(FreedomBeacon.com)- Last week, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the government’s collusion with social media in censoring the New York Post’s October 2020 report on Hunter Biden’s laptop that featured several former Twitter executives including the former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, and former Deputy General Counsel James Baker.
When asked if they employed such disappearing message apps like Signal, Snapchat, or Wicker in their communications with federal officials, both Gadde and Baker said they couldn’t recall if they did. But Roth answered, “Yes.”
During last Wednesday’s hearing, the three former Twitter executives, all fired by new owner Elon Musk, insisted that their decision to block the New York Post story was not at the behest of the government.
Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan didn’t believe the claims. He pressed Roth on whether or not the FBI informed Twitter that the Post’s story was fake or hacked. When he asked Roth if the New York Post’s report violated Twitter’s terms of service, the former head of Trust and Safety said, “In my judgment at the time, no, it did not.”
Jordon asked if the story didn’t violate Twitter’s policy on hacked materials or anything else, and the FBI didn’t tell Twitter it was fake or hacked, why did Twitter “take it down?”
Roth said while he didn’t believe the Post’s report violated Twitter’s terms of service, “the company made the decision that found that it did violate the policy.” He said when he was told of the decision, he “ultimately” didn’t disagree enough to object.
Jordan told Roth that he believed Twitter “got played” by the FBI.
Gadde admitted that Twitter’s “initial action” in blocking the Post’s report was “wrong” but argued that the policy was changed within 24 hours. She said because the Post refused to delete the original tweets about the report, two weeks after suspending the paper’s account, Twitter made an exception to retroactively apply the new policy to the Post’s tweets.
“In hindsight, Twitter should have reinstated the Post account immediately,” Gadde admitted.
