House Oversight Committee grills former Twitter executives over censorship following Twitter Files release

AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

On Wednesday, former Twitter executives were called to testify before members of the House Oversight Committee regarding the company’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story shortly before the 2020 election.

Chairman James Comer (R-KY) praised Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter at the end of last year and currently serves as the company’s CEO, for prioritizing free expression on the platform. He cited survey data which suggested that many Biden voters were unaware of the story, and would have chosen differently had they been informed.

Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) argued that the hearing was “all based on the victimology of right-wing politics,” and the revelations of collusion between Twitter and intelligence agencies in the Twitter Files were “trivial” and “silly.”

Former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and former Deputy General Counsel James Baker, formerly of the FBI, were questioned regarding documents indicating Baker’s insistence that the material from the laptop was either faked or hacked, despite the repair shop receipt signed by Hunter Biden.

Baker maintained his innocence and Gadde defended the work of monitoring “the health of the public conversation,” but admitted that the laptop story was not handled properly. Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth testified that the cooperation between social media firms and law enforcement was not politically driven, and that Twitter “made a mistake” in applying rules against hacked materials. He added that individual content moderation choices are often contentious, and that reasonable minds can differ on whether a specific decision was right or wrong.

“Individual content moderation decisions will always be contentious, and reasonable minds can differ about whether a specific choice was right or wrong,” said Roth.