The House Judiciary Republicans are fighting Twitter’s efforts to cancel the New York Post’s Hunter Biden expose by engaging in a social media version of whack-a-mole.
The committee Republicans did an end run around the platform Wednesday after Twitter blocked retweets of the newspaper’s scoop, reprinting the story on their House website and posting a link to their Twitter account, @JudiciaryGOP.
Twitter responded by slapping a warning on the link, saying, “The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with Twitter’s URL Policy.”
Not to be deterred, Rep. Jim Jordan, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called an audible.
“Twitter decided to slap a warning label on the link we tweeted to our official Judiciary Committee website!” said Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye in a Thursday email. “So, what did we do? We put the Hunter Biden story on Ranking Member Jim Jordan’s website and tweeted it out!”
Mr. Dye added, “Nice try, Twitter. But we won’t stop.”
SEE ALSO: Trump: Twitter giving ‘massive campaign contribution’ to Biden by blocking Hunter story
Twitter has blocked users from tweeting the link to the @nypost’s story on Hunter Biden.
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) October 14, 2020
So we put it on our website for you to read and share.
Click, share, and RT! https://t.co/tZwybnoW0e
Twitter is now blocking an official government website to protect Joe Biden.
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) October 15, 2020
WATCH what happens when you click the link to @JudiciaryGOP’s website.
Twitter censors the United States House of Representatives but not propaganda from Communist China and Iran.
Let that sink in. pic.twitter.com/cRIAuTZHDH
Other House Republicans denounced the platform for submerging access to the explosive story, which cited emails on a laptop that reportedly belonged to Hunter Biden in which Burisma official Vadym Pozharskyi asked him to “use his influence” with his father, then-Vice President and current Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise tweeted, “Twitter is now blocking an official government website to protect Joe Biden.”
“Big Tech is censoring @JudiciaryGOP all because their government link contains information about a Democratic presidential candidate,” tweeted Rep. Mark Walker, North Carolina Republican. “This is election interference.”
In the 2015 email, Mr. Pozharskyi also thanked Hunter Biden, a member of the Burisma board from 2014-19, in a 2015 email for setting up a meeting with the vice president, who headed the Obama administration’s policy in the Ukraine. Burisma is a Ukrainian natural gas company.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a Wednesday statement that “we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”
In a statement, Twitter said that the story violated its rules against posting “another person’s personal and private information,” as well as its “Hacked Materials Policy.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey also tweeted: “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.”
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
Rep. Ted Budd, North Carolina Republican, said Thursday he would sponsor a companion bill to the Limited Section 230 Immunity to Samaritans Act, which was introduced in June in the Senate.
“Recent acts of political censorship by Twitter and Facebook are a disgrace,” Mr. Budd said in a statement.
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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