A senior Republican lawmaker has vowed to haul Twitter employees before Congress to explain how the social media company grappled with a 2020 New York Post report on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibibi released a trove of internal Twitter documents on Friday night showing how Twitter temporarily suppressed the report, fearing it was a Russian hacking operation days out from the 2020 presidential election.
After Mr Musk had teased a bombshell disclosure for days, Mr Taibibi’s lengthy Twitter thread only appeared to confirm what was already known about the incident.
The so-called “Twitter Files” have animated many right-wing commentators and politicians as evidence of law enforcement overreach, despite the fact Joe Biden was not in power at the time.
James Comer, who will head the House Oversight Committee once Republicans take control of Congress in January, told Fox News on Friday night he intends to vigorously pursue the matter.
“We are going to have every person at Twitter in front of the House Oversight Committee,” Mr Comer said.
“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.”
Mr Taibibi’s late night thread detailed how the decision to temporarily remove a Post article was debated by employees in Twitter’s legal, policy and communications team.
Some employees feared the decision would fuel accusations of an anti-Republican bias at the company. Ultimately it was removed under the company’s hacked materials policy.
Mr Comer, Mr Musk and others have claimed the revelations were evidence that the FBI had pressured Twitter to suppress articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop and violated the First Amendment.
This claim was undermined by Mr Taibibi, who wrote that “there is no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story.”
Mr Taibibi’s thread also showed that both Democrats and Republicans routinely called on Twitter to remove material they deemed as harmful.
