"Twitter Files" journalist Matt Taibbi told Newsmax on Thursday night the most frightening thing for him after being threatened by a Democratic lawmaker with jail time for intentional perjury is that none of his colleagues in the mainstream media came to his defense.
Del. Stacey Plaskett, D-Virgin Islands, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, sent a letter April 13 to Taibbi threatening him with five years in prison for intentional perjury because, she alleged, his testimony before the select subcommittee on March 9 included an error regarding the name of a federal agency mentioned in the "Twitter Files."
Taibbi said he made a reference to CIAS, the government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, when he meant to refer to CIS, the Center for Internet Security, which is a private organization. Taibbi told "Eric Bolling The Balance" Plaskett's charge is "absolutely absurd."
"What's really frightening about that is that apart from a few journalists who are really independents, not one member of the mainstream press has said anything, even though it's kind of an unprecedented thing," Taibbi said.
Taibbi's work with the "Twitter Files" helped expose the federal government's coordination with the social media platform to censor material, including the New York Post's story on Hunter Biden's laptop weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Plaskett is not the only member of the federal government trying to intimidate Taibbi.
Taibbi said while he was testifying in front of the select subcommittee, the IRS paid a visit to his home and left a note on his door instructing Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. The Wall Street Journal reported Taibbi was told in a call with an IRS agent that his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had been rejected owing to concerns over identity theft.
"I came home that day from testifying in Washington, and my wife told me that there was a note that had been left in the door. And I did find out that the IRS came as I was testifying," Taibbi told Bolling. "At first, I thought it was a coincidence. But subsequent events made me wonder whether it possibly could be."
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