(Article by Luis Cornelio republished from NewsBusters.org)
The Arizona Capitol Oversight, a non-profit organization, unleashed on August 10 emails exposing how Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, as then-Arizona secretary of state, coerced Twitter and Facebook to censor her leading opponents ahead of her contentious bid for Arizona governor in 2022. According to the damning report, Hobbs sought to “improve her political posture” ahead of the 2022 election. In one of the emails, dated November 12, 2020, Hobbs whined that she came under fire after the resurfacing of a 2017 tweet where she associated Trump voters with the “neo-Nazi” and sought special protection from one social media platform.
? Today Arizona Capitol Oversight is releasing exclusive emails from @KatieHobbs' office
Hobbs' govt staff censored her political opponents while she campaigned #AZGov, including @AZGOP in August 2022 for saying she didn't deserve a promotion ->https://t.co/xDkKkFuIOS (1/4) pic.twitter.com/Ir1CRoElTd
— Brian Anderson (@AZBrianAnderson) August 10, 2023
The emails indicate that Twitter pushed back against Hobbs’s hissy fit that Twitter was not doing enough to protect her, asking her to provide more evidence of her assertions. Hobbs responded back claiming, “I am not sure I can provide the information you are asking for because I reported and then blocked multiple users at the same time.” As if that wasn’t enough, Hobbs then aimed her censorship demands at Facebook, emailing the company on November 23 2021 to remove an unrelated post. The post in question was related to the Arizona elections.
The censorship collusion continued from November 2020 all the way to the run-up of her gubernatorial campaign announcement. Notably, in one damning email, merely weeks away from her announcement, Hobbs used her official government email to pressure Twitter to censor posts that contained so-called misinformation.
The damning emails triggered an investigation by the Arizona House of Representatives, which is currently led by Republicans. Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, a Republican, announced a new probe through an Ad Hoc Committee on Oversight, Accountability, and Big Tech on Thursday, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. The new investigation comes nearly 9 months after Hobbs’s email first came under scrutiny by Republicans. The Capitol Times reported that in December 2021 former GOP Chairwoman Kelli Ward asked then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate whether Hobbs had violated state law by exploiting her government position to coerce Twitter to remove posts.
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