Elon Musk Fires Twitter’s General Counsel Over Hunter Biden Laptop Saga

New Twitter owner Elon Musk has fired the company’s deputy general counsel, James Baker, citing his role in the Hunter Biden laptop saga. “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 wrote on the platform. Shortly before the 2020 election, Twitter shut down sharing of a New York Post story about the laptop, with the company saying at the time that it violated its “hacked materials” policy. In recent days, Musk has been pitching a series of internal “revelations” about what happened that day at Twitter via Substack blogger Matt Taibbi, which have amounted to spirited arguments among high-level Twitter staff about its content moderation strategies—and whether the Hunter Biden laptop story rose to the level of action. Shortly after Musk’s announcement Tuesday, Taibbi reported that Baker was fired in large part due to his involvement in vetting the files before their release last week—apparently unbeknownst to Musk. Baker was previously FBI general counsel under Director James Comey, and played a key role in probing former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia—a job which has made him a familiar boogeyman among right-wing commentators and politicians.