Biden’s call for Musk probe draws jeers

The president’s detractors framed his objection to Saudi involvement in the Twitter deal as peak hypocrisy

US President Joe Biden has been accused of hypocrisy after suggesting an investigation into foreign involvement in billionaire Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. Representative James Comer (R-Kentucky) told Fox News that the Biden family’s own ties to foreign interests outweighed any of Musk’s overseas connections.

“The fact that Joe Biden said that there should be an investigation into Twitter over foreign investment will go down in history as one of the most hypocritical statements ever made by the president of the United States,” Comer said.

To say that [Musk] should be under investigation, but then that Congress should turn a blind eye to his family’s influence peddling with China, with Russia, with Ukraine, and yes, with the Middle East, is amazing.

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Asked on Wednesday whether he thought the world’s richest man was a “national security threat,” Biden responded that he thought Musk’s “cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate.” However, he insisted he was “not suggesting” Musk was actually doing anything inappropriate.

Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal pledged his $1.89 billion stake in Twitter to Musk’s acquisition earlier this year, alongside the Qatar Investment Fund’s promised $375 million. Musk purchased the company for a total of $44 billion after a protracted legal battle.

While the prince has held a stake in Twitter since 2011, his involvement has only recently concerned Senator Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who urged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to investigate potential Saudi influence on the network, citing the importance of maintaining Twitter as a “neutral platform free of foreign influence.”

Representative Comer seemed confident that Musk would help Republicans advance their own probe into foreign influence peddling by the Biden family by turning over documents regarding Twitter’s censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, which was scrubbed from the platform in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election.

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