Ex-Twitter Exec Admits Hunter Biden Laptop Story They Censored Didn’t Violate Their Policies

On Wednesday morning, Yoel Roth, former head for trust and safety at Twitter, testified before House Oversight and Accountability Committee. She admitted that Twitter had been harmed by the events of September 11. Hunter Biden laptop storyThe New York Post reported that the New York Post had censored the article. However, it did not violate Twitter policies.

Rep. Andy Biggs interviewed Roth, asking questions “Mr. Roth, within just mere minutes or hours after the New York Post published its story on the Hunter Biden laptop, at 8:51 am you sent a message to a team, part of your team, I assume, and you said ‘it isn’t clearly violative of our hack materials policy,’ referring to the story, ‘nor is it clearly in violation of anything else.’ Do you remember sending that message?”

“I don’t recall that message specifically, but that does sound like my judgment on that day, yes,” Roth replied.

Biggs continued by noting that Kayleigh McEnaney (ex-White House press secretary) was immediately removed from her account on Twitter.

Biggs continued by stating that Carolyn Strom had made an inquiry to find out what was going on. She was then told that McEnaney had been “bounced” by site integrity for violating the hacker materials policy.

Biggs quoted Trenton Kennedy as a Twitter employee. “‘I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for me marking this unsafe. And I think the explainability argument’ — now, that may be a technical term for you, but for me, it looks like we’re trying to create a narrative here to cover our butt — ‘the best explainability argument for this externally, will be that we’re waiting to understand that this story is the result of hacked materials.'”

“And so then we get into a whole series of things written by [Jim] Baker going back and forth, and he says, on that same day now at 9:26, which is about half an hour after your statement that you don’t think that anything’s been violated here, he says, ‘I’ve seen some reliable cyber security folks questioned the authenticity of the emails in another way.'”

Biggs noted that Roth sent out a message after Baker’s message, stating that “the key factor in forming our approach is consensus from experts monitoring election security and disinformation, that this looks a lot like a hack and leak that learned from the 2016 Wiki Leaks approach.”

Biggs then asked Roth to name any experts who had reached a consensus on that morning.

“Twitter did not give me access to any of my documents or emails to prepare for this hearing. And so unfortunately, I can’t give you a direct answer,” Roth responded.

“Were there experts, were there people that you consulted, that were cybersecurity experts between 9 am and 10:15 am On that day?” Biggs were asked.

“My recollection is that we were following discussions about this incident as they unfolded on Twitter. So cybersecurity experts were tweeting about this incident and sharing their perspectives and that informed some of Twitter’s judgment here. But I want to emphasize, as I said in my statement, I didn’t think that the evidence or those perspectives warranted removal, and I advocated against taking that action,” Roth responded.

Biggs also cited another document. “Our teams made the determination that the materials fall under our hacked materials policy,” His explanation was that in order to have a hacked policy violation, a government official or law enforcement officer would need to verify that the materials were actually hacked.

Biggs inquired if that was a correct understanding. Roth responded that it was not.

“So the policy did not require that there be any kind of official finding by the government by a government source?” Biggs questioned.

Roth responded that there were “a number of different types of evidence” This could be covered under the Hacked Materials Policy. “certainly government attribution would be a powerful one.”

Biggs interrupted and stated, “that wasn’t determinative is what you’re saying.”

“In that instance, we did not have any specific information from any government source, no,” Roth responded.

Biggs stated that he was reading from another document. “This might be an unpopular opinion, but one-off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are, in my humble opinion, a slippery slope and reflect an alternatively equally dictatorial problem.”

“Quite frankly, that’s what the essence of all four of your testimony — I realize you’re trying to fight against it — but you exercised. You exercised an amazing amount of clout and power over the entire American electorate by even holding them hostage for 24 hours reversing your policy and then hold it — and then they’re like, well, we want to go back to the originals. That’s 24 hours or two weeks, that you imposed your will on the American electorate,” Biggs was successful.