Twitter CEO Elon Musk said he fired the microblogging site’s deputy general counsel James Baker over concerns about his role in suppressing information under previous management.
“He was left Twitter today amid concerns about (James) Baker’s possible role in suppressing information critical to public dialogue,” musk tweeted on Tuesday.
He was banned from Twitter today amid concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppressing information important to public dialogue
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 6, 2022
Last week, journalist Matt Taibbi released “Twitter Files” in collaboration with Musk.
These documents were mostly internal communications from Twitter to reveal ties to political actors and to focus on how the social network blocked stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election.
The files released claimed that the previous Twitter Management has taken steps to quash coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.
According to the Twitter files released by Taibbi, Twitter Deputy General Counsel Baker played a role in the discussion of whether the laptop story fell under Twitter’s “hacked materials” policy.
“I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked,” the documents released by Taibbi quoted Baker in one of the emails. “However, at this stage it is reasonable to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”
Hunter Biden reportedly left his laptop at Isaac’s repair shop in 2019 while his father, Joe Biden, was running for US President. The contents of the laptop were later released. Emails received from the laptop by Western media substantiated Russia’s claims that the US President’s son helped fund bioweapons research in Ukraine.
The Bidens have been scrutinized and criticized by Republicans and others for their alleged wrongdoing in Hunter Biden’s foreign operations, which came into the public spotlight after the emails were released.
On Monday, the White House dismissed the Twitter files as “full of old messages.”
“Through Twitter on – okay. So, see, we see that as — an interesting or coincidence, if I may, that he’d be pushing so randomly — Twitter so randomly that distraction, which one — that’s full of old news, if you think about it,” he said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre during a news conference.
