Twitter CEO Elon Musk met House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in Washington on Jan. 26.
Musk
tweeted Thursday evening that he met with McCarthy and Jeffries to “discuss ensuring that this platform is fair to both parties.”
McCarthy, who
celebrated his 58th birthday on Thursday, declined to comment on his conversation with Musk.
“He came to wish me happy birthday. We’ve been friends for years,” McCarthy
told reporters.
According to congressional reporter Nathaniel Reed, Musk was able to
evade reporters and “left the Capitol undetected by most of the congressional press corps.”
Musk’s trip to the Capitol came just weeks after the Twitter chief
voiced his endorsement for McCarthy as speaker earlier this month.
“Kevin McCarthy should be Speaker,” Musk wrote at the time, when McCarthy repeatedly failed to secure the 218 votes needed to become speaker due to opposition from a group of conservatives. “Subtle, but I am beginning to suspect opinions differ on this matter … If not McCarthy, then seriously who?”
McCarthy eventually became the 55th
speaker of the House Representatives on Jan. 7 after 15 rounds of voting.
Tom Fitton, president of conservative transparency group Judicial Watch,
responded to Musk’s tweet by applauding his effort.
“Worth a try but the entire Left political/media/cultural complex has embraced and demands mass censorship of its political opponents,” Fitton wrote. “@RepJeffries, for example, has remained silent in the face of @Twitter files revelations that Schiff abused his office to try to censor critics.”
Earlier this month, internal Twitter documents made public by journalist Matt Taibbi
showed that Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office pressured Twitter in 2020 to ban investigative journalist Paul Sperry’s account. Schiff, who was then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wanted “many accounts,” including Sperry’s, suspended, alleging their links to QAnon.
Additional “Twitter files”
released by Taibbi on Jan. 13 showed that Schiff’s staff members wrote to Twitter “quite often” to seek the removal of content they disagreed with.
The timing of Musk’s visit also comes as the House Oversight Committee is planning to hold a public hearing on the week of Feb. 6.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.)
announced the hearing on Jan. 11, as part of new actions in connection with the investigation into President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and social media companies, over their alleged roles in suppressing stories about the younger Biden’s laptop before the 2020 elections.
“For the past two years, the Biden Administration and Big Tech worked overtime to hide information about the Biden family’s suspicious business schemes and Joe Biden’s involvement,” Comer wrote. “Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming.”
Comer wanted three former Twitter executives to attend the hearing: former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former Deputy General Counsel James Baker, and former Global Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth.
“Your attendance is necessary because of your role in suppressing Americans’ access to information about the Biden family on Twitter shortly before the 2020 election,” Comer wrote in letters to the three Twitter officials.
Musk has promised to
promote free speech after acquiring Twitter and his decision to release the company’s internal documents is tied to his promise.
Twitter, which banned Trump following the Capitol breach,
reactivated the former president’s account in November last year after more than 15 million account users voted in an online poll. The final poll results
showed 51.8 percent in favor of reinstating Trump.
On Jan. 25, Meta
announced that Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts will be reinstated “in the coming weeks.”
