Jim Baker, the controversial former FBI counsel who served as deputy general counsel for Twitter between 2020 and 2022, testified at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee today alongside former Twitter executives, to answer for the platform’s politically partisan censorship in the runup to the 2020 election.
Baker was investigated by the Department of Justice for allegedly leaking classified national security information regarding the Trump administration in a probe that began in 2017, although no charges were ultimately filed.
President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Baker, a prominent defender of the USA Patriot Act, has been described as “Mr. FISA” for his defense of the controversial secret courts system.
In his comments before the House Oversight Committee, Baker denied any improper conduct with regards to the platform’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was broken by Breitbart News Emma-jo Morris in the New York Post shortly before the 2020 election.
“I was not aware of, and certainly did not engage in, any conspiracy or other effort to do anything unethical, improper, or unlawful while i was at Twitter, period,” Baker told the assembled lawmakers.
“I did not act unlawfully or otherwise inappropriately in any manner with respect to the Hunter Biden laptop,” said Baker. “I urged caution with respect to the matter and noted that we needed more information to fully assess what was going on.”
What’s more, the former FBI lawyer said that Twitter took no direction from the government or political campaigns in its decision to suppress the story, which had a major impact on the 2020 election.
“I am aware of no unlawful collusion with or direction from any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” said Baker.
“At no time was I an agent or operative of the government or any political actor when I worked at Twitter,” said the former FBI counsel.
But documents released via the Twitter Files, the disclosure of which triggered Baker’s departure from the company, show an intense effort by the FBI, aimed at Twitter executives, to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Via Breitbart News:
Journalist Michael Shellenberger reported, based on documents he obtained from Elon Musk, that federal agents “discredited factual information about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings both after and *before* The New York Post revealed the contents of his laptop on October 14, 2020″ — working with top management at Twitter to censor and disparage the Post‘s reporting on evidence of now-President Joe Biden’s personal business involvement with corrupt and adversarial regimes in Europe and Asia, in the run-up to the 2020 election.
Shellenberger revealed that there was “an organized effort by representatives of the intelligence community (IC), aimed at senior executives at news and social media companies,” to smear factual and accurate stories based on a hard drive belonging to Hunter Biden, which the FBI had in its possession almost a year before the Post’s reporting and knew was authentic.
Shellenberger details how agents outside the company worked to get Twitter management, many of whom were former agents themselves, to embrace the narrative that documents showing the Biden family earning tens of million dollars from Eastern European oligarchs and the Chinese Communist Party were part of a “Russian ‘hack and leak’ operation,” and then censor reporting on those documents on that premise. The narrative would then also be adopted by virtually all of legacy media in the lead up to voting day of 2020, and used to buttress their decision not to report on the material.
A Harvard-Harris poll found that over 75 percent of voters believe Baker’s actions at Twitter were motivated by politics when he intervened in the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The mainstream media’s blackout of the Twitter Files is appalling, but word is getting out anyway. A new Harvard-Harris poll finds that 76% of voters think former FBI official James Baker acted out of politics in censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story while at Twitter pic.twitter.com/Ic8fXXodR4
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 20, 2022
In his comments before the committee, Baker also defended the practice of social media platforms being allowed to censor speech without any First Amendment protections for users.
“I think that the best reading of the law is that as a private entity, the First Amendment protects Twitter and its content moderation decisions,” said Baker. “I do not believe that the facts in the public record indicate that Twitter became a state actor… such that the First Amendment would have constrained it.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.