Biden Campaign Spox: We Know the NY Post Story Isn't True Because Twitter Censored It
The national press secretary for Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign made the fantastical claim Thursday that Twitter’s decision to ban a New York Post article containing information that calls into question the integrity of the former vice president is proof it was untrue.
“I think Twitter’s response to the actual article itself makes clear that these purported allegations are false and they’re not true and glad to see social media companies like Twitter taking responsibility to limit misinformation,” Jamal Brown told the media outlet Cheddar.
Biden campaign National Press Secretary @JTOBrown responds to Twitter’s decision to block a New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
“Twitter’s response to the actual article itself makes clear that these purported allegations are false.” #CheddarLive pic.twitter.com/PdPEkMZ85p
— Cheddar? (@cheddar) October 15, 2020
Whew, now that’s a doozy.
Not even Twitter was so brazen as to claim the information in the story is false, only objecting to how it was obtained.
The Post has the fourth-largest circulation of any paper in the country, so we’re not dealing with some rogue blogger here.
It’s owned by News Corp, parent company to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.
According to the emails acquired by the Post, “Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company,” the report said.
“The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.”
Twitter sent a series of tweets Wednesday night seeking to explain why it banned the Post stories from its platform.
The social media giant pointed to its 2018 policy that prohibits the distribution of content “obtained without authorization” and that might include “possibly illegally obtained materials.”
The policy, established in 2018, prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization. We don’t want to incentivize hacking by allowing Twitter to be used as distribution for possibly illegally obtained materials.https://t.co/qx9rlzWH4O
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
“The images contained in the articles include personal and private information — like email addresses and phone numbers — which violate our rules,” it said, adding, “As noted this morning, we also currently view materials included in the articles as violations of our Hacked Materials Policy.”
As noted this morning, we also currently view materials included in the articles as violations of our Hacked Materials Policy.https://t.co/gCY4BnBHHa
— Twitter Safety (@TwitterSafety) October 14, 2020
However, it said, “Commentary on or discussion about hacked materials, such as articles that cover them but do not include or link to the materials themselves, aren’t a violation of this policy.”
CEO Jack Dorsey conceded the company’s handling of the matter had been “unacceptable.”
Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable. https://t.co/v55vDVVlgt
— jack (@jack) October 14, 2020
Republican senators agreed. GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, announced Thursday they planned to subpoena Dorsey to testify before the committee next week regarding his company’s decision to block the Post’s Ukraine story and another about Hunter Biden’s dealings in China.
“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,” Cruz said.
Never before have we seen the censorship of a major outlet’s reporting, with serious allegations of corruption by a presidential candidate, days before an election. #BigTech crossed a line & must be held accountable. That’s why @senjudiciary is going to subpoena @jack. pic.twitter.com/FYHTacmbWr
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 15, 2020
“The allegations in the New York Post story, if true, indicate that Vice President Biden lied when he said he had never discussed his son’s business dealings,” he added.
Biden has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of his son’s dealings in Ukraine while Biden was vice president and running point for the Obama administration in its relations with Kyiv.
“I don’t know what he was doing,” Biden told Axios in December. “I know he was on the board. I found out he was on the board after he was on the board, and that was it.”
Twitter’s decision to block the Post story about these shady dealings is not proof they did not happen, but definitely is censorship of the media just weeks before the presidential election.
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