GOP’S REVENGE IS TWEET
Axed top Twit faces probe for Hunter news nix
Twitter’s former chief censor Vijaya Gadde will come under Judiciary Committee scrutiny when Republicans take control of the House in January, as fallout from the first installment of Elon Musk’s findings of political favoritism and censorship at Twitter continues to mount.
“We’re tracking Vijaya Gadde’s role in the suppression of the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop,” a committee spokesperson told The Post Saturday. “We absolutely plan to investigate this more. Stay tuned.”
Gadde, 48, Twitter’s former head of legal, policy, and trust, played a “key role” in suppressing The Post’s Hunter Biden coverage, journalist Matt Taibbi (lower inset) wrote after his review of the socialmedia company’s internal communications for a report he called “The Twitter Files.”
The ex-exec, who also played an instrumental role in the company’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from the platform, was fired by Musk (upper inset) in October shortly after he purchased the company for $44 billion.
Gadde, who landed an influential admin- istration post on an advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency while still a Twitter employee, reportedly earned $17 million in 2021.
Musk reveled in the traffic that Taibbi’s document drop was generating for Elon’s newly acquired social-media behemoth. “Twitter servers are running at Warp 9!!” he exulted early Saturday.
Taibbi’s report revealed that a small group of top-level execs chose to label The Post’s story about the son of then-candidate Joe Biden as “hacked material” without any evidence, and repeatedly bowed to Democrats’ demands to excise all discussion of the explosive report from the site.
According to Taibbi, the company “took extraordinary steps to suppress” the laptop story, removing links to the exposé shared by users and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.”
Late Saturday, Musk was coy about the timing and content of the next chapter of Taibbi’s report, but revealed in an online roundtable that a second independent journalist, Bari Weiss, is also poring over Twitter’s internal documents. “I’m somewhat leaving this up to Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss,” Musk said during a lengthy live Q&A. “I think there will be more smoking guns [but] I’ve not been poring over the Twitter files personally.”
The Q&A had tens of thousands tune in, but became unwieldy at times, with hardto-hear audio and people at times speaking over one another. In other news:
Mainstream journalists, in lockstep with Democratic strategists, smeared Taibbi as “sad” and a “fraud” for working with Musk to substantiate the internal documents. “Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth,” Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali posted. “Matt Taibbi always was, and still remains, a fraud,” wrote Dem pollster Matt McDermott.
Both The New York Times and The Washington Post have refused so far to cover the Twitter firestorm, earning Musk’s ire.
“The New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far-left politicians,” Musk tweeted.
Furious Republicans blasted Twitter’s partisan censors. “Leftists hate your freedom,” tweeted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who compared their suppression to that of the Chinese Communist Party. “They want to silence all dissent.”
Tech investor and GOP donor Peter Thiel cheered the report. “Sunlight is the best disinfectant!” he told The Post.
Actor James Woods, who Taibbi found was targeted for Twitter censorship at the behest of the Democratic National Committee, threatened to lead a classaction suit against the company and the DNC and asked Musk to fund the case.