The new Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee wants former Twitter executives involved in censoring Hunter Biden laptop stories ahead of the 2020 election to testify about their actions.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY), who got hold of the gavel earlier this week, told former Twitter deputy general counsel Jim Baker, former Twitter global head of trust and safety Yoel Rother, and former Twitter chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde that he wanted them to appear for testimony during a hearing scheduled in early February.
JAMES COMER DEMANDS TREASURY HAND OVER SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTS ON HUNTER BIDEN
“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,” Comer said in separate letters to the trio, who have all left the company recently following billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover.
Gadde was fired in October 2022, Roth resigned in November 2022, and Baker was fired in December 2022. All three had been deeply involved in Twitter’s discussions about ultimately censoring October 2020 stories by the New York Post on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China.
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 largely one-way communication 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 may have been either faked or hacked. Gadde was deeply involved in the suppression decision as well.
Before Roth resigned from Twitter, Musk spent some time defending him.
Baker, previously the FBI’s general counsel prior to joining Twitter, has previously defended the Trump-Russia investigation, including the FBI’s handling of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s dossier.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Late last year, Comer called on Musk to cooperate with congressional requests after the Republican said the company’s former CEO, Parag Agrawal, ignored a document preservation request in early 2022.
“Committee Republicans are investigating the Biden family’s pattern of influence peddling to enrich themselves and President Biden’s involvement in these schemes,” Comer wrote to Musk in November 2022. “As part of this investigation, Committee Republicans are reviewing the role Big Tech — including Twitter — played in supporting the Biden campaign in 2020 by suppressing certain stories implicating the Bidens.”
