A trio of former top Twitter executives attempted to walk a tightrope during a Wednesday hearing on the Big Tech company’s censorship of Hunter Biden laptop stories in October 2020, with one former executive denying any “unlawful collusion” with the FBI.
The New York Post reported in October 2020 that emails from the laptop showed evidence of shady business dealings by the son of President Joe Biden tied to Ukraine and China. When the publication attempted to post the articles on its Twitter account, the social media company said doing so violated its rule against sharing “hacked” materials. Facebook also limited the dissemination of the New York Post stories.
GOP DEMANDS TREASURY HAND OVER SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTS ON HUNTER BIDEN
Former Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, who had previously been the FBI’s general counsel under since-fired FBI Director James Comey, defended his and Twitter’s actions related to the Hunter Biden laptop censorship saga.
“I was not aware of and certainly did not engage in any conspiracy or other effort to do anything unethical, improper, or unlawful while I was at Twitter. Period,” Baker said. “I did not act unlawfully or otherwise inappropriately in any manner with respect to Hunter Biden’s laptop computer. … I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation.”
Baker added: “Even though many disagree with how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden matter, I believe that the public record reveals that my client acted in a manner that was fully consistent with the First Amendment.” Baker has previously defended the flawed Trump-Russia investigation, including the FBI’s handling of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier.
Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety Yoel Roth and former Twitter chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde also testified Wednesday. Gadde was fired in October 2022, Roth resigned in November 2022, and Baker was fired in December 2022. All three had been involved in Twitter’s discussions about censoring the October 2020 Hunter Biden laptop stories.
“Your attendance is necessary because of your role in suppressing Americans’ access to information about the Biden family on Twitter shortly before the 2020 election,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in separate letters to the trio last month.
Roth said Wednesday that “Twitter and other tech companies worked to build closer information-sharing relationships with law enforcement such as the FBI” to deal with “threats” posed by Russian disinformation efforts similar to those in 2016.
Twitter’s new billionaire owner Elon Musk began providing internal Twitter records to select reporters in late 2022. According to the “Twitter Files” disclosures, the FBI opened a “virtual war room” with Twitter in September 2020 to handle alleged election misinformation. The channel appeared to be a communications channel from the FBI to Twitter and included representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Some of this information included the FBI forwarding documents related to the Russian hacking group APT28, which Roth later said the New York Post story made him think of.
Roth initially concluded that the New York Post story did not violate the company’s policy on hacked materials but appeared to shift his opinion after Baker said the documents might have been either faked or hacked. Roth defended Twitter’s interactions with the federal government Wednesday: “Across the FBI, DHS, and other agencies, the professionals responsible for combating malign foreign interference in elections did so with integrity, and the utmost care and respect for the laws of this country.”
“Since 2018, I have had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and industry peers regarding election security,” Roth said in a December 2020 declaration to the Federal Election Commission. “During these weekly meetings, the federal law enforcement agencies communicated that they expected ‘hack-and-leak operations’ by state actors might occur in the period shortly before the 2020 presidential election, likely in October.”
“These expectations of hack-and-leak operations were discussed throughout 2020. I also learned in these meetings that there were rumors that a hack-and-leak operation would involve Hunter Biden.”
Roth said his team eventually blocked Twitter users from sharing links to the New York Post articles. He said he did not discuss it with any Biden campaign representatives prior to censoring the articles. However, on Wednesday, he admitted Twitter “erred in this case” because “we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.”
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The day after Twitter blocked the New York Post’s mid-October 2020 stories on Hunter Biden, Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted, “Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix.” But for weeks, the company continued to lock the New York Post’s Twitter account, insisting the outlet delete its tweets on the younger Biden.
Gadde tried arguing on Wednesday that “at no point did Twitter otherwise prevent tweeting, reporting, discussing, or describing the contents of Mr. Biden’s laptop.” But she said that Twitter “had not fully appreciated the potential impact” of the laptop censorship policy “on the free press and others” and said Twitter soon “admitted its initial action was wrong.”
Konstantinos “Gus” Dimitrelos, a cyber forensics expert and former Secret Service agent, conducted an examination of the Hunter Biden laptop for the Washington Examiner last year, concluding with “100%” confidence that “the hard drive is authentic.”
