bret: but, first, breaking tonight. house republicans are taking a microscope to the hunter biden scandal. the oversight committee grilling former twitter executives today about their censorship of the story in the new york post which many in the g.o.p. contended could have directly affected the 2020 election. the most pointed questions though aimed at the u.s. government influence into the censorship decisions. correspondent david spunt reports tonight from the justice department. good evening, david. bret, good evening to you. a fiery hearing lasting the majority of the day. democrats argue there is nothing there but republicans believe something more sinister wer and. and this was the chance for republicans to make the case to the public. we don t know where the fbi ends and twitter begins. emotions running high. we are talking about hunter biden s half fake laptop story. i mean, this is embarrassment. front and center this new york post cover from october
were personally either banned or shadow banned for an extended period of time from the earlier iteration of twitter. but, look, i think you also saw it the philosophical argument taking place in real time between the republicans on the panel and the democrats and in terms of the role of social media. you had the democratic witness as brit was saying earlier who was actually endorsing this notion that speech can be violence and almost making the conservative case against all these regulations and bans and shadow bans. so, you know, this is not going away any time soon. and, it s only the tip of the iceberg. it does seem like though the twitter executives were awfully apologetic about the hunter biden story ban which shows how much the politics have moved on this issue. bret: what s interesting, ben, this really focuses on the interaction between the fbi and twitter and the u.s. government and twitter. and these twitter files that we saw from elon muskens release