Washington (EFE) of his son Hunter.
The Surveillance and Accountability Committee of the House of Representatives seated four former company executives on the bench who in October 2020, the date of publication of that news item, were involved in its legal or transparency team.
The chairman of that committee, the conservative James Comer, pointed out that under the leadership of those witnesses Twitter was a private company that removed voices that they did not consider “appropriate.”
The article in question was based on emails and other digital materials recovered from a laptop attributed to Hunter Biden, a copy of which was provided to the newspaper by former New York mayor and attorney for former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021) Rudy Giuliani.
Biden’s son asked the Justice Department this month to investigate those who spread his content, but his lawyers have stressed that this is not the same as acknowledging his ownership.
According to the material it contained, when his father was still Vice President of the United States under Barack Obama (2009-2017), Hunter Biden introduced him to an executive from the Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings, which was being investigated by the then Attorney General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin.
Republican compromise
Since Republicans won a majority in the House in the midterm elections last November, they had promised to investigate the Biden family for allegedly taking advantage of their political ties to do business, and this Wednesday’s hearing is part of those efforts. .
Following the publication of the first of the New York Post articles, Twitter decided to remove the story entirely, alleging that it violated its internal policy against publishing stolen digital material, since the contents of the computer would have been obtained without the consent of its owner. , but later backtracked and allowed netizens to share it.
What happened took place two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, which Joe Biden won, and by the time Twitter rectified it, according to Comer, “the damage had already been done.”
The information contained in that computer had been “delegitimized”, which in his opinion showed that Biden “lied” to the Americans.
The justification of Twitter in the Biden case
Its then chief legal and policy officer at Twitter, Vijaya Gadde, fired in October by the firm’s new owner, Elon Musk, maintained that the platform initially limited itself to applying the policy that avoided echoing material obtained from through hacking.
“Tagging or removing Tweets that violate Twitter’s terms and suspending or banning users who repeatedly break the rules is sometimes labeled simply as censorship, but it’s a key way Twitter and other companies fulfill their responsibility to keep users safe.” users of their products,” added former Transparency and Security team manager Yoel Roth.
For Republicans, Twitter fell into the “game” of the FBI, which raised the possibility that the leak could be part of a Russian hacking operation.
“It is not obvious what is the correct response to a suspected cyberattack by another government in a presidential election. But whether it’s me, Elon Musk, or another future lawmaker, someone will have to make decisions about the governance of digital spaces. Those decisions should not be made behind closed doors,” stressed Roth, who denied having received pressure from the FBI.
Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the committee, in turn criticized the very beginning of the investigation into a “false scandal:” The key point is that it was a decision by Twitter. In the United States, private media can decide what to publish however they want. I don’t understand Congress being drawn into this nonsense when we have serious work to do.”
