Category: US

London
CNN
 — 

Credit Suisse

(CS) has reported its biggest annual loss since the financial crisis in 2008, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing the scandal-plagued Swiss bank as it attempts a turnaround.

The lender on Thursday posted a loss of 1.4 billion Swiss francs ($1.5 billion) in the fourth quarter of 2022, extending a losing streak that started in 2021 and taking its full-year loss to 7.3 billion Swiss francs ($7.9 billion). In 2008, Credit Suisse made a loss of 8.2 billion Swiss francs ($8.9 billion).

The bank’s shares fell 5% in early trade. The stock has plunged 65% over the past 12 months but is up 12% so far in 2023.

Credit Suisse said in a statement that the fourth-quarter performance was impacted by “the challenging economic and market environment, significant deposit and net asset outflows at the beginning of the quarter and the execution of our strategic actions.” It added that it expected to make another “substantial loss” in 2023.

Customers withdrew 111 billion Swiss francs ($121 billion) in the final three months of 2022, when the bank was hit by social media speculation that it was on the brink of collapse.

The rumors, which sparked a selloff in the shares, followed a series of missteps and compliance failures that have cost the bank dearly.

For example, the collapse of US hedge fund Archegos Capital Management, a client of Credit Suisse, in 2021 cost the bank $5.5 billion. An independent external investigation later found “a failure to effectively manage risk.”

Credit Suisse has since embarked on a major restructuring plan that entails cutting 9,000 full-time jobs, spinning off its investment bank and focusing on wealth management.

In a step towards this, the company announced Thursday the acquisition of M. Klein & Company, an investment banking business.

Credit Suisse CEO Ulrich Körner said the deal “marks another milestone in the carve-out of CS First Boston as a leading independent capital markets and advisory business.”

The bank also announced that it had finalized the first stage of the deal to sell its securitized products group to Apollo Global Management, which is expected to conclude in the first half of this year.

“We have a clear plan to create a new Credit Suisse and intend to continue to deliver on our three-year strategic transformation by reshaping our portfolio, reallocating capital, right-sizing our cost base, and building on our leading franchises.” Körner said in the statement.

— Julia Horowitz contributed to this report.

CNN
 — 

After five Memphis police officers brutally beat Tyre Nichols last month, one officer took two cell phone photos of the visibly injured 29-year-old Black man and texted one image to at least five people, newly revealed internal police department documents show.

Demetrius Haley – one of five officers fired and charged with murder in Nichols’ death – admitted that he texted a photo to five people, including two other Memphis officers, a “female acquaintance” and a civilian employee, according to the documents, published online by CNN affiliate WMC and obtained by CNN. A sixth person was also identified as a recipient of the same photo, the documents state.

Indeed, surveillance video of the beating released to the public shows one of the officers twice held up his cell phone and shined a flashlight on Nichols.

The sharing of the photo was just one allegation among many laid out in the internal documents, which accuse the officers of a slew of misconduct and policy violations before, during and after the interaction with Nichols on January 7.

Taken together, the police documents accuse the officers of pulling over Nichols without telling him the reason for the stop, using excessive force, turning off or otherwise obscuring their body-worn cameras, “laughing and bragging” about the beating and then misleading investigators.

Also included in the documents is a sworn affidavit from one of the officers defending his actions – the first time any of the officers involved in the beating have offered their perspective on what happened.

The offenses are laid out in five decertification request letters – one for each officer – sent by the police department last month to a state commission that enforces policing standards. If their decertification is granted, they would be unable to work for other state law enforcement agencies.

Nichols is described in the letters as a nonviolent, unarmed subject who posed no significant threat to the officers. He died three days after the beating.

All five officers – Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Desmond Mills Jr. – were internally charged with violating the department’s policies on personal conduct, neglect of duty, excessive or unnecessary force and use of body-worn cameras, the letters show. Some also were charged with additional violations. The charges are not criminal in nature.

The documents say that all five officers declined to make any statements during the administrative hearings. In each case, the president of the police union, Lt. Essica Cage-Rosario, submitted a letter stating investigators had not provided the body-camera footage or other officer statements beforehand.

“These are only a few examples of the GROSS violations of this officer’s right to due process,” Cage-Rosario said, according to the documents.

