Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, has claimed that he sacked James Baker, the microblogging site’s deputy general counsel, due to worries over Baker’s involvement in information stifling during the previous administration.
“In light of concerns about (James) Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,” Musk tweeted on Tuesday.
In conjunction with Musk, journalist Matt Taibbi published “Twitter Files” last week.
The primary purpose of this collection of papers was to reveal connections between Twitter and political figures, with a particular emphasis on how the social media platform censored articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 US Presidential election.
According to the documents that were made public, the previous Twitter management took action to stifle news of Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 US Presidential Election.
The debate about whether the laptop story fell under Twitter’s “hacked materials” policy reportedly involved Twitter deputy general counsel Baker, according to the Twitter Files written by Taibbi.
“I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked,” the documents published by Taibbi cited Baker as saying in one of the emails. “At this stage, however, it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”
While his father, Joe Biden, was purportedly campaigning for president of the United States in 2019, Hunter Biden apparently left his laptop at Isaac’s repair shop. Later, the information on the laptop was made widely known. The laptop’s emails provided evidence for Russia’s assertions that the son of the US president contributed to the funding of bioweapons research in Ukraine.
Republicans and others have criticised the Bidens for what they claim to be improper behaviour about Hunter Biden’s international business transactions, which came to light after the emails were made public.
The White House dismissed the Twitter Files on Monday, calling them “full of old stuff.”
“By Twitter on — okay. So, look, we see this as a — an interesting or a coincidence, if I may, that he would so haphazardly — Twitter would so haphazardly push this distraction that is a — that is full of old news, if you think about it,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing.
