hobbs dictated Twitter’s content moderation while serving as secretary of state.

According to the emails disclosed in court filings, Hobbs’ office asked the Center for Information Security (CIS) to review two tweets posted by an account with 21 followers. Within 30 minutes, CIS tapped Twitter to handle the issue, who promised to “escalate.” Twitter resolved the issue several hours later by removing both tweets.

“These messages falsely assert that the Voter Registration System is owned and operated by foreign actors,” complained Hobbs’ office. “This is an attempt to further undermine confidence in the election institution in Arizona.”

The exchange occurred last January, the day after the attack at the Capitol.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) told The Washington Post that they don’t interfere in election-related speech online. Instead, the government agency told the outlet that it deferred to CIS to engage in those issues.

In 2021, CIS shared through its Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center (EI-ISAC) year-end report that it was “uniquely positioned to handle both cybersecurity and misinformation reports to protect election infrastructure.” The nonprofit disclosed that it created a communications hub — called the Situation Awareness Room (SitRoom) — to identify and address 2020 election threats with federal, state, local, and private partners.

CIS used its EI-ISAC to coordinate election officials, federal partners, and social media platforms.

“The success of these efforts in the 2020 election [Trump defeated?] established the foundation for expanded efforts on mis/disinformation reporting for future elections,” stated CIS.

CIS works with all 50 states in over 2,900 election offices nationwide.

CIS is a nonprofit founded in 2000; its president and CEO, John Gilligan, was formerly a senior intelligence and security advisor for the Air Force, Department of Energy, and White House Cyber Security Commission under the Obama administration. CIS has received around $196.5 million in federal grants since 2010 [beginning early in Obama administration], and nearly $3.7 million in federal agency cybersecurity contracts since 2005.

The coordination between Hobbs and Twitter was revealed in court filings for a case before the Louisiana Western District Court: Missouri v. Biden. At issue in the case is whether President Joe Biden and his administration violated the First Amendment by directing social media companies’ censorship of speech pertaining to COVID-19…..

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Read more at Arizona Independent Daily.