The Federal Trade Commission has been asking Twitter Inc. to hand it internal communications regarding a number of issues that have happened after Elon Musk took the reins, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

According to that report, the agency has been hounding Twitter since Musk took over, sending multiple emails in an attempt to understand the workings of the company better. These letters pertain to a number of issues, notably Twitter’s mass layoffs, its controversial Twitter Blue service and the even more controversial Twitter Files, which seem to expose how much power government agencies had over certain narratives that appeared on Twitter pre-Musk.

The FTC has been asking to see Musk’s own emails and may depose him at some point. The letters to Twitter suggest that the agency is suspicious that Twitter hasn’t been adhering to compliance measures that the FTC set after Twitter was fined $150 million in May last year for deceptive practices.

On top of that, regulators fear that after Twitter has laid off so many people, including key workers involved with privacy and security, that the platform may not be able to run itself properly. They’re also concerned that Twitter Blue was rushed, which could also potentially present privacy and security issues.

One of the other matters is the Twitter Files. After Musk’s takeover, he gave three journalists, seemingly led by former Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi, unprecedented access to Twitter’s communications with government bodies, including the FBI. Taibbi has claimed time and again that moderation of Twitter was forcefully guided at times by such agencies.

In letters, the FCT has asked Twitter to “identify all journalists” that were given this royal access treatment. It also wants to know the “nature of access granted” and if that was in line “with your privacy and information security obligations under the [aforementioned] Order.”

Today, a Republican-led House Judiciary Committee called the FTC’s requests “harassment” and “overreach.” A press release stated that the FTC has made more than 350 specific demands and is “attempting to harass Twitter and pry into the company’s decisions on matters outside of the FTC’s mandate.”

“There is no logical reason, for example, why the FTC needs to know the identities of journalists engaging with Twitter,” said the press release. “There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk.”

Musk himself talked about the matter, today characteristically tweeting some emotive language: “A shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!”

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