Elon Musk could fire Twitter's top lawyer for censoring conservatives: report

Twitter's top lawyer, known as the Big Tech company's chief advocate for censoring conservatives, is in a vulnerable position as one of the highest paid executives who could be shown the door once new owner Elon Musk takes over.

Vijaya Gadde, who earned a whopping $17 million in 2021 as Twitter's head of trust and safety, legal, and public policy functions, could be handed her last paycheck in the coming weeks. Reports of Gadde being on the corporate chopping block come as Musk, a free speech crusader seeking to privatize the tech giant, is reportedly planning to slash executive payroll and nix high-level jobs.

Musk expressed zero "confidence" in Twitter's current management at the time the tech magnate disclosed ambitious plans to acquire the company earlier in April.

However, according to the New York Post, Gadde "also stands to win a nice consolation price if she's fired: a severance package worth $12.5 million that includes the accelerated vesting of a trove of Twitter shares she has accrued."

An emotional Gadde, 48, broke down crying in Monday's staff meeting discussing Musk's takeover, POLITICO reported. "Gadde cried during the meeting as she expressed concerns about how the company could change," sources said. "She acknowledged that there are significant uncertainties about what the company will look like under Musk's leadership," POLITICO described the insider talk.

In March 2019, journalist Tim Pool appeared on podcasting icon Joe Rogan's show to debate with then-CEO Jack Dorsey and Gadde about Twitter's rules. During the appearance, Gadde defended the site's content moderation policies.

A year later in late 2020, Gadde had Twitter "change course" after first blocking the New York Post's bombshell report on Hunter Biden's infamous laptop.

Gadde's team also oversaw the permanent banning of former President Donald Trump in January 2021, following the Jan. 6 riot. CNN credited Gadde for taking the lead on the Trump ban while an absent Dorsey was away on vacation.

Musk tweeted a meme mocking Gadde as a Twitter elite who is oblivious to the platform's liberal "bias." The jab further took aim at Gadde who denied on Rogan's program holding double standards that favor progressives after Pool confronted her about censorship cases where right-wing figures were booted off Twitter.

The new Twitter boss also jabbed at Gadde's leadership by calling Twitter's suppression of the Hunter Biden story "obviously incredibly inappropriate."

Musk lambasted Twitter's involvement in the cover-up of the report on President Joe Biden's son and railed against the suspension of the New York Post's official Twitter account in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. "Suspending the Twitter account of a major news organization for publishing a truthful story was obviously incredibly inappropriate," Musk wrote in a tweet Tuesday.