U.S. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, speaks at a media event on the National Press Club on January 30, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., effusively praised Twitter owner Elon Musk on Wednesday, saying Musk was “being transparent” concerning the tech platform.
“God bless Elon Musk,” Comer said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He called the controversial tycoon “an amazing American.”
Comer’s comments got here just days after Musk visited Washington and met for over an hour with House Republican leaders, a bunch that included Comer.
In addition they got here just per week before Comer is about to chair the primary big congressional hearing on Twitter since Musk bought the corporate in October and since Republicans took control of the House.
On Feb. 8, the House Oversight Committee will hear from three former Twitter executives about what Comer called “the role the federal government played in suppressing the Biden laptop story.”
Notably, Comer didn’t say he can be investigating Twitter’s role within the alleged suppression.
Musk’s charm offensive on Capitol Hill appears to have been limited to Republicans and White House officials.
Musk initially claimed that he “met with” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of Recent York.
“Just met with @SpeakerMcCarthy & @RepJeffries to debate ensuring that [Twitter] is fair to each parties,” Musk tweeted Jan. 26.
But an aide to Jeffries later said that this shouldn’t be what happened.
Jeffries had merely bumped into Musk on his way out of McCarthy’s office and been introduced to him, the aide said. So while McCarthy and Republicans met with Musk for over an hour, Jeffries literally just “met” him.
Twitter’s decision-making throughout the 2020 presidential campaign has been a key subject of the so-called “Twitter files,” a series of unprecedented exposes of Twitter’s internal corporate communications that were authorized by Musk himself.
Musk hand-picked a bunch of independent journalists and gave them a curated set of Twitter’s internal messages from before Musk bought the corporate. The emails and Slack chats appeared to indicate Twitter executives debating methods to handle the laptop story and other politically sensitive events.
Comer lauded Musk’s decision to publicize his company’s internal deliberations, saying Wednesday that “he’s done an amazing service to each American who cares about free speech.”
Republicans have been up in arms over Twitter’s decision in 2020 to limit the distribution of a Recent York Post story published in October 2020, claiming that a “Smoking-gun” email proved then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had once been introduced to a Ukrainian energy executive by his son, Hunter.
The Post said its reporting was based on data recovered from a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off at a Delaware computer repair store but never picked up.
The Biden campaign emphatically denied the Post report, saying Biden’s official schedules from the time of the alleged meeting showed nothing about it “ever took place.”
Facebook and Twitter each limited distribution of the story, with Twitter taking the highly unusual step of blocking links to the article altogether. On the time, the corporate said the article violated its hacked material policy.
The choice caused an uproar amongst Republicans who blasted Twitter, saying it censored conservatives, a claim they’ve long maintained despite the corporate’s denials.
Twitter later backtracked on the choice, allowing links to the Post story. Then-CEO Jack Dorsey called the initial alternative to dam links with little explanation “not great.” Twitter also updated its hacked materials policy to only remove hacked content whether it is shared directly or in concert with hackers.
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