In today’s #vatnik soup I’ll discuss Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) and why he was a bad choice for disseminating the Twitter Files.

First, see the ugly ass chart that I made to see the connections between the pro-Russian actors and Taibbi. I’m truly sorry for how it looks.

As you can see from the chart, Taibbi, once a prominent journalist and a former contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine is well-connected to some of the biggest Russia/Syria-apologists and grifters alive.

I’ve written about Aaron Maté before, and Neil Abrams (@neil_abrams) has done a comprehensive list of debunkings he has done on Maté:

For those interested, here's a compendium of my various threads that debunk Maté's arguments about Ukraine, either directly or indirectly.

Receipts provided, as always. /1

— Neil Abrams (@neil_abrams) November 8, 2022

He likes to smear NGO’s like the White Helmets who revealed war crimes in Syria …

… and blames the “Ukrainian neo-nazis” or the CIA/NED/[insert US institute here] on the ongoing war.

Maté has also received money for his work from an organization that funds apologists for the Assad regime:

Pro-Assad Lobby Group Rewards…

Max has appeared on RT and Sputnik on several occassions, but his most well-known for his propaganda/disinformation blog The Grayzone.

When interviewed by Tucker Carlson, Max even had the audacity to say that RT isn’t funded by the Kremlin.

It’s worth noting that The Grayzone was founded after Max visited Moscow in Dec, 2015. Joshua Collins (@InvisiblesMuros) has written a great article on Max and the Grayzone:

Grayzone, Grifters and the Cu…

You can read my soup on Max from here:

Max Blumenthal

To conclude:

Even if the first release of Twitter Files turned out to be a nothingburger, it is evident that Taibbi shouldn’t be the one releasing them.