WASHINGTON – Former Twitter employees are expected to testify next week before the House Oversight Committee about the social media platform’s handling of reports on President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
The scheduled testimony, confirmed by the committee Monday, will mark the first time the three former executives have appeared before Congress to discuss the company’s decision to initially block a New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop on Twitter on Twitter. weeks leading up to the 2020 election.
Republicans have said the story was suppressed for political reasons, though no evidence has been released to support that claim. Witnesses for the February 8 hearing are expected to be Vijaya Gadde, former legal director; James Baker, former deputy general counsel; and Yoel Roth, former head of security and integrity.
The hearing is one of the first of many in a GOP-controlled House that will focus on Biden and his family as Republicans wield their new, albeit slim, majority power.
The New York Post first reported in October 2020 that it had received from former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani a copy of a laptop hard drive that Hunter Biden had left 18 months earlier at a computer repair shop. from Delaware and never recovered Twitter initially blocked people from sharing links to the story for several days.
Months later, Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey called the company’s communications surrounding the Post article “not very good.” He added that blocking the article’s URL with “zero context” about why it was blocked was “unacceptable.”
The Post article at the time was met with skepticism because of questions about the origins of the laptop, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because senior Trump administration officials had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden. ahead of the 2020 election. The Kremlin had interfered in the 2016 race by hacking into Democratic emails that were later leaked, and fears that Russia would meddle again in the 2020 race were widespread across Washington.
“That is why we are investigating the Biden family for influence peddling,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the Oversight committee, said at a press event Monday morning. “We want to make sure that our national security is not compromised.”
The White House has sought to discredit the Republican investigations into Hunter Biden, calling them “political stunts divorced from reality.”
Nonetheless, Republicans now have subpoena power in the House, giving them the authority to demand testimony and conduct an aggressive investigation. Republican staffers have spent the past year analyzing messages and financial transactions found on the laptop belonging to the president’s youngest son. Comer previously said the evidence they have collected is “overwhelming” but offered no details.
Comer has promised there will be no hearings regarding the Biden family until the committee has the evidence to support any claim of alleged wrongdoing. He also recognized that the stakes are high when an investigation focuses on the leader of a political party.
On Monday, the Kentucky Republican, speaking at a National Press Club event, said he could not guarantee a subpoena for Hunter Biden during his term. “We’ll go where the investigation takes us. Maybe there’s nothing there.”
And he added: “We’ll see.”
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