Former Twitter Executives Testified to the House Oversight Committee on Feb. 8, 2023. Photo Courtesy of The New York Times.
The new Republican House majority followed through on their promise to hold Twitter executives accountable for their role in the suppression of The New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Their goal for this roughly six-hour hearing was to prove government interference and pressure to remove posts from Twitter. They succeeded in that goal.
The hearing, titled, “Protecting Speech From Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing The Biden Laptop Story” featured four witnesses: Twitter’s former chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, former deputy general counsel James Baker, former Twitter policy official Annika Collier Navaroli, and former global head of trust and safety Yoel Roth.
In an exchange that is now part of the official congressional record, Navaroli described to Florida Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost a Twitter post that the Trump White House requested to be removed. The video is below and a content warning for strong language is in effect.
When asked, repeatedly, all of the witnesses denied any pressure from President Biden, the FBI, or any government official in the decision to remove the New York Post article. “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 stated in his opening statement. Roth did testify, and Maryland Representative Jaime Raskin questioned him further, that his team did find evidence of 100s of thousands of Russian bots on the platform that are still active to this day.
New York Congressmen Dan Goldman also used the opportunity to try and clear up some misunderstandings he believed his Republican colleagues had over the crime they believe Joe Biden committed. The controversy surrounding Hunter Biden’s laptop stems from the theory that when Joe Biden was Vice President he was involved with the business dealings of a Ukrainian company, Burisma, that his son Hunter was on the board.
The claim continues and states that Vice President Joe Biden fired a Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, because he was investigating Burisma. But according to statements from several White House officials during the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, they actually fired Shokin, according to international law and support from Europe, because he wasn’t investigating corrupt companies, including Burisma.
This hearing also proved over and over again through witness testimony that CEOs at Twitter actually went out of their way to protect President Trump and conservative voices. Roth described violent anti-semitic and homophobic tweets aimed at him that were never taken down. He said that he was threatened so viciously that he was forced to sell his home and move. Navaroli, who was a whistleblower to Twitter’s failure to recognize the potential violence of Jan. 6, repeatedly told the lawmakers that Twitter did not take threats as seriously as they should have.
The hearing was at times professional and courteous and other times threatening and intense. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene used her five minutes to yell at the witnesses and question them as to why her personal Twitter account was suspended. She accused them of silencing her ability to speak to her constituents.
When Greene was told by the chairmen that her time was expired, she pointed at the witnesses and said, “And your time is expired.” The exchange continued when California Representative Jimmy Gomez asked Yoel Roth to explain why Greene’s Twitter account was suspended. Roth went on to explain that she had violated policies regarding Covid-19 and was repeatedly warned to stop violating their policies. She even received multiple “time-outs” according to Roth.
Greene interrupted the testimony to demand another chance to question. When she was given the chance, after a tense exchange between Ranking Member Raskin and Chairmen Comer, she asked, “Who made you in charge of what is true and what’s not?” Chairmen Comer stopped her line of questioning and allowed Gomez to reclaim his time.
Between Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert asking, “Who the hell do you think you are?” and South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace blaming the vaccine for her asthma after admitting to being a long Covid sufferer, and several congress people asking the chairmen when they were going to arrest the witnesses, and thanking God for Elon Musk, Democratic members continuously accused the Republicans of “political theater.” Representatives Mace, Greene, and Boebert explicitly accused the witnesses of personally attacking them.
The hearing concluded with no concrete evidence of a single claim that the Republican lawmakers brought to the table, and it opened up new inquiries into Russian interference in elections, big tech mishandling of Jan. 6, and the accusation that the Trump White House did the very thing the Republican side was accusing then candidate Joe Biden of doing.
I will end this on a positive note with a statement from Representative Frost. Representative Frost is the first Gen Z Representative at 25 years old. Yes, he got an ex-Twitter exec to curse on live television, but he also gave a concise and intelligent analysis of why this hearing was taking place. “My Republican colleagues wish the Hunter Biden laptop story would have helped them win the election, that didn’t happen, and now they’re angry about it.”
