Donald Trump Slams 'Corrupt' U.S. as He Jumps on Musk's Twitter Reveal

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday weighed in on the report about how Twitter decided to censor a New York Post story involving Hunter Biden's laptop in the run up to the 2020 presidential election, saying that "we are living in a very corrupt country."

On Friday, Twitter CEO Elon Musk vowed to reveal "what really happened" with the Hunter Biden laptop story "suppression" after the social media platform blocked users from sharing the newspaper's article because it violated its distribution of hacked materials policy.

In a series of tweets dubbed the "Twitter files," independent journalist Matt Taibbi posted a series of internal discussions at the behest of Musk, which allegedly reveal how Twitter staff "at highest levels of the company" made the decision to block the New York Post story, but without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

Taibbi also posted tweets that allegedly showed how Twitter staff reviewed and removed tweets at the request of Joe's Biden team in 2020.

"By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: 'More to review from the Biden team.' The reply would come back: 'Handled,'" according to Taibbi.

One screenshot posted by Taibbi also appears to show Twitter staff saying they were "removing or reviewing" the accounts of users tagged for them by the "DNC" [Democratic National Committee]. Also, some of the deleted tweets reportedly contained sexually explicit content, involving Hunter, which were illegally posted online.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that the claims made in the "Twitter files" somehow prove his unfounded claim of widespread voter fraud that, according to him, cost him the election.

The former president also used the Twitter claims to suggest the country as a whole is "corrupt," and the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) are wrongly investigating him for allegedly mishandling classified materials that were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August.

"Wow! That's a really big story about Twitter and various forms of government Fraud including, specifically, Election Fraud. The same level of Fraud took place with the other Big Tech companies, if not even worse (if that's possible?)," Trump wrote. "We are living in a VERY CORRUPT COUNTRY &, AS THEY ARE SAYING ALL OVER THE INTERNET, 'NOTHING WILL BE DONE ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT & FBI ARE TOTALLY CORRUPT.' But they'll keep investigating 'boxes' that were legally & openly taken from the [White House]."

Despite its major build-up from Musk, a number of the claims made in the Twitter files were already known.

In October 2020, Dorsey tweeted that the social media platform was "wrong" to block the URLs of the New York Post story surrounding the laptop, resulting in the platform ultimately changing its policy and enforcement.

"Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have capabilities to do that," Dorsey tweeted.

The original reporting from the New York Post alleged that Hunter arranged for then-Vice President Joe Biden to meet with an executive from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, where Hunter was a board member, in April 2015.

The information for the story was said to have been supplied by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said he obtained it from a MacBook Pro belonging to Hunter.

After originally dismissing the reports as potential misinformation and casting doubt on its authenticity, newspapers such as The Washington Post and The New York Times later found that thousands of emails, which formed the basis of the story, did come from a computer that Hunter allegedly dropped off at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, in April 2019, but never picked up.

However, The Washington Post said in March that the emails provide "little new insight" into Hunter's work for Burisma and that they do not implicate Joe Biden.

Members of the GOP React

Meanwhile, a number of Trump loyalists also reacted to the claims that were made in Friday's Twitter files report.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia whose personal Twitter account was recently reinstated after being suspended for violating COVID-19 misinformation policy earlier this year, tweeted: "I'm personally familiar with the result of the Twitter Files. On behalf of all the people who have been impacted by Big Tech, Democrats, and U.S. Government collusion, as well as election interference, I look forward to my role next year."

Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert also tweeted: "We thought Twitter was a corrupt cesspool. We never knew it was this bad."

Newsweek reached out to Twitter and the White House for comment.