Cruz’s letter asks for clarification on why the social media platform has prevented the spread of the link and notes that the New York Post’s report depends on leaked emails, much like other commonly uncensored reports of political scandals.
“Twitter’s censorship of this story is quite hypocritical, given its willingness to allow users to share less-well-sourced reporting critical of other candidates for public office,” Cruz’s letter reads.
“Accordingly, this can only be seen as an obvious and transparent attempt by Twitter to influence the upcoming Presidential election.”
Cruz then asks the company to provide information to the Senate’s Subcommittee on The Constitution about who made the call to censor the story and whether Twitter has taken similar action against sites more critical of President Donald Trump.
“If Twitter did not prevent Buzzfeed from sharing its reporting on the Steele dossier or the New York Times reporting on President Trump’s tax returns, please explain a politically neutral principle for why the reporting is treated differently,” his letter asks.
Twitter has barred both the New York Post and regular users from sharing the story, even by sending the link over direct messages. The site redirected users who tried to share the link to a page that identifies the link as “potentially spammy or unsafe.”
“This link could fall into any of the below categories: malicious links that could steal personal information or harm electronic devices; spammy links that mislead people or disrupt their experience; violent or misleading content that could lead to real-world harm; certain categories of content that, if posted directly on Twitter, are a violation of the Twitter Rules,” the page reads.
The email correspondence, included in the article among a data dump from a hard drive believed to belong to Hunter Biden, directly contradicts Joe Biden’s claim that he never spoke to his son about his foreign business dealings.
The New York Post also claims in the article that reporters pulled a sex tape of Hunter Biden from the drive that also shows him smoking crack.
The FBI seized the hard drive in December after an unidentified customer dropped the water-damaged Macbook off at a repair shop. The owner, who couldn’t positively identify the customer as Hunter Biden, turned the computer over to the FBI after copying the hard drive and sending the copy to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello. Giuliani provided the New York Post with the copy on Sunday.
Facebook has also taken action to quell the spread of the article. Andy Stone, Facebook’s communication director, tweeted that Facebook is “reducing… distribution” of the article to “reduce the spread of misinformation.”
###
Disclosure: Unlike almost every other media outlet, The Texan is not beholden to any special interests, does not apply for any type of state or federal funding, and relies exclusively on its readers for financial support. If you’d like to become one of the people we’re financially accountable to, click here to subscribe.
