Senate Judiciary Committee to Subpoena Twitter and Facebook Executives for Alleged Election Interference

Yesterday, October 14, Senators Ted Cruz, R-Texas, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., sent letters to Twitter and Facebook, asking questions about the companies’ blocking of tweets and posts of a New York Post article. As The Daily Citizen reported, the censored story alleged that Hunter Biden had introduced his father, Joe Biden, to a Ukrainian foreign businessman while he was on the board of the company.

Earlier today, the two senators went a step further. Along with Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., they’ve announced the committee will be voting next Tuesday, October 20, to issue subpoenas to Twitter and Facebook executives for blocking yet another Post story about the Biden family.

The senators held a press conference during a break in the hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett to make the announcement. They said that both companies’ censorship of news stories was “interfering with an election.”

Senator Cruz said, “In the last two days we’ve seen a remarkable development. We have seen big tech, we’ve seen Twitter and Facebook actively interfering in this election, in a way that has no precedent in the history of our country.”

Cruz explained that the first story blocked by Twitter and Facebook made allegations that “indicate that Vice President Biden lied when he said he had never discussed his son’s business dealings.”  The senator said that even “The New York Post itself, when it attempted to put out its story, was blocked on Twitter and Facebook.”

“The New York Post has the fourth largest circulation of any newspaper in this country,” Cruz continued, “Never before have we seen active censorship of a major press publication with serious allegations of corruption of one of the two candidates for President.”

He went on to say, “This morning the story escalated and got even worse. The New York Post broke a second story of a series of emails that indicate more corruption.” Cruz said he went to share the news article on Twitter, but Twitter was blocking the story from being shared.

“This is election interference and we are nineteen days out from an election. It has no precedent in the history of democracy,” Cruz stated.

He explained that the Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to know what was going on, and that they would subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to come and testify on Friday, October 23, “to come before this committee and the American people to explain why Twitter is using their corporate power to silence the press and to cover up allegations of corruption.”

Both Cruz and Graham stated that they didn’t know if the allegations were true or not, with Cruz adding, “Those are questions Vice President Biden should answer.”

Vice President Biden’s campaign is pushing back against the allegations that Biden met with a Ukrainian businessman. According to Politico, “Top Biden advisers who staffed him during his vice presidency, citing their own recollections as well as a review of Biden’s official schedules, sharply rejected the Post’s suggestion that Biden met with a representative of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings in 2015.”

But the Politico article continued, “Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction” that would not have been listed on Biden’s official schedule.

The Post said that new information about Hunter’s business dealings came from “a trove of data that the owner of a computer repair shop in Delaware said was recovered from a MacBook Pro laptop that was dropped off in April 2019 and never retrieved.”

Senator Graham pointed out the political bias of social media giants. “All the allegations about Russian collusion and Trump, and every other idea that Trump may have done something bad, nobody blocked that.”

“The power behind these platforms has been taken to a level that truly is dangerous I think,” he said, adding that the companies were “stopping Americans who have these tools available to them, to exercise the ability to share information with their friends,”

Senator Josh Hawley said, “I think a subpoena from the Judiciary Committee is absolutely appropriate and in order. We believe in a free press in this country. We also believe in free elections. And the attempt to rig an election – which is what we are seeing here – by monopolies, is unprecedented in American history.”

“They have a lot to answer for,” he continued, “And I hope that we’ll subpoena both Twitter and Facebook – they should both come. They’re both engaged in censorship. They’re both massive monopolies. They should answer to the Judiciary Committee.”

Photo is from Shutterstock.

Related:

Facebook and Twitter Censor Report on Hunter Biden Introducing Joe Biden to Ukrainian Businessman

Sen. Rand Paul Will Refer Hunter Biden to DOJ for Criminal Investigation Following Committee Report