House Republicans will bring in “every” single employee who took part in the various efforts to try and hinder the spread of reporting regarding the Hunter Biden laptop just prior to the 2020 election, expressed one incoming chairman for a highly powerful committee this past Friday evening.
Currently sitting as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) put forth this declaration on Friday evening directly after a series of internal Twitter communications were made public concerning how the platform should deal with a story from the New York Post about the contents of the laptop which was thought to have belonged to the son of sitting President Joe Biden, including a number of details about the business dealings, drug use, and sex life of Hunter Biden. The short-term hiding of the story has only sparked a number of claims about improper election influence by former President Donald Trump and those in his camp.
“In January, Jason, when I take your old position as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, I can promise you this: Every employee at Twitter who was involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story will have an opportunity to come before Congress and explain their actions to the American people,” stated Comer to one former congressman, Jason Chaffetz, who at the time was guest-hosting in the slot normally utilized by Fox News’s Sean Hannity.
“This was a huge story,” he went on. Comer continued on, stating, “This story’s just beginning … because we’re going to have every single person at Twitter that was involved in this in front of the House Oversight Committee as soon as possible.”
The collection of messages from Twitter was made public this past Friday evening sporting the permission and blessing of new CEO Elon Musk by Matt Taibbi, a journalist who stated that the choice to try and hide the reporting “was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with the former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.”
One of the notable officials unveiled to have taken part in the talks about the choice to limit the spread of the story due to the site’s “hacked materials” policy was former top FBI lawyer James Baker, Twitter’s deputy general counsel. This release sparked some fairly heavy concerns from Twitter’s former Sr. Director, Head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, about the possible harm the release posed to anyone actively identified in the release.
Taibbi put heavy emphasis on the fact that he has not seen any evidence of “any government involvement in the laptop story,” but did note a number of resources who remembered hearing about a “general” warning put forth by federal law enforcement that summer concerning possible foreign hacks. The journalist stated that “both parties” had the power to sound the call for particular posts to be reviewed and taken down. “For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored,” explained Taibbi in a tweet, stating that the system seemed to be heavily skewed to Democrats.
As part of the interview, Comer explained just how Republicans have already made plans to get ready for taking over the House for this coming term.
“We knew that the [Democratic] National Committee was communicating with Twitter. We knew the Biden campaign was communicating with Twitter, stated Comer. “That’s why, in April of this year, we, on the House Oversight Committee, requested that Twitter preserve all documents and correspondence between Twitter executives and the [Democratic] National Committee and the Biden campaign with respect to the Hunter Biden laptop story.”
