Three high-level Twitter employees appeared before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability last week.

The hearing took place on February 8 over Twitter’s alleged censorship of a 2020 story by the New York Post.

In October 2020, a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop was barred from Twitter’s platform in the final stages of the presidential election. After suspending the New York Post’s account, Twitter banned the distribution of the article, labeling it “content obtained through hacking that contains private information,” per the New York Post.

Vijaya Gadde, former chief legal officer of Twitter; James Baker, former Twitter deputy counsel; and Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, appeared before the House Oversight Committee.

As Twitter officials were deeply involved in the decision-making process concerning the New York Post story, the three were called before the House Oversight Committee and questioned about the process and federal government involvement.

Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the committee chair, questioned whether Twitter officials verified the authenticity of the laptop.

“Isn’t it correct that the Biden campaign had contact with Twitter in the run-up to the 2020 election … And you’re telling this committee that you didn’t ask any Biden representative if the laptop was real or for Hunter Biden’s attorney’s phone number to confirm it’s [sic] authenticity?” asked Comer, per a press release from the House committee.

Gadde responded, “We did not speak to anybody related to that.”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) also noted that Twitter executives acknowledged the New York Post’s story did not violate the platform’s terms and conditions, per the House Committee. Twitter had previously justified banning the link to the story from being shared by claiming that it violated the terms and conditions.

This claim was not supported by the information discovered by Rep. Biggs.

“Within 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. You said, ‘It isn’t clearly violative of our hacked materials policy,’ referring to the story, ‘nor is it clearly in violation of anything else.’ Do you remember sending that message?” Biggs asked Roth.

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

While Roth denied FBI involvement in the Hunter Biden laptop story, FBI involvement in other Twitter actions has been discovered recently.

Internal Twitter documents publicized by Matt Taibbi in December showed that the FBI allegedly paid Twitter $3.4 million of taxpayer money to suspend accounts on its platform, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.

Democratic members of the House committee offered different perspectives on key points in the hearing. They argued that Twitter’s actions did not violate First Amendment rights since it is a private company that can remove or allow certain content under its own terms.

“Despite all their mentioning of the First Amendment, they have not even made any sort of legal or legislative argument as to what the tie here is behind a personal grievance,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to The Hill. Ocasio-Cortez charged that the hearing was not only an “embarrassment” but also an “abuse of public resources.”

Jamie Raskin (D-MD), meanwhile, suggested there might be value in discussing the matter by connecting it to the larger issue of social media being used to spread “propaganda, disinformation, lies, hate and violent incitement.”

“[T]his is a grave problem confronting democracy in America and all over the world, not a phony, silly, concocted partisan issue. We must analyze it carefully and legislate effectively to address it,” he said.

In its “Key Takeaways” from last week’s hearing, the House Committee alleged that “[u]nder former Twitter employees’ watch, Twitter devolved into a private company the FBI and federal government infiltrated to deliberately limit free speech, particularly conservative speech and news contrary to the mainstream narrative.”

Comer discussed the hearing on the Fox show Sunday Night in America.

“We’ve got to have reform at the FBI. The American people have lost confidence in the FBI,” said Comer, per Fox News. “What they did with Twitter and other social media platforms, with respect to not just the Hunter Biden laptop story but many conservative stories throughout the last few years, is [the] reason for this select committee on the weaponization of DOJ to be taken seriously and to have every tool they need to be able to bring reform to the DOJ.”

The Dallas Express reached out to the offices of Reps. Comer and Biggs, as well as the House Oversight Committee, for comment. No response was received by the time of publication.