The House Select Subcommittee on the weaponization of the Federal Government published a report earlier this year that detailed how the Federal Trade Commission had harassed Twitter after Elon Musk took over the company with bureaucratic redtape and harassment.

Now, thanks to the new legal motion filed Thursday, we now know that Elon Musk’s Twitter harassment by the FTC was more severe than originally thought. It looked like a shakedown based on ideological concerns rather than a legitimate investigation based on justified concerns.

The motion for a protection order filed by Musk’s X Corp., which owns Twitter “asks that the Court rein in an investigation spiraling out of control, and become tainted with bias, and terminate a misfitted consent order that can no longer serve any proper equity purpose.”

The motion asks the Court to terminate the consent order that the FTC imposed on Twitter 2022, when Musk assumed control of the company following his completion of the deal to purchase the social network and privatize it.

According to the filing “the FTC engaged in conduct that was so irregular and inappropriate that Ernst & Young (EY “)–the assessor appointed under a consent agreement between Twitter and FTC to evaluate Twitter’s privacy program, data protection program, and information safety program) felt as if FTC tried to influence the outcome before the engagement had even begun. ‘”

X Corp’s complaint notes that recent sworn testimony details the FTC’s attempts to co-opt EY’s independent assessment to produce evidence of ‘deficiencies’ in Twitter’s privacy program and information security. ‘”

The motion says that “these efforts included dictating very specific procedures to EY and conveying expectations about the results before EY had even started any procedures.”

The FTC made it clear that its “expectations”, which were really more of a demand, would not be met if EY did not comply with the Biden FTC’s demands.

The FTC was so adamant with EY that they were afraid that if EY quit as independent assessor the FTC would take issue and cause EY to face ‘other challenges’ over time. ‘”

As X Corp’s motion illustrates, the federal governments weaponized approach is to target ideological and political dissenters as well as platforms that enable them to express themselves. They even use fear of retribution to force private companies to achieve their aims.

Musk responded after the motion had been filed. He criticized the Biden FTC’s “[i]nsanely legal overreach.”