Vijaya Gadde's job title at Twitter, where she worked until Musk's arrival, was Legal, Public Policy & Trust and Safety Lead. As the company's content policy chief, she made calls to ban then-outgoing US President Donald Trump from the social platform and to censor the Hunter Biden “laptop from Hell” story, US media reported.
Gadde was responsible for banning the 45th US president in the wake of the January 6, 2021 events, when a mob that included Trump supporters breached the Capitol building in Washington DC in attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 US presidential election.
In a conference call on January 8, 2021, Gadde reportedly asked 5,200 Twitter employees to be patient with her legal team as they decided on the future of Trump’s account on the platform.
About three hours later, Trump was banned permanently from Twitter after Gadde and her team were slammed for allowing the then-lame duck president back on the website after an initial 12-hour ban.
Separately, her team censored a story on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was first published by the New York Post ahead of the 2020 US election. The content of the laptop, including the future First Son’s naked photos and graphic videos, is part of the ongoing federal investigation into whether the POTUS’ son violated US laws when he engaged in financial and business dealings in foreign countries during his father’s vice presidency between 2009 and 2017.
In addition, federal agents are probing Hunter Biden for reportedly obtaining what they claim is “sufficient evidence” to charge the 52-year-old with tax crimes and lying about his drug abuse to buy a gun.
President Joe Biden has repeatedly dismissed any knowledge of his son’s business activities, with most US news outlets and social media companies successfully shielding him from the laptop-related revelations ahead of the 2020 presidential election campaign, when they were coined as part of a “Russian disinformation operation.” Earlier this year, however, the New York Times and The Washington Post made a U-turn, confirming that the laptop was authentic and that the damning information contained within the device was genuine.
US media reports on Gadde come after Trump hailed billionaire Elon Musk’s official takeover of Twitter on Friday, noting that the social media platform was "now in sane hands."
In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump stressed that he was “very happy that Twitter is now in sane hands, and will no longer be run by Radical Left lunatics and maniacs that truly hate our country [the US]”.
"Twitter must now work hard to rid itself of all of the bots and fake accounts that have hurt it so badly. It will be much smaller, but better. I love truth!" the ex-POTUS added.
Apart from Gadde, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal got the boot after the social platform’s ownership went to Musk, who earlier stressed that he is a proponent of free speech, adding that that he bought the network to "help humanity" and to provide a platform for healthy debate, free of violence.