Matt Taibbi Just Making Shit Up Now

Investigating Taibbi's latest claims reveal the once great journalist is now just a sad conspiracy theorist.

Matt Taibbi appears before the select subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the federal government on Thursday, November 30, 2023.

by Ben Cohen

Did you know that brave truth teller Matt Taibbi was persecuted by the Biden White House? Did you know they threatened him with jail and sent shady IRS agents to his house to make sure he would live in fear?

It’s absolutely true because Matt Taibbi says so himself:

The shocking tweet was in response to someone complaining about the Trump administration barring an AP reporter and photographer from Air Force One over ‘Gulf of Mexico’ name dispute.

Unfortunately, about two minutes of research unveils this to be fictitious nonsense created by Matt Taibbi’s increasingly conspiracy addled mind.

The IRS Visit: Fact vs. Fiction

To be clear, an IRS agent did show up at Taibbi’s house on the same day he testified before the Select Subcommittee on what he (allegedly) found in the Twitter Files story. But what Taibbi wants his followers to believe was a Biden administration intimidation tactic, was in fact a routine visit from IRS over potential identity fraud. As reported by the NY Post, the agency told Taibbi that his 2018 and 2021 tax returns had been rejected due to identity theft concerns, and that the agency owed him money. When the story broke Taibbi tweeted that he “wasn’t worried for myself” but felt that Rep. Jim Jordan’s committee looking into the matter “should be aware of the situation.”

Jordan took no legal action after investigating the issue because there was no evidence the IRS was engaged in anything illegal or had coordinated with the Biden administration to intimidate him.

The "Jail Time" Threat

So what about Taibbi’s claim that he was “threatened with jail time” by House Democrats? Unsurprisingly that turns out to be nonsense too.

On April 13, 2023, Stacey Plaskett, the non-voting delegate to the US House of Representatives from the Virgin Islands' at-large congressional district, sent a letter to Taibbi giving him the opportunity to correct his testimony in his Twitter Files testimony to Congress. Plaskett told Taibbi that he had misrepresented the role of government agencies, specifically the CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) and the Global Engagement Center (GEC) in content moderation. Plaskett’s letter mentioned other egregious errors and misleading claims in his reporting and warned him of how serious deliberately misleading Congress was. She wrote:

“Prior to your appearance before the subcommittee on March 9, you signed the Judiciary Committee’s Truth in Testimony form, certifying that you understood that “[knowingly providing material false information to this committee/subcommittee, or knowingly concealing material information from this committee/subcommittee, is a crime (18 U.S.C. § 1001).” 24 In addition, at the beginning of the March 9 hearing, you swore “under penalty of perjury that the testimony you [were] about to give [was] true and correct to the best of your knowledge, information, and belief.”25 Under the federal perjury statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1621, providing false information is punishable by up to five years imprisonment”

It is debatable whether Taibbi knew he was misleading Congress with his comically bad reporting on the Twitter Files (my assessment was that he most definitely was), but there is no doubt he made serious errors that even he was forced to admit to.

Patterns of Misinformation

In that light it seems extremely reasonable that Plaskett would give him the opportunity to correct his testimony. As for “threatening” him with jail time, the claim is clearly false. Firstly, it wasn’t “House Democrats”, it was one House Democrat who has no vote on any legislation. Secondly, Plaskett clearly wasn’t threatening Taibbi with jail time, she was informing him of the consequences of giving knowingly false testimony. Taibbi surely understands the difference, but he is of course betting his followers don’t.

In recent years Taibbi has claimed without a shred of evidence that Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson are victims of Joe Biden-led Deep State conspiracies. In this alternative world, he and other free speech heroes are fighting a terrifying enemy bent on shutting them up and ending democratic freedoms. This would be a noble cause if any of it were true. But it isn’t.

The Reality Behind the Claims

In the end, Taibbi’s claims fall apart under scrutiny. The IRS visit was related to identity theft concerns, not government intimidation. The so-called “threat” of jail time was simply a reminder of the legal consequences of misleading Congress—something every witness is subject to. While Taibbi presents himself as a fearless truth-teller standing up to a corrupt establishment, the facts tell a different story: one where exaggeration and omission serve a conspiratorial narrative rather than the truth.

Perhaps most telling is how Taibbi continues to position himself as a crusader against establishment power while still fixating on the Biden administration—even as Donald Trump and Elon Musk threaten media companies, take apart the federal government, and inform the public that “He who saves his country violates no law”.

One wonders why.

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