Ex-Twitter Executives Testify Before House Oversight Committee On Decision To Censor Hunter Biden Story—Here’s What To Know

Topline

Former Twitter executives are testifying before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday in what is expected to be one of the most contentious GOP-led hearings of the new Congress, as its right-wing members will question the witnesses about a key red-meat issue: the social media giant’s decision to censor content about Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Key Facts

Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth, former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and former Deputy Counsel James Baker appeared before the committee for a hearing at 10 a.m. ET titled: “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.”

Democrats on the committee, meanwhile, called Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee-turned-whistleblower, as a witness, and highlighted Twitter’s role in allowing former President Donald Trump and “MAGA extremists” to promote false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in his opening statement.

Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) saluted newfound right-wing hero, Twitter owner Elon Musk, in his opening remarks: “Big Tech autocrats wield their unchecked power to suppress the speech of Americans to promote their preferred political opinions . . .Twitter was once one of these platforms – until Elon Musk purchased the company a few months ago,” he said.

Republicans will also seek answers about their claims that the FBI encouraged Twitter and other social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, an allegation the FBI and tech executives have denied.

Key Background

Twitter disabled the New York Post’s account and removed other Tweets about its story revealing the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 presidential election—a decision Roth later called a mistake after multiple other outlets verified the legitimacy of the laptop’s contents. The story suggested that President Joe Biden had ties to his son’s Ukrainian business partners, a claim the president has repeatedly denied. Republicans seized on Twitter’s decision to censor the story, casting it as an example of their claims of left-leaning bias by social media companies. The allegations were bolstered by Musk’s release of the “Twitter files” in December that revealed the company’s internal deliberations about removing the story, which ultimately hinged on fears that it was a product of a Russian hacking scheme in violation of Twitter’s anti-hacking policy.

Tangent

Musk has increasingly leaned to the right in recent years, and his decisions to gut Twitter’s content moderation staff, reinstate banned GOP accounts and unveil the company’s internal communications about censorship decisions have bolstered Republicans’ claims of left-leaning bias. Musk laid off Gadde and fired Baker, citing his role in the decision to remove the Hunter Biden story. Roth resigned following Musk’s takeover and later faced threats from right-wing extremists after Musk suggested Roth endorsed child sexualization by highlighting Roth’s former tweets that were taken out of context by right-wing extremists.

Further Reading

More Twitter Drama: Musk Cuts More Staff In Charge Of Misinformation As Laid Off Employees Criticize Severance Packages (Forbes)

Musk Flirts With QAnon: He Attacks Fauci, Roth In Latest Shift To The Right (Forbes)

Elon Musk’s Political Shift: How The Billionaire Moved From Backing Obama To Endorsing DeSantis (Forbes)