House Republicans Launch Wideranging Investigations Into Biden, His Son And Socialmedia Bias
Feb. 8 (UPI) -- House Republicans on Wednesday criticized the Biden family and tech giants during a Twitter hearing on a report about a laptop belonging to President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.
The hearing, titled "Defending against government interference and social media bias, Part 1: Twitter's role in debunking the Biden laptop story," comes after the new Republican majority last week launched a series of planned polls for the 2024 election.
White House Press Secretary Ian Sams issued a statement Wednesday calling the meeting a "political freak," The Hill reported.
"One day after President Biden delivered his State of the Union address, he highlighted the significant progress we've made as a nation in job creation and historic economic growth, and the work that remains to be done to address Americans' top priorities. fight inflation, raise wages and invest in manufacturing and create jobs in infrastructure”. And the Republicans in the House of Representatives consider creating a strange political situation as their political priority."
Republicans have long viewed the probe as a way to hold the Biden administration accountable, though their efforts have been rebuffed by boards of directors. For Democrats, the poll is a political scorecard designed to be used as a campaign for two years.
New Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and James Comer, R-C. House Oversight Leader RK touched on a wide range of topics, but rhetoric about an alleged anti-conservative bias took center stage.
On Wednesday, the committee began investigating Twitter and processing a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop. The social media platform restricted the publication of the article. Kummer accused Twitter and the FBI of a "conspiracy" to censor the story, although little evidence was presented to support this.
"The American people deserve answers about this attack on the First Amendment and why Big Tech and the Swamp are colluding to censor this information for sale to the Biden family for profit," Kummer said. Duties are coming.
The GOP tapped three former Twitter executives: ex-lawyer Vijay Jade; Jim Baker, former legal counsel for Twitter and the FBI; and Will Roth, Twitter's former head of trust and security. According to Politico, none of the three confirmed that the Republican Party colluded with the FBI to cover up the New York Post story.
Instead, former Twitter officials insisted on what they had said before: a mistake was made that was eventually corrected with a policy change within days.
"I made it clear that I should have taken no action to prevent Twitter from covering the New York Post at the time," Roth said.
Amid an explosion of billboard headlines about Hunter Biden's alleged laptop, Republicans on the committee said there was an anti-conservative bias between the administration and various social media outlets. Meanwhile, Roth said that Twitter's content decisions often draw the ire of both parties, Politico reports.
Democrats did not sit quietly on Wednesday. Representative of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DNY, representative of the New York Post, avait tenté de reverse l'thique, journalist en partageant une histoire que d'autres organes de presse, tels que le le le Washington Post, n'ont pas pu confirmed.
"Twitter wouldn't let them, and now they're angry," he said. "I think the politicians who wanted explosive information from the Washington Post couldn't get away with it and now they're angry. They want to be able to do it again."
"They are using this committee as a weapon to start over," he said. "Complete hearing during 24-hour hiccups in right hand surgery".
Ocasio-Cortez met with former Twitter employee Anika Collier-Navaroli, a witness subpoenaed by the Democratic Commission. He asked about a tweet addressed to former President Donald Trump, Ilhan Omar, Ayan Pressley and Representative Rashida Tlaib asking them to "go back to where you came from". Navaroli, who was a member of Twitter's content moderation team at the time, said it was Trump's first tweet about actions taken by Twitter moderators.
Navaroli said the group was disqualified even though the moderators found that Trump violated a policy that specifically prohibits tweets that say "go back to your country" or "go back to where you came from" as slurs against immigrants. A senior Twitter official. The policy regarding these types of tweets was later removed from Twitter's rules.
"There's a lot of right-wing bias on Twitter," Ocasio-Cortez said.
The investigation into how Twitter handled this story is perhaps the tip of the iceberg of the Republican platform investigation. Paul Likas, senior vice president of global policy at the Software and Information Industry Association, told UPI that the increased scrutiny will likely require greater oversight of changes at the company under new owner Elon Musk.
"If it allows different voices to be heard, there are a lot of questions about how Twitter processes information when curating content," Likas said.
"From an industry perspective, there are other platforms that are taking a very deep and responsible approach to solving really difficult problems with online content. I think part of the focus on Twitter is that there's a lot of uncertainty right now."
Lykas said that while he believes Congress has an important role to play in moderating content, it would be beneficial for its users and the industry to work bipartisanly and not allow discussions and recommendations to follow ideological lines.
He said there is an opportunity to find bipartisan support around TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company. Lawmakers from both parties believe there are legitimate privacy concerns.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee announced last month that it will hear testimony from TikTok CEO Show Zi Chow in March about the company's ties to the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the app's privacy and data security practices and their impact on children.
With TikTok, "there are very specific privacy and data protection issues, as well as the safety and security of this particular platform," Lekas said. "It may not reflect other social media platforms, so I think the research is very, very important."
Immigration has been another area of concern for House Republicans, with Republicans blaming Biden for the surge in immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border during hearings on the "Biden border crisis" last week. Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler, accused Republicans of using the hearings for "showcase."
On Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee heard testimony from border officials who said the influx of immigrants has made it harder to stem the flow of drugs and contraband into the United States.
Mike Howell, director of the watchdog project at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the House investigation into migrants crossing the US-Mexico border should lead to the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mallorcas.
"We don't need a lot of research," Howell said. "The evidence is incontrovertible. More than 5 million people cross the border illegally, in fact, they are guests of this country. There are border politicians who deliberately tear up the books to create mass chaos, ignore the law, and allow drugs to flow into the country.
So my opinion and that of the Heritage Foundation, what should be explored for the house?
Lindsey Cormack, an associate professor of political science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said the study, like many others, will be used to keep voters on the Republican Party's agenda for the next two years.
Simply put, the Senate doesn't have the votes to remove Mallorca, and Republicans know it no matter what they find in the polls.
He said: "Even if the House of Representatives can introduce indictments, there may not be a majority in the Senate that believes Majorcas should be indicted." "It's been a two-year campaign, there are people who are really angry about what's happening at the border.
"Politically it would be very difficult to succeed because the numbers are not there in the Senate."
Two years after Democrats called on several Republican lawmakers to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Republicans plan to put Democrats first in the 2024 presidential election.
Howell said rich targets for investigations are bills that Biden has championed as major accomplishments, such as the infrastructure bill, the U.S. aid bill and the inflation bill.
He said House investigations into these bills will focus on how the money is spent and who directly benefits, while trying to create checks and balances on where the money goes.
The oversight committee is also looking into John Kerry's work as Biden's international leader on climate change, as well as allegations of embezzlement and fraud related to aid programs to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cormack said efforts to learn how money is spent during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, may fail because the public is fed up with the problem.
"Bringing these issues up is more about making sure they're on the national radar," Cormack said. “The hearings will do some of that work for them. I think [pandemic research] is going to be a little less useful because I don't think it's going to be a good political issue going forward."
Howell said it's up to each committee whether or not the House investigations move forward, and that time is getting tighter as the presidential election nears.
“Everything has to go and there are no brakes,” Howell said. "I want to emphasize that every committee should have a control and investigation committee. House leaders understand that impeachment is not just oversight, it's accountability."
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