Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) speaks during the confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., October 13, 2020.
Susan Walsh | Pool | Reuters
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to authorize subpoenas for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to testify about their handling of a recent unverified New York Post article about former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
Twelve Republicans on the committee voted to authorize the subpoenas and ten Democrats sat out the markup in a protest of the session’s earlier vote on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are already set to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee next week alongside Google CEO Sundar Pichai about alleged bias and privacy matters.
The Judiciary Committee voted to compel the CEOs to testify about their “suppression and/or censorship” of two recent New York Post articles involving unverified allegations about emails supposedly taken from a computer belonging to the Democratic presidential nominee’s son, Hunter Biden. The initial story alleged the younger Biden attempted to introduce a top executive at a Ukraine company he worked for to his father while he was serving as VP. The Democratic nominee has called the story a “smear.”
Facebook and Twitter took very different approaches to moderating the article, which contained unredacted email addresses in documents included in the story.
Andrew Bates, spokesman for the Biden campaign, responded to the New York Post’s story in a statement:
“Investigations by the press, during impeachment, and even by two Republican-led Senate committees whose work was decried as ‘not legitimate’ and political by a GOP colleague have all reached the same conclusion: that Joe Biden carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing. Trump Administration officials have attested to these facts under oath,” Bates said.
“The New York Post never asked the Biden campaign about the critical elements of this story,” he added. “They certainly never raised that Rudy Giuliani — whose discredited conspiracy theories and alliance with figures connected to Russian intelligence have been widely reported — claimed to have such materials.
“Moreover, we have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place.”
This story is developing. Check back for updates.
