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The White House on Wednesday said it deleted a tweet after Twitter users flagged the post as lacking context.
In its tweet, the White House said that it was "thanks to President Biden's leadership" that US pensioners had received the biggest benefit hike in 10 years.
But a note by Twitter generated by users argued that the boost was in fact due to an automatic adjustment triggered by high inflation -- a mechanism that has existed since 1972.
The note was part of Twitter’s Birdwatch program, which adds comments to relevant posts if enough people with a wide range of opinions find them "helpful."
"The tweet was not complete," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked about the deleted tweet. "It did not have that context."
Elon Musk, the world's richest person, who took ownership of Twitter last week, hailed the correction saying the feature that produced it "was awesome".
"Our goal is to make Twitter the most accurate source of information on Earth, without regard to political affiliation," Musk tweeted.
US conservatives complain of censorship on the major social networks and Musk staunchly defends looser moderation of content on Twitter in the name of free speech.
But critics and government regulators defend content rules as key to limiting harassment, hate speech and misinformation.
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Democracy watchdog sues federal agencies over missing Jan. 6 texts
November 02, 2022
Filing a lawsuit against several federal agencies including the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on Wednesday accused officials of violating federal law by failing to recover missing messages that could pertain to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The agencies, along with the Department of Defense (DOD), the U.S. Army, and the National Archives are required under the Federal Records Act to take enforcement action to recover text messages that were sent from multiple Trump administration officials on January 6 and the surrounding days.
When members of Congress and federal inspectors general launched probes into the attack, in which thousands of supporters of former President Donald Trump breached the U.S. Capitol and tried to stop lawmakers from certifying his electoral loss, they found "an alarming pattern," reads CREW's lawsuit.
"Text messages of key Trump administration officials at DHS, the Secret Service, DOD, and the Army from on and around January 6 were deleted," the lawsuit reads. "Even worse, the deletions occurred after the records were requested by government investigators and FOIA requesters in January 2021."
Government records from the personal cell phone of Ken Cuccinelli, the former acting deputy secretary of homeland security, were also erased when his government phone was "reset" in January 2021, according to the complaint.
The DHS reportedly discovered a year later that Cuccinelli "'was using his personal phone' to communicate about government business," but the agency "did not seek to collect messages from this device."
The Federal Records Act requires government agencies to "take enforcement action through the Attorney General whenever they become aware of records being unlawfully removed or destroyed," CREW noted.
On social media, CREW juxtaposed the deleted text messages with the Republican Party's response to former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
"Missing and destroyed federal records from top officials undermine government transparency and accountability, and it is imperative that agencies are complying with record-keeping laws," said Donald Sherman, senior vice president and chief counsel at CREW. "The loss of these particular federal records would leave a major gap in the factual record concerning the January 6 attack on the Capitol, impeding efforts to obtain answers and accountability for an unprecedented assault on American democracy."
The lawsuit states that uncovering the text messages from officials at the U.S. Army and the DOD "could help answer unresolved questions about the agencies' pre-January 6 preparations and the significant delay in their deployment of National Guard troops to the Capitol as it was under siege."
All of the missing records could also shed light on "the actions or inaction of key White House and Trump administration officials on and around the insurrection," said CREW.
A report released in April 2021 by the inspector general overseeing the Capitol Police found that the law enforcement agency was forewarned about an attack in which "Congress itself is the target" but officers were ordered not to use aggressive crowd control methods.
"The missing records may contain critical evidence concerning the January 6 attack on the Capitol and could shed light on the reasons for the government's lack of preparedness for the attack, the government's day-of response, and the actions or inaction of key White House and Trump administration officials on and around the insurrection," said CREW.
The agencies named in the lawsuit have "a legal duty to recover" the records, said Sherman.
"These missing records are the property of the American public," he said. "Government records must be preserved or retrieved when removed from federal custody, especially when they are critical to issues of public concern."
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Reporters were able to publish John Eastman's emails because Dropbox link was accidentally made public
November 02, 2022
News outlets including Politico and The Washington Post were able to access eight damning emails former Trump attorney and “coup memo” author John Eastman (photo, Jan. 6) tried to keep from the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack because public court documents included an active link to a Dropbox file they were stored in.
Those emails reveal Trump’s attorneys crafting a scheme that they appeared to believe U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas would agree to use to block certification of the 2020 presidential election results, even just temporarily, to allow the public to doubt the results were legitimate. Some interpreted the emails to suggest that Justice Thomas, whose far-right activist spouse Ginni Thomas actively worked to overturn the election, was somehow amenable to their plot. There is no indication he was involved.
That stunning development of how news outlets were able to read and publish the emails was reported by Politico’s Kyle Cheney, who posted a letter sent by the House General Counsel to the Clerk of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It reads:
“It has come to our attention this morning that some media outlets have been able to access the Dropbox link that counsel for Dr. Eastman created to share documents with the Select Committee and that was included in the attachments to the brief we filed with the Court last night in response to Dr. Eastman’s emergency motion.”
“We were not aware that the links in Dr. Eastman’s email remained active, and had no intention to provide this type of public access to the materials at this stage. Providing public access to this material at this point was purely inadvertent on our part,” the letter explains.
“We have communicated this information to counsel for Dr. Eastman so that they can deactivate the links going forward.”
As some have noted, similar errors have been made that resulted in damning evidence being made public.
In late September attorneys for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones accidentally sent to opposing counsel – the lawyers for Sandy Hook families – what he was told on the stand were “an entire digital copy of your entire cellphone with every text message you’ve sent for the past two years.”
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