A sixth police officer also has been fired but not charged. The officers were all members of the specialized SCORPION unit, which has since been disbanded. Further, the Fire Department fired two EMTs and a lieutenant for their inadequate response to the incident.

Seven more officers are expected to face administrative discipline related to the case, the Memphis city attorney announced Tuesday.

The Memphis City Council also approved several public safety reforms in a meeting Tuesday night, the first hearing since the video of Nichols’ beating was released. The council votes happened as Nichols’ family entered the House of Representatives chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, as invited guests of first lady Jill Biden to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Biden addressed the need for police accountability in his speech.

Nichols’ parents spoke to CNN on Wednesday morning, thanking Biden for acknowledging him and urging Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to address police reform.

“My son didn’t die for nothing,” RowVaughn Wells told CNN’s Don Lemon on CNN This Morning. “There has to be some greater good … some good will come of this.”

Video contradicts initial police report in Tyre Nichols arrest

The documents added further details to the entirety of the police interaction with Nichols, only some of which is captured on surveillance and body camera footage.

The interaction began with a traffic stop for alleged “reckless driving,” police initially said.

However, the internal police documents say Haley exited his unmarked vehicle and “forced (Nichols) out of his vehicle while using loud profanity and wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie over (his) head.” Haley “never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest,” the documents state.

In the following moments, Haley pepper-sprayed Nichols directly in the eyes and kicked him on the ground, the documents say.

After Nichols fled the scene, the officers caught up to him at a second location near his family home and punched and beat him as he lay restrained on the ground, the video shows.

At one point, Haley was “on an active cell phone call where the person overheard the police encounter,” the documents state.

The documents lay out numerous uses of excessive force against Nichols committed by each officer and say several of the men failed to intervene or report the violent actions of their fellow officers.

At one point, Smith and Bean held Nichols by the arms while other officers pepper-sprayed and “excessively struck” him with a baton, the department says. Smith and Bean also admitted to punching Nichols several times as they tried to handcuff him, the letters say.

After the beating, the officers can be heard on body-worn camera “making multiple unprofessional comments, laughing and bragging about (their) involvement,” the documents say.

The officers also failed to immediately provide aid in the critical moments after the beating and did not immediately help when medical personnel requested to remove Nichols’ handcuffs, the documents say. The documents also note Smith is a certified EMT.

Their conversation and inaction after the beating was witnessed by a civilian who took photos and cell phone video, the documents state.

Mills knew Nichols had been “pepper sprayed, tased, struck with an ASP baton, punched, and kicked” but didn’t provide him aid, according to the documents. Instead, he admitted in his report he walked away to decontaminate himself from the chemical irritant spray, his letter says.

About 23 minutes passed between the time Nichols appeared to be subdued and a stretcher arriving on scene, video shows.

An autopsy commissioned by Nichols’ family preliminarily found he suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” The full report from the family’s autopsy has yet to be released. Officials have also not released Nichols’ autopsy.

After Nichols’ arrest, the officers’ statements and reports contradicted one another and omitted or distorted key details about their violence toward Nichols, according to the letters.

Their accounts were “not consistent with each other and are not consistent with the publicly known injuries and death of Mr. Nichols,” the documents say.

When speaking to Nichols’ mother after the arrest, Mills and his supervisor “refused to provide an accurate account of her son’s encounter with police or his condition,” his letter says.

Martin made “deceitful” statements in his incident summary, in which he claimed Nichols tried to grab his holstered gun as officers forced him to the ground, his letter says. Video evidence, however, “does not corroborate” his statements, it says, adding Martin never disclosed that he punched and kicked Nichols several times. Instead, it says, he said he administered “body blows.”

Haley also said in a statement and in body camera footage that he heard an officer tell Nichols, “Let my gun go!” But the claim was “deemed untruthful” after a review of video evidence, the documents say.

Both Haley and Martin were internally charged with violating the department policy against providing “knowingly incorrect, false, or deceitful” information, the documents show.

All five of the officers either never turned on their body-worn cameras or only recorded snippets of their encounter with Nichols, which is a violation of the department’s policies, the letters say.

Both Bean and Mills were initially recording their encounter with Nichols but removed their cameras while the scene was still active, their letters state.

