Three former Twitter executives will testify before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday about Twitter’s decision to temporarily suppress a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, in what is expected to be the new Republican majority’s first high-profile hearing into President Joe Biden’s administration and family.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who has launched a broad investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings, is looking into the social media giant after Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk released internal Twitter staff communications about the decision to temporarily block users from sharing the New York Post story in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign season.
The session marks the first opportunity for Twitter’s former Deputy Counsel James Baker, a former top official at the FBI, to speak publicly since Musk fired him in December.
Musk has stated that the internal correspondence disclosed as part of his so-called “Twitter files” demonstrate government suppression, implying that Twitter acted “under directions from the government” when it buried the laptop story. The “Twitter files” have fuelled Comer’s suspicion that the government was complicit in the story’s suppression.
“We simply want to know what Twitter’s policy was in terms of determining something was disinformation,” Comer explained. “We want to know what role the government had in persuading Twitter to conceal specific articles and accounts. We want to know if and how much tax money was spent by federal agencies on Twitter since that’s what we look into.”
However, AWN previously reported that allegations that the FBI directed Twitter to suppress the story are unsubstantiated, and in interviews with AWN, a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, as well as multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, all denied any such directive was given.
“I am aware of no criminal coordination with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop problem,” Baker plans to say, according to an AWN analysis of a draught of his opening statement. “While many people disagree on how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden incident, I believe the public record shows that my client acted in a manner that was perfectly compatible with the First Amendment.”
In addition to Baker, the committee will hear from Twitter’s former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth.
Meanwhile, Democrats intend to call Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower, as a witness during Wednesday’s session.
“Here’s the serious issue: what happens when a social media platform is actually used to inspire violent insurgency against the US government? What are our plans to address this? And that’s what we learned from this Twitter whistleblower,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Oversight Committee’s senior Democrat, told AWN. “So, in comparison to the minutiae that the majority is engaged in, I believe the severity of her evidence is really astonishing.”
According to an excerpt from Raskin’s prepared remarks, Twitter “became the national and global platform for incitement to seditious violence against our government and a forum on the day of attack for coordinating logistical movements and tactical manoeuvres in the mob violence against our officers” in the run-up to January 6, 2021.
All of the witnesses asked for subpoenas to testify before the committee.
The hearing is the second in a row in which social media giants and the FBI have been called to account for decisions made in the final weeks of a presidential election. Following 2016, social media companies such as Twitter faced criticism for doing too little to regulate their platforms against misinformation campaigns, notably from foreign countries such as Russia.
According to Republicans, they’re back in hot water for going too far with their policing.
When the New York Post published its report on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, Twitter executives were wary of anything that appeared to be foreign interference and were ready to act, even without government direction. Roth had spent the previous two years talking with the FBI and other government authorities, preparing for some sort of hacking and leak operation.
“There were a lot of reasons why the entire business was on alert,” Roth said in November, not long after resigning from Twitter. Roth argues that he was not in favour of the story being blocked and that the company’s choice was a mistake.
Republicans will use the testimony of Twitter’s former executives to raise questions not only about the laptop tale, but also about other long-standing conservative grievances about the social media firm that Musk purchased last year. The Republican ranks of the Oversight Committee are filled with the conference’s conservative hardliners who have complained about purported suppression of conservative voices on Twitter.
“I’ll get to ask Twitter officials why they thought they could ban a member of Congress — permanently being a member of Congress. “My Twitter account was permanently disabled for over a year,” said Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Greene’s account was suspended in January of last year for multiple violations of Twitter’s Covid-19 misleading policy, according to the company at the time. After Musk purchased Twitter in November, her account was reinstated.
Democrats say they want to poke holes in Republican charges surrounding the laptop tale, while calling the committee’s choice to convene the meeting in the first place into doubt.
“They cherry-pick witnesses who match their story. It isn’t the same as an objective assessment of how Twitter works and good and bad behaviours that could lead to meaningful reform or regulation. That is not their goal here,” said Virginia Democrat Rep. Gerry Connolly.
Musk visited Capitol Hill ahead of the hearing and talked with a number of House Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Comer. Comer, a Kentucky Republican, claimed Musk gave him advice on lines of questions, though he declined to provide more details ahead of the meeting.
“We’re going to save it,” stated Comer. “Thank you, Elon Musk.”