
FILE – A Twitter logo hangs outside the company’s San Francisco offices on Nov. 1, 2022. A top European Union official warned Elon Musk on Wednesday Nov. 30, 2022 that Twitter needs to beef up measures to protect users from hate speech, misinformation and other harmful content to avoid violating new rules that threaten tech giants with big fines or even a ban in the 27-nation bloc. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)
() — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden made headlines yet again, this time for Twitter’s alleged suppression of a story concerning him and his laptop.
Some Republicans have even vowed to investigate Hunter as well as big tech companies, and this weekend those politicians took to Twitter, alleging internal and secret talks between Twitter executives.
Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk enthusiastically teased “what really happened” with Twitter’s alleged suppression of a story concerning Hunter Biden and his laptop on Friday, saying “This is going to be awesome.”
In a lengthy Twitter thread on Friday, journalist Matt Taibbi alleged that Twitter staff had open lines of communication with both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign during the 2020 presidential race.
Taibbi said that both camps often reached out to Twitter to block stories or tweets they felt were either unfair, inaccurate or misinformation. Twitter had a content moderation team to evaluate those requests.
But Taibbi contends that the system was unbalanced in favor of liberal-leaning requests. He argues, without documentation, that the Twitter staff leans left.
“Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right,” he tweeted.
On the Hunter Biden story specifically, Taibbi’s thread said there was a lively debate behind the scenes over how to handle it. Largely, and surprisingly, this allegedly came without serious input from Twitter’s then-CEO Jack Dorsey.
In his thread, Taibbi postulates Twitter officials’ decision to suppress the laptop story was based on its “hacked material” policy, at that point, anything from the laptop story was gained from foreign hacks, though Taibbi did not offer formal documentation to verify this statement.
Taibbi described how an anonymous former employee said, “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
Even some Democrats voiced concerns. Rep. Ro Khanna wrote an email to Twitter staff, saying that suppressing the Hunter Biden story “seems like it’ll invite more backlash than it’ll do good.”
In fact, the internal emails reveal there were multiple sources expressing frustration from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill over Twitter’s handling of the story.
Despite the concerns, Twitter later suspended the NY Post account for over two weeks. Dorsey reinstated the account after 16 days, calling its decision to freeze the account a mistake.
After Taibbi’s posts went public, Republicans who vowed to pressure big tech companies moving forward spoke out.
California Rep. Kevin McCarthy told Fox News that now there should be investigations into other tech companies such as Facebook and Google.
“These now have become arms of the Democratic Party, arms of the Biden administration,” McCarthy said.
has been unable to independently verify the emails Taibbi released in the thread. He himself said in order to cover this story he had to agree to certain conditions. He has not revealed what those conditions were.
Hunter Biden has said that federal prosecutors in Delaware are investigating his taxes and has denied any wrongdoing. He has not been charged.