Bean took the camera off his vest and left it on the trunk of a car before walking away to “have a conversation with other officers about the incident,” the letter says. Mills took his vest off entirely, leaving it on another car with the camera still attached, his letter says.

Martin and Haley, the first officers on the scene who dragged Nichols out of his car, didn’t turn their cameras on before the confrontation, according to their statements of charges. Smith also hadn’t activated his camera when he first arrived at the scene, his letter says.

The documents do not clarify whether Haley, Martin or Smith turned on their cameras the second time they encountered Nichols, who was confronted by officers again after he fled on foot. Martin’s letter says he “at some point” took his camera off and put it in his car.

In a sworn affidavit submitted during his disciplinary hearing, Smith explained that he called for medical help, followed his training and even tried to assist Nichols at one point.

He said that he called for medical help even before he arrived on the scene of the second encounter.

“Even though no one else requested medical assistance, because of the reported taser and chemical spray, I immediately made a radio call and indicated that medical should be sent to the area where the suspect was last seen to possibly render medical aid if the suspect was taken into custody,” he said.

CNN could not independently confirm that Smith made that call.

After arriving at the scene, according to the affidavit, Smith said he tried to help another officer take Nichols into custody but that Nichols “was violent and would not comply.”

“It is my contention that I personally utilized the training and defensive tactics” he learned as a Memphis police officer, he said. However, according to the investigative hearing summary filed by the city, Smith admitted to investigators that he hit Nichols, “with a closed first two to three times in the face.”

Bodycam and surveillance videos from the incidents show that Nichols did not appear to be violent, and instead captured multiple officers threatening Nichols with violence while he appeared to comply with their commands or was already on the ground. Smith’s bodycam footage was not among those released by the city of Memphis.

Smith suggested that at one point he attempted to help Nichols.

“I informed my fellow officers to assist me in sitting the suspect against my squad car in order for the suspect to breath [sic] better,” the affidavit reads.

In the document, Smith did not deny failing to turn on his camera soon enough and said, “I did not intentionally fail to activate my body worn camera, but the safety of the other officers and myself was paramount,” he said.

Despite his defense, Memphis police fired Smith after finding he violated policies on personal conduct, neglect of duty, duty to intervene and excessive/unnecessary force, the documents state.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of CNN’s coverage of Black History Month and its ongoing commitment to honoring unsung heroes.

CNN
 — 

As a kid, Clarice Phelps often turned to one image for inspiration.

While other seventh graders hung ’90s pop band and movie posters on their walls, Phelps put up a poster of Mae Jemison, the first Black female astronaut to launch into space.

“Mae started it all for me,” said Phelps, who in learning about Jemison realized she – a Black girl from Nashville’s Edgehill public housing – could reach for big dreams, too.

Because of her race, her gender or her family’s income, Phelps would face bias at almost every step, she said, on her way to helping make a discovery that would change how scientists chart the building blocks of the universe.

As the first Black woman to break such scientific ground, Phelps now feels a responsibility to guide kids like the one she once was, she said – even if others’ doubts about her sometimes still echo in her mind.

An “unlikely scientist,” Phelps had few scientific influences beyond a stack of home encyclopedias and “Beakman’s World” on TV, she’s said. And growing up poor with three sisters and a single mom, advanced – and expensive – schooling didn’t seem likely.

But Phelps was a smart kid with a passion for learning, she said. She was also highly determined.

Once, after a childhood music teacher sneered at her pawn shop-bought violin, Phelps devoted hours of practice to earn first chair in the orchestra, she said in a 2019 TEDx Talk. “I poured my heart and soul into that violin because I saw it as an extension of who I wanted to be,” she said.

“I took everything in my life like that violin,” she said, refusing to let others’ assumptions limit what she might achieve.

Phelps later was selected into a magnet school, where she met two teachers who, she said, were “instrumental” in nurturing her passion for science. That love for experimentation and discovery prompted her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Tennessee State University and later enlist in the US Navy’s Nuclear Power School.

