Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California was the only Democrat lawmaker who voiced concerns about Twitter's censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the 2020 presidential election.
"Musk released Twitter’s internal discussions on the Hunter Biden laptop story Friday night via journalist Matt Taibbi," reported Breitbart.
The report about the lone Democrat congressman's concern was revealed according to internal discussions released by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk.
Taibbi reported that Khanna "was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern."
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern. pic.twitter.com/TSSYOs5vfy
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
"In an email to Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of Trust & Safety, Khanna told her Twitter’s decision to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story was 'Generating huge backlash on [Capitol] hill,'" reported Breitbart.
"We put out a clarifying thread of Tweets earlier this evening to explain our policy around the posting of private information and linking directly to hacked materials," Gadde answered.
Khanna still seemed more concerned with constitutional violations than with breaches of the Twitter rules.
"Hope you’re well Vijaya! But this seems a violation of the 1st Amendment principles," Khanna responded, followed by a highlight of the New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark Supreme Court decision on the first amendment that has implications for members of the press.
Khanna continued in the letter:
If there is a hack of classified information or other information that could expose a serious war crime and the NYT was to publish it, I think the NYT should have that right. A journalist should not be held accountable for the illegal actions of the source unless they actively aided the hack. So to restrict the distribution of that material, especially regarding a Presidential candidate, seems not in the keeping of the principles of NYT v Sullivan.
32.Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files: pic.twitter.com/Tq6l7VMuQL
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022
Source: Breitbart