A member of Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council, who claims to be the niece of top Clinton/Biden advisor John Podesta, has quit her job at the social media company amid new owner Elon Musk’s crackdown against child exploitation on the platform.
Lesley Podesta resigned from Twitter on Thursday with two other employees.
In a statement regarding the exit, she said the move is due to concerns about the “wellbeing of Twitter’s users.”
While the alleged family ties are not public, Lesley Podesta claimed in 2018 that John Podesta is her “uncle.”
Ah. My uncle John
— Lesley Podesta (@podesta_lesley) October 14, 2018
It is unclear whether they are blood relatives.
Lesley Podesta, Eirliani A Rahman, and Anne Collier posted their resignation on Twitter.
“We are announcing our resignation from Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council because it is clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline,” they said in a joint statement.
Three of us resigned from Twitter’s Trust & Safety Council today: @eirliani @podesta_lesley and me. Here’s why https://t.co/h05TblfGIO pic.twitter.com/iqcHvhbgms
— annecollier (@annecollier) December 8, 2022
Responding to the resignation, political commentator Mike Cernovich said Lesley Podesta and her colleagues “belong in jail.”
Cernovich linked to a New York Post story about Twitter’s “Trust & Safety Team” refusing to remove child porn from the platform.
The post reported that, despite the content showing videos and images of child sex trafficking victims being abused, there was no intervention by Podesta or other members of the Trust and Safety Council.
Musk replied: “It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!”
In the resignation, Eirliani was highlighted for serving “on the Council’s Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) Prevention advisory group.”
Another Twitter user pointed out that “Lesley Podesta (resigning as listed in this Tweet from Twitter) is John Podesta’s niece (Democrat deputy chief of staff).”
https://twitter.com/sourpatchlyds/status/1601285178412142592
“Small world,” Musk replied.
Small world
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
In their resignation, the three said “The establishment of the Council represented Twitter’s commitment to move away from a US-centric approach to user safety,” and stressed the globalist approach before Musk’s takeover.
They claimed that Musk’s reliance on “automated content moderation” will create more “abuse and hate speech” on the platform.
The statistics they cited were from the debunked Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
ALX on Twitter wrote, “John Podesta’s Niece resigned from Twitter’s “Trust & Safety Council” and we’re supposed to act like that’s a bad thing? Goodbye..”
John Podesta’s Niece resigned from Twitter’s “Trust & Safety Council” and we’re supposed to act like that’s a bad thing?
Goodbye.. https://t.co/OFujnIdEgy
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 9, 2022
John Podesta, who is the former White House Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, is a controversial figure in Washington D.C.
He also served as Senior Advisor to Joe Biden and as campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential bid.
Podesta became notorious online after WikiLeaks published his emails along with Hillary Clinton’s ahead of the 2016 election.
The contents of Podesta’s emails led to allegations that he was involved in child exploitation.