Their stories aren’t widely told, but these Black women and men helped shape history

When Phelps turned her sights to radiochemistry – the study of radioactive substances – racial bias and sexism tried to get in her way, she said. While women make up half the US workforce, only 27% work in science, technology, engineering and math, often dubbed STEM, US 2019 census data shows; of those, only 2% are Black women, according to 2015 National Science Foundation stats.

“For the first 18 years of my career, I was the only Black woman in my field. When I was in the Navy, I was the only Black girl in my division. Afterwards in my lab, I was the only Black woman in the whole facility – and initially they thought I was the janitor,” she told CNN, recalling requests to grab the trash.

“It’s isolating,” said Phelps, who after also served as an engineering laboratory technician aboard the USS Ronald Reagan. “You feel like you have to represent your entire race and descend the racial stereotypes … especially in nuclear and radiochemistry.”

Then in 2010, Phelps joined an international mission to do something else unprecedented: Create Element 117.

For years, there had been a single square in the seventh row of the periodic table of elements that scientists struggled to fill. No element with the precise chemical and physical properties to fit that spot in the familiar chart ever had been found or synthesized.

It would have to have 117 protons in its core. And like other so-called “superheavy elements” that don’t exist in nature, it would have to be created in a lab.

Work like this, Phelps explained, aims eventually to find a superheavy element stable enough to provide “new avenues for fuel and energy sources” and offer insight into the beginnings of the universe and the matter that existed during the Big Bang.

As part of the discovery team, Phelps purified the element berkelium to create a film – a painstaking, monthslong process. Then, collaborators in Germany and Russia “relentlessly bombarded” it for months with calcium.

The experiment produced six unique atoms, each with the required 117 protons. It was declared a success in 2012, and four years later, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry – the world authority on chemistry – officially recognized Element 117 as part of the periodic table, along with three other new elements.

Since Phelps’ team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other institutions in Tennessee laid the groundwork for discovery, Element 117 was officially named “tennessine” (Ts). It’s the second-heaviest known element on Earth, and though its use is limited to research, scientists believe it is a critical stepping stone toward the creation of future superheavy elements.

“We can’t imagine where tennessine could take us,” said author of “Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table” Kit Chapman, noting human-generated elements are used “in smoke detectors, to treat cancers, even to power rovers on Mars.”

With the discovery, the girl with the Jemison poster on her wall had “claimed a seat at the periodic table,” Phelps said in her TEDx Talk.

But despite the feat, Phelps again found herself fighting for recognition.

When her lab celebrated tennessine, Phelps was left off the gala’s guest list; when her supervisor got her in, no place card bore her name, she said. Even the plaque listing scientists involved in the discovery omitted her.

“They had left me off this whole thing,” Phelps said. “I felt embarrassed because everyone is wandering around this luncheon, and I literally didn’t have a seat at the table. I went outside, and I was crying.”

Phelps later was told her name had been cut off by mistake following a spreadsheets’ line break, she said.

Phelps’ “name was inadvertently omitted from a plaque dedicated to (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) staff credited with the discovery of tennessine, an error we quickly corrected,” the institution told CNN. The lab “is incredibly proud of Clarice Phelps – a US Navy veteran, a prolific scientist, an active member of the East Tennessee community.

“As the first Black woman to be involved in the discovery of an element, she is an inspiration for the next generation of women and people of color in STEM,” it said.

At the time, though, the incident – like the doubting orchestra teacher – served again to harden Phelps’ resolve.

After winning the monthslong battle to get the plaque recommissioned with her name on it, Phelps started talking with reporters about the significance of tennessine and her role on the team. And she was acknowledged by Chapman, a science historian, and British physicist Jess Wade, who has written over a thousand Wikipedia biographies about women and minority scientists, as the first Black woman involved in the discovery of a new element.

Phelps, now a mom of three, said she wants to be a visible role model, like Jemison: “I want to be that person for that little girl who’s looking for somebody that looks like them, doing things that people say they can’t do.”

Still, though, she battles imposter syndrome – the result of years of professional micro- and macro-aggressions – and tries to fight it by remembering: “I did that work,” she said.

“My hands were in the glove box handling that material,” said Phelps, who’s working to finish her PhD in nuclear engineering. “I didn’t do that by myself, there was a team, but I know what I did, and no one can take that from me.”

