Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., on Wednesday took a former Twitter executive to task over the platform’s alleged collusion with federal agencies to block a story about Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Speaking at House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Luna shared a flowchart showing federal agencies and social media companies, including Twitter, were all communicating on a private cloud server called Jira.
Luna questioned Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety, whether he remembered his communication with federal agencies on a private cloud server to remove a posting in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Roth equivocated, telling Luna he disagreed with the "characterization" and could not give a yes or no answer.
"This ladies and gentlemen is joint action between the federal government and a private company to censor and violate the First Amendment," Luna said. "This is also known as … joint state actors. It’s highly illegal, you are all engaged in this action and I want you to know that you will all be held accountable."
The appearance by Roth and other former Twitter executives before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee marked the first testimony about the company's decision to initially block a New York Post article in October 2020 about the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.
The former Twitter executives conceded they made a mistake by blocking the story but adamantly denied Republican assertions they were pressured by Democrats and law enforcement to suppress the story.
The FBI has rejected the characterization of an inappropriate relationship with Twitter or any other social media company.
"The FBI does not instruct or direct any social media company to censor an account or remove information from their platform," the bureau said.
It said social media companies "voluntarily" provide information to the bureau when the company believes there is a serious risk of death or serious physical injury. In turn, the FBI said it shares "identified malign foreign influence information with these companies."
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Such information, the FBI said, is specific to foreign actors like Russia, China, and Iran, and their activities.
"We may also alert social media companies about intentional attempts to post disinformation about voting times, places, or dates, which may be a federal crime," the FBI said. "Private sector entities independently make decisions about what, if any, action they take on their platforms and for their customers in response to information we share."
Fox News' David Spunt contributed to this report.
