By Dan Frieth – Reclaim The Net
A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch has brought to light an FBI email showing federal agents met with Twitter executives only four days before the 2022 midterm elections.
The message, dated November 3, 2022, arranged a “touch point meeting” the next day to discuss “potential changes” to Twitter’s “content moderation policies” and “PRC networks of activity.”
Only one name in the correspondence was left unredacted. It identified Laura E. Dehmlow, who was then section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force.
Every other sender and recipient was concealed. Judicial Watch said the timing and focus of the meeting highlight how government agencies were communicating with social media companies during a critical political period.
More: FBI flagged so many tweets, Twitter execs had to find a way to process stream of requests
“This smoking-gun email shows that the Biden FBI were working with Big Tech to censor Americans just before a key election,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
The record was obtained as part of Judicial Watch v. US Department of Justice (No. 1:23-cv-01163), which sought to compel the FBI and Justice Department to release information related to their interactions with Twitter about censorship and election-related issues.
The email was written just days after Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter on October 27, 2022.
The subject line read “RE: Midterm Election Touch Point Meeting with Twitter.”
The agenda for the meeting included two items: “Recent disclosure of the three PRC [People’s Republic of China] networks of activity (WAPO article)” and “Any potential changes to Twitter’s account verification and content moderation policies.”
A response from a Twitter contact said, “Thanks [redacted] Looking forward to meeting tomorrow. Can you also add [redacted] to the invite? He’ll be joining us from the legal side of the house.”
The Washington Post article mentioned in the message, published on November 1, 2022, was titled “MAGA porn, hate for Trump: China-based accounts stoke division.” The FBI’s email also carried a notice clarifying that it “contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI” and was “not to be distributed outside your organization.”
Although the Twitter Files had already shown that the FBI was meeting regularly with Twitter and flagging posts before the 2022 election, this newly released record reveals a specific example of such coordination occurring within days of the vote.
The details have added to growing concern about the degree to which federal agencies were influencing what Americans could see and share online during election season.
Judicial Watch filed its April 2023 lawsuit against the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after the FBI failed to respond to a December 2022 FOIA request concerning records about the suppression of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story.
Internal Twitter communications released later through the Twitter Files identified Yoel Roth, Vijaya Gadde, and Jim Baker as central figures in that decision-making.
The FOIA case was dismissed in July 2025.
The group has continued to file related lawsuits, including one in June 2025 against the State Department seeking documents describing President Trump or members of his cabinet as “purveyors of disinformation.”
Earlier disclosures from Judicial Watch showed that the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency worked closely with the Election Integrity Partnership and other groups before and after the 2020 election to identify and suppress online content labeled as “misinformation.”
Documents from 2023 and 2024 revealed that these operations included real-time monitoring of social media posts and direct communication with major platforms about election narratives.