Hunter Biden's Laptop and 'Twitter Files'—What We Do Know, What We Don't

The recent release of a trove of emails sent by Twitter employees, related to the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, has fueled narratives that allege conspiratorial ties between the social media platform and the government in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Teased by Elon Musk several days ahead of their release on Friday, December 2, the "Twitter files" (shared by former Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi) showed that Twitter engaged with politicians over the content on its platform, as well as the social media network's efforts to suppress the story about the president's son.

The messages pointed to uncertainty among the platform's leadership about the provenance of the laptop story. The leadership opted early on to suppress the story in its recommendation algorithms and then blocked links to it—saying that this was under the company's policy on hacked materials.

What do the "Twitter Files" say?

According to Taibbi's thread, the decision to block the article was made with Vijaya Gadde, former head of legal, public policy & trust and safety at Twitter, playing a key role.

But in one screenshot, former U.S. policy communication manager Trenton Kennedy wrote that he was "struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe."