In a bad sign for the White House, one Capitol Democrat said this past weekend that he is "open" to holding hearings on how in 2020 Twitter suppressed reporting about Hunter Biden's laptop. 

According to Breitbart, that statement was made on Sunday by California Rep. Ro Khanna as he spoke with Maria Bartiromo.

Ro Khanna says on Fox News that he's open to congressional hearings on the Hunter Biden/Twitter stuff pic.twitter.com/y7ePI0WMjT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 11, 2022

Ro Khanna: We don't want censorship

"I have said I am open to hearings in Congress on this," Khanna told Bartiromo. "There are two competing values. On the one hand, we don’t want censorship."

"We don’t want to have people censored or boxed out, or shadow-banned and removed from Twitter because of their viewpoint," he continued.

"On the other hand, we do want respect, and we don’t want accounts that are filled with anti-Semitism or just spewing racism or hate on these accounts," the Democratic lawmaker said, adding, "And I think Congress should have an honest, thoughtful conversation about how we uphold both of those values."

"Do you believe this can get better? Can we take the politicization out of federal agencies as well as the media?" Bartiromo asked.

"I do, Maria, because I think if we want my hope of coming together as a country, the first thing we have to do is say people have to be able to express their view," Khanna replied.

"We can’t tell people we disagree with, 'Please be silent. We don’t want to hear you. We don’t want to engage with you.' That’s going to create further polarization," he insisted.

Twitter "took extraordinary steps" to block laptop story

Khanna's remarks came after new Twitter owner Elon Musk released internal company documents showing that staff routinely colluded with Democrats during the 2020 presidential campaign.

That phenomenon was detailed in a long series of tweets put out earlier this month by independent journalist Matt Taibbi.

In one exchange, a Twitter employee provided a list of tweets which the Biden campaign had asked the platform to review. Another employee responded that the matter had been "handled."

8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.” pic.twitter.com/mnv0YZI4af

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

Twitter also "took extraordinary steps to suppress the story" around Biden's laptop, even "removing links and posting warnings that it may be 'unsafe,'" steps which are normally reserved for malware and child pornography.