The White House on Wednesday bashed House Republicans for engaging in what it called a “bizarre political stunt” as the Oversight Committee held its first hearing related to an investigation of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.
“The morning after President Biden delivered a State of the Union Address emphasizing the significant progress we’ve made as a nation to generate historic job and economic growth and the work still to be done to address Americans’ top priorities like tackling inflation, raising wages, and investing in manufacturing and infrastructure jobs, House Republicans are making it their top priority to stage a bizarre political stunt,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.
Wednesday’s hearing is focusing on the platform’s decision to limit the spread of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. The hearing will feature testimony from former Twitter executives Yoel Roth, Vijaya Gadde and James Baker.
“This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and relitigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” Sams said. “This is not what the American people want their leaders to work on.”
After Elon Musk took over control of Twitter as CEO at the end of October, closing his deal to purchase the company for $44 billion, he released some internal communications from Twitter staff about the decision to censor the New York Post story through a Twitter thread posted by journalist Matt Taibbi.
The thread, though, largely showed internal debates among employees over high-profile decisions and lacked details of influence from Democrats.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement last week that “Americans deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp colluded to censor this information about the Biden family selling access for profit. Accountability is coming.”
Comer has pledged investigations into Hunter Biden with Republicans now in the majority in the House, a move the White House has brushed off as out of touch with what the public is interested in.