That’s the lesson she tries to impart as a board member and vice president of Yo-STEM, a non-profit that aims to bring STEM education to underserved communities like the one she grew up in.

“No one can take away what you know,” she said: “your experience and knowledge and your self-worth.”

CNN
 — 

At least $191 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits could have been improperly paid, with a “significant portion” attributable to fraud, according to a new estimate from the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General.

That’s up from the office’s projection last year of at least $163 billion in improper payments.

The updated estimate was released Wednesday as part of a House Ways and Means Committee hearing entitled, “The Greatest Theft of Taxpayer Dollars – Unchecked Unemployment Fraud.”

House Republicans, who gained control of the chamber last month, are highlighting the widespread fraud that permeated the Covid-19 relief programs that Congress enacted in the early years of the pandemic. The House Oversight Committee held a lengthy hearing last week about fraud in two pandemic business assistance measures, the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loan, as well as in the enhanced jobless benefits.

At the Ways and Means Committee hearing, GOP lawmakers repeatedly called out the size of the fraud, the loss to taxpayers and the trouble the theft has wrought on employers and Americans whose identities were stolen. Many, however, agreed with their Democratic peers that the enhanced jobless benefits were needed when the economy tanked at the start of the pandemic.

“While many Americans who actually qualified for these benefits were left struggling to reclaim their benefits and their identity, upwards of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars have been stolen,” said Missouri Rep. Jason Smith, who chairs the committee.

The pandemic relief packages that created these programs in 2020 passed Congress with bipartisan support and were administered that year by the Trump administration.

The extent of the fraud in the pandemic jobless benefits program is not yet known, and estimates vary widely.

Inspector General Larry Turner told the committee that fraud accounts for at least $76 billion in improper payments, but stressed that the figure is likely to rise once the office has more data.

The Labor Department’s estimated improper payment rate does not include the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which Congress hastily created in 2020 and was the target of much of the fraud. The agency is expected to release an improper payment rate for that program by the end of the year, Turner said.

Improper payments consist of both fraud and incorrect benefit amounts paid to legitimate claimants.

The US Government Accountability Office last month pegged the fraud figure at more than $60 billion. The watchdog agency, however, warned that the estimate has limitations and should be interpreted with caution. The actual amount of pandemic unemployment benefits fraud may be “substantially higher.”

The GAO is working on a higher-end estimate, which should be released later this summer, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro told the committee.

Both Turner and Dodaro noted that improper payments have long been a problem in the unemployment benefits system, which is administered separately by each state. They also criticized the Department of Labor and state agencies for not fully putting the watchdogs’ anti-fraud recommendations in place.

“If we can’t deal at the federal government and states level to reduce improper payments in normal times, then you’re bound to have problems when there are emergencies,” Dodaro said. “I’d urge this committee to continue their oversight to make sure the Labor Department and the states take action on our recommendations so that we’re much better prepared next time to deal with these emergency situations.”

In his State of the Union speech Tuesday, President Joe Biden called on Congress to beef up anti-fraud resources in an effort to find criminals and crack down on the schemes to steal relief money.

Fraud within the nation’s unemployment system skyrocketed after Congress enacted a historic expansion of the program in March 2020. State unemployment agencies were overwhelmed with record numbers of claims and relaxed some requirements in an effort to get the money out the door quickly to those who had lost their jobs.

The enhanced payments and lax controls quickly attracted criminals from around the world.

States and Congress subsequently tightened their verification requirements in an attempt to combat the fraud, particularly in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which allowed freelancers, gig workers and others to collect benefits for the first time.

A key component of the relief effort was a federal weekly supplement for out-of-work Americans. The jobless received a $600-a-week boost from April through July of 2020. Congress then revived the enhancement in late December 2020 but reduced it to $300 a week. That supplement expired in September 2021, though many states led by Republicans and one with a Democratic governor ended it earlier.

Lawmakers also created the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program, which extended payments for those who exhausted their regular state benefits. Both pandemic unemployment programs also ended by September 2021.

More than $888 billion in federal and state unemployment benefits were paid from the end of March 2020 through early September 2021, according to the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General.

DeForest, Wisconsin
CNN
 — 

President Joe Biden brought his State of the Union populist economic messaging to Wisconsin on Wednesday, firing back at Republicans and highlighting US manufacturing in a preview of an expected 2024 argument in the battleground state.

