Elon Musk announced on December 7 that he had fired Twitter’s deputy general counsel James Baker, citing concerns about his role in the social media platform’s previous management’s suppression of information on the Hunter Biden laptop.
Baker, a former top FBI lawyer, was discovered secretly vetting internal Twitter documents before they could be reviewed by journalists, causing the release of additional material related to the company’s censorship scandal to be delayed.
Baker worked with anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page during his time at the bureau. Baker reportedly found himself under criminal investigation after leaving the bureau in 2018 for allegedly leaking materials to reporters. Baker has stood by his actions while at the FBI and in relation to the Russia investigation.
“In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,” Musk said in a tweet on Tuesday.
The Tesla CEO went on to say that he questioned Baker about the events surrounding the laptop suppression scandal before firing him, and that the lawyer’s explanation was “unconvincing.”
Last week, Taibbi and Musk released the “Twitter Files,” a collection of documents containing internal Twitter communications. They describe, among other things, how the social network suppressed stories about a laptop owned by US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden in the run-up to the 2020 US Presidential election.
Another user asked Musk if Baker was asked to explain himself before being fired, and Musk replied, “Yes. His explanation was …unconvincing.”
In 2019, Hunter Biden allegedly left his damaged laptop with a repair shop to be repaired. His father was running for president of the United States at the time. The contents of the laptop were later made public in the United States by publications such as the New York Post.
The laptop allegedly contained private videos of Hunter Biden, which were later shared on Twitter.
Musk revealed that Twitter deleted a few tweets after receiving a request from Joe Biden’s campaign. The tweets included naked photos of Hunter Biden that were shared without his permission, which is against Twitter’s rules.
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