FBI Paid Twitter Millions, Had Close Relationship With Execs And Staff, Emails Show

The FBI paid Twitter millions as a reimbursement for the time the company spent processing the FBI’s requests, according to internal documents published by author Michael Shellenberger Monday, in the most recent installment of Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s ongoing “Twitter Files.”

In an email with the subject line “Run the business – we made money!” an employee, whose name was redacted, reports to then-Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker, that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million dollars between October 2019 and February 2021, Shellenberger reported. Baker, a former FBI agent, was the agency’s general counsel during Operation Crossfire Hurricane, and approved the surveillance of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page via improper use of the Steele dossier, according to a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The FBI and Twitter enjoyed a close relationship in the run-up to the 2020 elections, with the FBI promising “no impediments to information sharing” between the two groups in a Sept. 16, 2020 meeting between social media executives and intelligence community staff.