Biden made clear that he was willing to continue the fight as he hit the road, reigniting the social safety net argument with Republicans that sparked one of the most memorable moments in Tuesday’s speech. The argument highlighted Biden’s attempts to shift his message away from the “extreme MAGA” and “mega-MAGA” talking points of the 2022 midterm election.

“Last night, I reported on the State of the Union: It is strong, it is strong,” Biden told the room of union workers at a LiUNA training facility in DeForest, Wisconsin, reiterating much of his economic messaging and highlighting key legislative accomplishments.

But as he quipped that he had a “spirited debate last night” with Republicans on Social Security and Medicare, Biden offered a new warning to the GOP.

“Look – a lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me just say this: It’s your dream, but I’m gonna have my veto pen make it a nightmare,” he said.

Republicans repeatedly heckled Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, ignoring the occasional shushes from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In moments throughout the address, Republicans in the House chamber shouted at Biden, protesting his approach to a wide range of issues such as immigration, Social Security and Medicare spending and the debt ceiling.

‘Liar!’: Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupts Biden during State of the Union address

Biden said that some Republicans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, “seemed shocked” when he highlighted their colleagues’ efforts to cut those social safety net programs, holding up a “brochure” with Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s plan to require all federal legislation – including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – to be authorized every five years. He referenced quotes on the matter from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who received boos and hisses, and Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee.

“There’s a senator named Mike Lee who was also yelling, ‘Liar, liar, house on fire’ kind of stuff last night. … They played last night, something I didn’t even know existed, a video of him saying, ‘I’m here right now to tell you one thing you’ve probably never heard from a politician: It’ll be my objective to phase out Social Security,’” he said.

Biden continued, “Sounds pretty clear to me – how about you? But they (Republican lawmakers) sure didn’t like me calling him on it.”

Shortly after Biden’s remarks near Madison, PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff asked him if he was expecting the kind of reaction he got in the House chamber.

“From the folks that did it, I was,” Biden said. “The vast of majority of Republicans weren’t that way, but you know, there’s still a significant element of what I call the ‘MAGA Republicans.’”

The president told Woodruff that McCarthy “was gracious,” and so were “a lot of the members.”

As for last night’s “conversion” of some Republicans, he offered skepticism during his speech: “I sure hope that’s true. I’ll believe it when I see it when their budget’s laid down with the cuts they’re proposing. But looks like we negotiated a deal last night on the floor of the House of Representatives.”

Earlier in the speech, Biden attempted to make a broader argument for working together with GOP lawmakers, touting the successes of his first two years in office.

“Why can’t we do it again?” he asked.

“People sent us a clear message: Fighting for the sake of fighting gets us nowhere. We’re getting things done,” he said, before going on to draw clear arguments against his Republican colleagues.

And he again called on Congress to raise the nation’s debt limit during his earlier remarks, warning against the “chaos” he said Republicans are “suggesting.”

Biden also fired back at a television commentator he heard aboard Air Force One lamenting his focus on junk fees: “Junk fees may not matter to the wealthy people, but they matter of most folks like the home I grew up in. They add hundreds of dollars a month to make it harder to pay your bills or afford that family trip. I know how unfair it feels when a company overcharges you and think they can get away with it.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN
 — 

Former Twitter executives acknowledged to lawmakers Wednesday that the social media company erred when it temporarily suppressed a New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, but the officials emphasized there was no government involvement in the decision.

Republicans grilled the social media executives – including former Twitter deputy counsel James Baker – over Twiter’s handling of the laptop story and broader complaints about censorship at the first high-profile hearing in front of the House Oversight Committee for the new Republican majority investigating President Joe Biden’s administration and family.

While Twitter’s new owner and CEO Elon Musk has suggested that the internal communications released as part of his so-called “Twitter files” show government censorship – suggesting Twitter acted “under orders from the government” when it suppressed the laptop story – the executives told Congress they did not receive any requests from the government to temporarily suppress the story.

Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth testified there was a lot of confusion over how to handle the story amid an increased emphasis on tackling misinformation – specifically from malign foreign actors – on their platform.

