What Is Congress Learning from Twitter Employees?

House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is acting true to his word. His committee put former Twitter executives on the record today about how the New York Post’s report on the Hunter Biden laptop was suppressed a few weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election.

According to polls, the suppression of Hunter Biden’s laptop could have affected the results of the last presidential election. Few mainstream media outlets acknowledged the story of the laptop prior to the election, but most of them have since verified that it is authentic. The “Twitter Files” of Elon Musk has shown what was happening “behind the curtain.” Fred Lucas analyzed the Twitter hearing and shared six highlights from it. 

1. ‘Restrict Speech and Interfere’ With Elections

Comer called the situation “coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process.” The committee chairman noted that Twitter worked “hand in hand with the FBI” to monitor political speech.

A Media Research Center poll shortly after the 2020 election found that 36% of self-described Biden voters said they were not aware of the evidence behind claims that he was personally involved in his son Hunter’s business deals with China, a claim bolstered by emails found on the abandoned laptop.

Of those, 13% said that if they had known, they would not have voted for Biden….

Comer later said that both sides of the aisle should be concerned about government agencies outsourcing censorship:

The government doesn’t have any role in suppressing speech. That’s something the media should be very concerned about. What if there is a conservative president that somehow cleans out our FBI, [and] they put in conservatives to suppress liberal speech? That’s something that should never happen.

2. Twitter Concerns About Russia and Another Jan. 6

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety, said he had outright opposed suppressing the New York Post’s account, but supported a milder measure based on concerns about Russian meddling in the 2016 election….

Former Twitter content moderation team member Annika Collier Navaroli warned the committee that a riot similar to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol could occur….

3. Admission That Laptop Story Didn’t Violate Twitter Policies

Roth, the former head of trust and safety for Twitter, admitted to the panel that the New York Post’s reporting on the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop didn’t violate Twitter’s policies….

Jordan followed by telling Roth:

I think you guys wanted to take it down. I think you guys got played by the FBI. And that’s the scary part. Because – this to me is the real takeaway – we had 51 former intelligence officials five days after you guys take down the Hunter Biden story and block the New York Post account, five days later, 51 intel officials send the letter [saying] that the Hunter Biden story has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information campaign.

 

4. How Trump Pushed Twitter

Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said the Trump administration had sought to squelch political speech on Twitter, pointing to two examples.

“On May 27, 2020,” Connolly said, “President Donald J. Trump tweeted, and I quote, ‘Republicans feel that social media platforms totally silence conservatives…. We will strongly regulate the monopolies or close them down before we ever allow this to happen.’”

The Virginia Democrat asked Navaroli, the former executive on Twitter’s content moderation team: “Does that not sound eerily like a government official telling Twitter [as] a threat, ‘We will shut you down if we don’t like the content?’”

Navaroli replied: “I am not familiar with the tweet that you have referenced.” …

5. AOC Concedes Hunter Biden Story ‘Half’ True

Despite nearly everyone’s accepting the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said the Post story on the laptop was “half-fake,” apparently meaning she thought it was at least half true.

“It’s just an abuse of public resources, an abuse of public time,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We could be talking about health care. We could be talking about bringing down the cost of prescription drugs. We could be talking about abortion rights, civil rights, voting rights. But instead we are talking about Hunter Biden’s half-fake laptop story.”

Ocasio-Cortez then seemed to make the committee’s hearing about herself, saying, “Let’s talk about something real.” …

6. ‘Nazis in the White House’

During the hearing, Comer asked Roth about his own tweet calling Trump administration officials Nazis.

Roth’s tweet – a reference to female anti-Trump protesters wearing pink hats – read: “Yes, that person in the pink hat is clearly a bigger threat to your brand of feminism than the ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.”

“Mr. Roth, did you write this tweet?” Comer asked.

Roth answered: “I regret the language that I used in my former tweets, but yes, I did post that.”

[Comer asked Roth if he thought “all conservatives are Nazis” or “the hundreds of people that worked in the Trump administration?” Roth answered, “Certainly not.” When asked if Twitter officials asked him to take down the tweet, Roth answered, “Twitter did not have a practice of restricting their employees from sharing their personal viewpoints on the service.”]

The Twitter case in Congress is not about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It is about how the FBI use a private company to suppress the free speech of Americans. All Americans should be interested in what Congress is investigating and supporting the effort to find the truth.