The Federal Trade Commission inappropriately pressured an independent third-party auditing firm to find Twitter had violated the terms of its settlement agreement with the FTC, a motion filed last week in federal court reveals. That misconduct and the FTC’s own repudiation of the terms of the settlement agreement entitle Twitter to vacate the consent order, its lawyers maintain.
This latest development holds significance beyond Twitter’s fight with the FTC, however, with the details providing further evidence that the Biden administration targeted Twitter because of its owner Elon Musk’s support for free speech on his platform.
I “felt as if the FTC was trying to influence the outcome of the engagement before it had started,” a CPA with nearly 30 years of experience with the Big Four accounting firm Ernst & Young (EY) testified last month. The FTC’s pressure campaign left EY partner David Roque so unsettled that he sought guidance from another partner concerning controlling ethical standards for CPAs to assess whether his independence had been compromised by the federal agency.
Roque’s testimony prompted attorneys for Twitter to seek documents from the FTC to assess whether the federal agency had repeated its pressure campaign with EY’s successors, but the agency refused to provide any details to the social media giant. Twitter responded last week by filing a “Motion for a Protective Order and Relief From Consent Order.”
That motion and its accompanying exhibits provide shocking details of an abusive agency targeting Twitter. When those facts are coupled with the report
