In a House Oversight Committee hearing, former Twitter executives testified that there was no conspiracy to knowingly hide the New York Post's story about Hunter Biden's infamous laptop.
While Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL-19) is skeptical about the former executive's involvement and knowledge in the Hunter Biden laptop-gate scandal, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) slams them for her removal, and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL-10) dismisses their concerns as "calling the referee."
Rep. Donalds begins by asking former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth if he personally was opposed to removing the story, who did? Roth answers it was Del Harvey, Vice President of his division.
Donalds then asks former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde if Twitter had any contact from the Biden campaign. Gadde says "not to her knowledge."
However, Donalds reveals a screenshot of an email from October 2020 in which the Biden campaign is "referencing five different tweets, with a Twitter email chain. Under the line is "more to review from the Biden team.""
As such, he asks for comments on how much interaction there really was. Gadde answers she is not familiar with the email, while Roth says he is "only familiar with what's been reported in the Twitter Files."
Roth's answer ends up backfiring when Donalds replies, "but the email is very clear. 'More to review from Biden team.' The response three hours later at the bottom is 'handled these.' What does 'handled these' mean?" Roth says, to his understanding; the tweets shown in the email contained "nonconsensual nude photos of Hunter Biden."
"How could you know so much about the contents of these tweets? As far as I'm concerned, these are just web addresses. I don't know what's in these tweets. You have these things committed to memory, but you don't know who you talked to at the Biden team?" asks Donalds.
Roth again answers his department was separate from that which interacted with the Biden campaign.
A short while later, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene delivers a powerful speech railing against Twitter for removing her account. "Twitter employees, over 98% of them, donate to Democrats," she says.
"So while you coordinated with DHS, the FBI, the CIA, our government, and outside groups to permanently ban, shadowban conservative Americans, and candidates like me, and the former President of the United States, President Donald J. Trump, you were censoring and wrongfully violating our First Amendment free speech rights," Greene adds.
She reminds the former executives that they do not possess security clearances, are not elected, and do not represent any constituents. Greene specifically calls out Roth for his "ability, or should I say, inability, to remove child porn" from Twitter and his apparent arguing in his doctoral dissertation that minors should have access to the gay hookup app Grindr.
However, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D) says he "has been sitting here for two hours and I still don't see the point of this hearing."
He says it detracts from solving the problems of the American people and that "my Republican colleagues wish the Hunter Biden story would've helped them win the 2020 Election."
Frost says this is because "in the future when they want disinformation to be on the internet, social platforms will be scared to call them out down the road. It's called 'calling the ref.'"
It is unsure if Frost is calling the laptop story itself fake or the supposed collusion between Twitter and the government to keep it suppressed.
