Filiberto Agusti 202 429 6428 direct 202 261 7512 fax fagusti@steptoe.com 1330 Connecticut Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036-1795 202 429 3000 main www.steptoe.com October 15, 2020 Via Email (vijaya@twitter.com) and U.S. Mail Vijaya Gadde, Esq. Head of Legal, Policy and Trust Twitter 1355 Market Street #900 San Francisco, CA 94103 Dear Ms. Gadde: My client, Elliott Broidy, was the target of a cyber-espionage campaign sponsored by the State of Qatar and carried out by former state intelligence operatives designed to silence his criticisms of their support for terrorism. These mercenaries were paid at least tens of millions of dollars to hack into email and corporate servers of Mr. Broidy and his business. The stolen contents were curated, doctored, and packaged up together with Qatar’s American public relations personnel, who selectively leaked those materials—as well as forged documents—to generate damaging and embarrassing stories about Mr. Broidy, his family, and his businesses in hundreds of media outlets. And one of the primary vehicles used to promote Mr. Broidy’s hacked materials was Twitter. Yesterday, we became aware of Twitter’s policy banning users from sharing or linking to news articles that contain or link to private information or trade secrets contained in hacked materials when the company announced that it would prohibit the sharing or dissemination of New York Post articles containing materials found on a computer allegedly used by Hunter Biden. In response to public controversy, a Twitter spokesperson explained that the New York Post articles violated Twitter’s policies because “The images contained in the articles include personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules.” Your spokesperson further clarified that what crosses the line is not links to articles that discuss hacked materials, but rather those that “include or link to the materials themselves.” Twitter’s policy against allowing the dissemination of private information and trade secrets dates back to at least 2018, and yet, thousands of links remain on Twitter to stories that contain or link to Mr. Broidy’s hacked materials, including those that reveal emails, email addresses, private information and business trade secrets. Thus, at the same time Twitter is enforcing a ban on these New York Post articles, there are hundreds of articles in which the images of Mr. Broidy’s hacked and stolen emails, business documents, and personal documents continue to be shared widely on your platform. Moreover, these pieces contain personal information, including addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other information, as well as numerous trade secrets. In some cases, the journalists themselves have Tweeted links directly to hacked materials containing such sensitive information, including Tom LoBianco (before he ceased to work at the Associated Press) and NY Times’ Ken Vogel. As far as we can tell, the key difference between the two situations is that the New York Post gave its readers tremendous visibility into the sourcing of a laptop that is alleged to have been abandoned into the care of a computer repair shop, whereas the NY Times, AP, and others intentionally obscured that they had received non-authenticatable PDFs of hacked materials from American mercenaries sponsored by a notorious state sponsor of terrorism. Never mind that most of those outlets also obscured from readers—in their respective publications and while promoting or sharing those hacked materials over Twitter—that Qatar was nakedly smearing a vocal critic of its terror sponsorship, attempting to intimidate him – and others who might dare to criticize Qatar – into silence and effectively destroy his First Amendment freedoms. We demand that you take immediate action to ensure that Twitter’s policies are enforced fairly, without regard to a hacking victim’s political leanings. We look forward to hearing from you promptly about what measures you will take to remove content that violates your policies regarding the dissemination of hacked materials as it relates to Mr. Broidy. We reserve all rights. Thank you in advance for your consideration of this important issue. Very truly yours, Filiberto Agusti cc: Jack Dorsey, CEO (jack@twitter.com)