Marjorie Taylor Greene laid into former Twitter executives in a House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday for banning her account in 2020 and accused former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth of endorsing child sexualization, a claim Twitter owner Elon Musk made previously that led to right-wing harassment against Roth.
The GOP-led committee on Wednesday held a hearing to probe Twitter executives about their decision to remove a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop from the social media platform ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The story revealed the contents of a laptop that once belonged to the president’s son and contained information suggesting then-Vice President Joe Biden had contact with his son’s Ukrainian business partners. Republicans have cast the move as an example of what they claim is left-leaning bias by social media companies. Oversight Chair James Comer, in his opening statement, tktkttk. Democrats on the committee, meanwhile, called Anika Collier Navaroli, a former Twitter employee-turned-whistleblower, as a witness, and highlighted Twitter’s role in allowing former President Donald Trump and “MAGA extremists” to promote false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in his opening statement. In addition to Roth, former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and former Deputy Counsel James Baker appeared before the committee.
Greene is one of three GOP committee members who have been suspended from Twitter for violating its content moderation policies. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) was temporarily suspended from the platform in November 2021 after sharing a cartoon video that depicted him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and swinging swords at Biden. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) was also briefly suspended in January 2021 for tweeting the false claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
The hearing, which began at 10 a.m., was put on hiatus around 1 p.m. for about an hour, due to a an apparent power outage.
