House Republicans on Wednesday are hearing testimony from former Twitter executives into what the lawmakers characterize as the social media platform’s “role in suppressing the Biden laptop story” as part of their investigation into Hunter Biden and his family members and associates.
The House Oversight Committee is questioning former high-ranking Twitter executives about the platform’s handling of New York Post reporting in 2020 about the alleged contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, in which the social media company controversially blocked users from tweeting and direct-messaging about it.
In excerpts of prepared remarks released ahead of the hearing, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the committee, alleged that “Big Tech autocrats wield their unchecked power to suppress the speech of Americans to promote their preferred political opinions.”
Comer charged that Twitter’s handling of the unverified articles shows there was a “coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news, and the intelligence community to suppress and delegitimize the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop” and its contents.
James Baker, Twitter’s former deputy general counsel, said, “I was not aware of and certainly did not engage in any conspiracy” with government or campaign officials to suppress the story.
“Moreover, I’m aware of no unlawful collusion with or direction from any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” Baker said.
The move by Twitter executives to limit the spread of the Post articles happened weeks before the November 2020 presidential election. Twitter backtracked 24 hours later, allowing users to share links to the articles, but the main Post account was suspended for two weeks for refusing to delete its initial tweets, Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former general counsel, told the panel.
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said the company had concerns because the story “at first glance bore a lot of similarities to the 2016 Russian hack and leak operation targeting the DNC. We had to decide what to do. And in that moment, with limited information, we made a mistake.”
The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, blasted the hearing as a “trivial pursuit” about a news article that had “no discernible effect on anything” and that was given significant exposure on other social media platforms and in right-wing media during the brief time it was blocked on Twitter.
“Silly does not even begin to capture this obsession,” Raskin said.
The White House dismissed the committee hearing as a “bizarre political stunt” a day after the president delivered his second State of the Union address.
“This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and re-litigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” White House spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement.
“This is not what the American people want their leaders to work on. As the president has said and made his focus, the American people expect their leaders to work together in a bipartisan way on the issues that most impact their lives and their families, not attack his family with long-debunked conspiracy theories,” he continued.
The House Oversight Committee’s hearing comes as allies of the president and his son consider a legal defense fund to support Hunter Biden and others as they respond to Republican-led congressional investigations, NBC News reported last month.
Republicans allege that Hunter Biden has capitalized on his father’s political career and connections for profit amid their criticism of a series of the younger Biden’s financial dealings in Ukraine and China.
Hunter Biden beefed up his legal team in December amid an ongoing federal probe and plans by Republicans to make him a key focus of investigations as soon as they took control of the House in January.
Upon his appointment as the new Oversight Committee chairman, Comer accused the president of “influence peddling,” and swiftly dived into investigating Hunter Biden and other Biden family members and associates.
