“I am 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 told lawmakers in his opening statement. The executives testified that while mistakes were made in the company's handling of the situation, the FBI had nothing to do with the blocking of the story. Nonetheless, Republicans including Comer, R-Ky., have used the Post story, which has not been independently verified by The Associated Press, as the basis for what they claim is another example of the Biden family's “influence peddling." Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., called the hearing a “fishing expedition” seeking to reheat bogus allegations claiming Biden somehow influenced his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. The tweet threads lacked substantial evidence of a targeted influence campaign from Democrats or the FBI, which has denied any involvement in Twitter's decision-making. The documents and data largely show internal debates among employees over the decision to temporarily censor links to the story about Hunter Biden. "Thank god for Elon Musk for allowing us to show the world that Twitter was basically a subsidiary of the FBI." Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said, referencing one of the independent journalists with access to company files. The issue was also reignited recently after Elon Musk took over Twitter as CEO and began to release a slew of company information to independent journalists, what he has called the "Twitter Files." But they did not acknowledge that that data came from a laptop that Hunter Biden is purported to have dropped off at a computer repair shop. Just last week, lawyers for the younger Biden asked the Justice Department to investigate people who say they accessed his personal data. The Kremlin had interfered in the 2016 race by hacking Democratic emails that were subsequently leaked, and fears that Russia would meddle again in the 2020 race were widespread across Washington. The newspaper story was greeted at the time with skepticism due to questions about the laptop's origins, including Giuliani's involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden before the White House election. Months later, Twitter's then-CEO, Jack Dorsey, called the company's communications around the Post article "not great." He added that blocking the article's URL with "zero context" around why it was blocked was "unacceptable." Twitter blocked people from sharing links to the story for several days. The Post first reported in October 2020, weeks before the presidential election, that it had received from Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a copy of a hard drive from a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved. The witnesses Republicans subpoenaed to testify were Vijaya Gadde, Twitter's former chief legal officer James Baker, the company's former deputy general counsel and Yoel Roth, former head of safety and integrity.
James Comer, the chairman, said in his opening statement.
"Today's hearing is the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's first step in examining the coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process," Rep. Three former executives appeared before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee to testify for the first time about the company's decision in the weeks before the 2020 election to initially block from Twitter a New York Post article about the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. "Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016," Roth added. The White House criticized congressional Republicans for staging "a bizarre political stunt".Three former executives appeared before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee to testify for the first time about the company's decision in the weeks before the 2020 election to initially block from Twitter a New York Post article about the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.They denied, however, that they were pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story, pushing back against Republican allegations.Former Twitter executives conceded Wednesday that they made a mistake by blocking a story about Hunter Biden, the president’s son, from the social media platform in the run-up to the 2020 election.
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