“It isn’t obvious what the right response is to a suspected but not confirmed cyberattack by another government on a presidential election,” Roth said. “I believe Twitter erred in this case because we wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of 2016.”

House Oversight Chairman James Comer – a Kentucky Republican who has launched a broad investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings – is probing the social media giant in the wake of Musk releasing internal communications from Twitter staff about the decision to temporarily block users from sharing the New York Post story in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential election campaign season.

The “Twitter files” have fueled Comer’s belief that the government may have been involved in the suppression of the story.

“America witnessed a coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news and the intelligence communities to suppress and de-legitimized the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its contents,” Comer said, adding that Twitter “worked hand-in-hand with the FBI to monitor the protected speech of Americans, receiving millions of dollars to do so.”

CNN has previously reported, however, that allegations the FBI told Twitter to suppress the story are unsupported, and a half-dozen tech executives and senior staff, along with multiple federal officials familiar with the matter, all denied any such directive was given in interviews with CNN.

“I am aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation,” Baker said in his opening statement. “Even though many disagree with how Twitter handled the Hunter Biden matter, I believe that the public record reveals that my client acted in a manner that was fully consistent with the First Amendment.”

The Twitter executives argued that the social media platform made mistakes in its handling of the New York Post story, but emphasized that the heightened focus on combating disinformation complicated the company’s decision-making process.

Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer, testified that, looking back, Twitter should have immediately reinstated the New York Post’s account after the company reversed its decision to block the Hunter Biden story.

Roth said he personally disagreed with the decision to temporarily supress the laptop story, but said that the company’s judgment was colored by the “real Russian activities they we saw play out that year.”

But Republicans blasted the witnesses for suppressing the story because they thought it may have been a Kremlin effort to influence the 2020 election.

“You all led the American people to believe (it) was Russian disinformation, when in fact it was not,” Comer said. “This is something this committee should be concerned about.”

Rep. Dan Goldman, the New York freshman Democrat who was the lead counsel for the House’s 2019 impeachment inquiry into Trump, argued there were legitimate reasons for Twitter and ex-intelligence officials to suspect the laptop story was Russian disinformation.

For one, it was being pushed by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and the corruption claims overlapped with Russia’s previous disinformation operations. Goldman pointed out that Giuliani had coordinated some of his past anti-Biden efforts with a known Russian agent, who was later sanctioned by the Treasury Department for meddling in the 2020 election.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, said in his opening statement that Republicans were trying to “whip up” a scandal involving a private company rather than focusing on issues that matter to voters.

“The majority has called a hearing to revisit a two-year-old story about a private editorial decision by Twitter not to allow links to a single New York Post article made for a two-day period that had no discernible influence on anyone or anything” Raskin said. “Instead of letting this trivial pursuit go, my colleagues have tried to whip up a faux scandal about this two-day lapse in their ability to spread Hunter Biden propaganda on a private media platform. Silly does not even begin to capture this obsession.”

The Democratic witness at Wednesday’s hearing, Anika Collier Navaroli, is a former Twitter employee turned whistleblower who testified before the January 6 House select committee last year.

Navaroli argued Wednesday that Congress should really be focusing on “Twitter’s failure to act before January 6,” 2021.

“Twitter leadership bent and broke their own rules in order to protect some of the most dangerous speech on the platform” in the months leading up to January 6, Navaroli said.

In an effort to rebut the Republican criticisms, Democrats asked Navaroli about the Trump White House making requests to Twitter to take down tweets. Navaroli told the committee that she had heard the White House in 2019 flagged an expletive-laden tweet critical of then-President Donald Trump from model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen for removal.

Teigen, a prolific Twitter user, called Trump a series of expletives in the September 2019 tweet in response to Trump describing her as the singer John Legend’s “filthy mouthed wife.” Navaroli, who worked on Twitter’s safety policy team, told the committee she had heard about the White House request. Navaroli said she heard about the request from her supervisor.

Twitter did not remove the tweet. CNN has reached out to representatives for Trump for comment.

Democrats also featured Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to push back on the Republican criticisms of Twitter. The New York Democrat criticized Twitter for allowing misinformation against the LGBTQ community and people of color to continue – citing one specific example that inspired violent threats, including a bomb threat, at Boston Children’s Hospital over its care for transgender children.

