Far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed on Wednesday that Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop is “half-fake” — as she smeared The Post’s bombshell reporting that first exposed the device and its contents.
“We’re talking about Hunter Biden’s half-fake laptop story. I mean, this is an embarrassment,” the 33-year-old raged, suggesting the House Oversight Committee hearing should have been focused on issues like abortion and civil rights.
The Bronx and Queens lawmaker made the remarks as lawmakers grilled Twitter executives over the social media giant’s suppression of The Post’s October 2020 stories on the so-called “laptop from hell.”
AOC’s rant got off to a bad start when she confused New York’s favorite tabloid with the reliably liberal Washington Post — “I think that the story here with the New York, with the Washington Post reporting” — and went downhill from there.
Disregarding both journalistic practices and the principle of free speech, Ocasio-Cortez suggested The Post’s ban from Twitter was its own fault because it did not loop competing outlets in on the laptop’s contents.
She referenced a Washington Post article that claimed left-leaning sources — who later belatedly admitted the laptop was, in fact, legit — had faced a “roadblock” in trying to corroborate the trove of emails discovered on the scandal-scarred son’s device.
“The New York Post had this alleged information and was trying to publish it without any corroboration, without any backup information, they were trying to publish it to Twitter, Twitter would not let them — and now they are upset,” Ocasio-Cortez claimed.
“I believe that political operatives who sought to inject explosive disinformation with the Washington Post couldn’t get away with it,” she continued.
“And now they’re livid and they want the ability to do it again. They want the ability to inject this again. They are weaponizing the use of this committee.”
House Republicans are probing the extraordinary censorship measures the platform took against The Post when it prohibited users from sharing articles that linked then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to his son Hunter and brother James Biden’s foreign business deals.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the House hearing with Twitter execs over the Hunter Biden laptop story
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The platform, then headed by CEO Jack Dorsey, also locked The Post out of its Twitter account for more than two weeks because of baseless claims that the report used hacked information.
However, Ocasio-Cortez dismissed the furor as a “24-hour hiccup in a right-wing political operation.”
The witnesses Republicans subpoenaed to testify during the hearing include Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer; James Baker, the company’s former deputy general counsel; and Yoel Roth, former head of safety and integrity.
Anika Collier Navaroli, a former employee with Twitter’s content moderation team, was brought in by Democrats to testify.
