House Committee Sets Date for Hearing on Twitter’s Censorship of Hunter Biden Laptop Story

The House Oversight Committee has summoned former Twitter executives to testify at a hearing in early February regarding the platform’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” story.

Shortly before the 2020 presidential election, Twitter blocked the distribution of the articles, published by the New York Post, which linked President Biden to his son’s foreign business relationships, ahead of the 2020 election, citing a “hacked materials” policy without providing any evidence.

The new committee chairman, Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), wrote that the hearing will examine the decision to suppress the story made by ormer Twitter officials Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, and James Baker, and called on all three to testify before the committee.

Comer gave the three former executives until January 18 to respond.

Gadde, the former policy director, was fired by new Twitter owner Elon Musk in October. Roth, the former director of trust and safety, resigned in November.

Baker, a former attorney and general counsel for the FBI, was fired by Musk in December for allegedly obstructing his efforts to publish what has become known as the “Twitter Files” — internal documents and emails revealing the inner workings of the platform’s censorship decisions.

The Twitter Files have revealed close coordination between Twitter and the FBI, and other elements of the U.S. security state. The files revealed that Yoel Roth was meeting with the FBI and other U.S. security agencies around the same time that the suppression of the Hunter Biden story was taking place.

The files also revealed that most Democrats, with the exception of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), believed the platform had not gone far enough in its censorship.

An email from Carl Szabo, one of the tech industry’s top lobbyists in D.C., told Twitter that Democrat lawmakers he spoke to in the aftermath of the Hunter Biden story suppression expressed their belief that “social media needs to moderate more,” and complained that the story had been allowed to travel as far as it did.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.