Ocasio Cortez specifically referenced how the harassment followed a series of posts made by the Twitter account LibsofTikTok, which has shared a series of anti-LGBTQ messages with its followers. The congresswoman emphasized that those attacks were shared broadly by far-right Twitter accounts, and asked if the account was still active.

“Regrettably, yes it is,” Roth said.

The hearing marks the second-straight election where social media companies and the FBI have faced scrutiny for decisions made in the final weeks of a presidential election. After 2016, social media companies like Twitter were under fire for doing too little to police their platforms for misinformation campaigns, particularly from foreign governments like Russia.

Now they’re back in the hot seat for taking that policing too far, according to Republicans.

All of the witnesses requested subpoenas to appear before the committee.

When the New York Post published its story on Hunter Biden’s laptop in October 2020, Twitter executives were hyper suspicious of anything that looked like foreign influence and were primed to act, even without direction from the government. Roth had spent two years meeting with the FBI and other government officials and was prepared for some kind of hack and leak operation.

For Republicans, the testimony of Twitter’s former executives gives them the opportunity to raise questions not just about the laptop story but other long-running conservative complaints about the social media company that Musk purchased last year. The Oversight Committee’s Republican ranks are full of the conference’s conservative hardliners who have complained about alleged suppression of conservative voices on Twitter.

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and serves on the House Oversight panel, claimed that the former Twitter employees were “played by the FBI” and argued that Twitter executives looked for reasons to take down posts about the New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

Jordan has long claimed the FBI has been politicized, and his line of questioning underscores his approach to the Judiciary subcommittee he chairs that is designated to investigate the alleged weaponization of the federal government. House Oversight members have repeatedly yielded their time back to Jordan, who is widely known for his aggressive line of questioning.

“I think you guys wanted it to be taken down,” Jordan said.

Jordan suggested Twitter was duped by a group of former national security officials who wrote in a public letter that the emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop may have been fake and had “earmarks” of a Russian intelligence plot. Since then, news outlets have been able to verify some of the emails as authentic.

“The information operation was run on you guys,” Jordan said.

Roth said Wednesday that – despite GOP claims – he never believed the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

“I never held that belief,” Roth said, adding “I didn’t then and I don’t now.”

Twitter justified its decisions at the time by saying the article contained personally identifiable information and hacked materials – and that it’s against Twitter rules to spread that material on the platform.

Jordan and Comber both questioned Baker – who previously served as the FBI’s top lawyer – about whether he spoke with anyone at the FBI about the Hunter Biden laptop.

Baker said he did not recall speaking with anyone at the FBI, but also spoke carefully in his answer, with some lawyerly hedging, and did not offer a direct denial.

“To the best of my recollection, I did not talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story before that day,” Baker said, referring to when the New York Post’s account was restricted for posting about the laptop.

But Comer and Jordan were frustrated when they unsuccessfully tried to override Baker’s claims of attorney-client privilege in response to Jordan’s questions about the FBI’s interest in enforcement of Twitter’s policy or whether he suppressed documents while at Twitter.

Comer argued that Baker appeared under subpoena and that Congress “does not recognize the common law attorney client privilege.” Baker responded he tried to resolve this issue with Twitter ahead of time but defended his use of attorney-client privilege, saying, “I don’t have anything in writing that clears me in my ethical responsibilities to my former client with respect to answering questions that I think fall squarely within the attorney-client privilege.”

Other Republicans criticized the executives for their treatment of conservatives. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, railed against the Twitter executives for banning her account, one of several Republicans who was critical Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy during Wednesday’s hearing.

Greene’s account was suspended last January for repeated violations of Twitter’s Covid-19 misinformation policy, the company said at the time. Her account was restored in November after Musk purchased Twitter.

Ahead of the hearing, Musk traveled to Capitol Hill and met with a number of House Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Comer. The Kentucky Republican said that Musk offered him tips on lines of questioning, though Comer declined to offer more details ahead of the hearing.

“We’re going to save it,” Comer said. “Thank God for Elon Musk.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to clarify that Navaroli testified that she heard about the request to delete the Chrissy Teigen tweet from her supervisor.