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Senate Judiciary Committee Votes To Subpoena Facebook, Twitter CEOs

Called to testify about “suppression and/or censorship”

   DailyWire.com
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 10: Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to testify before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. Zuckerberg, 33, was called to testify after it was reported that 87 million Facebook users had their personal information harvested by Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm linked to the Trump campaign. (Photo by
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to subpoena the testimonies of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after all 10 Democrats boycotted the panel’s hearing to advance the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.

Republican members want the two CEOs to testify about their handling of a recent series of articles by the New York Post, America’s fourth-largest newspaper, concerning former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s business dealings. Both social media sites suppressed the stories.

Zuckerberg and Dorsey are already set to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee next week.

The Judiciary Committee voted to compel the CEOs to testify about their “suppression and/or censorship” of the Post articles, one that alleged Hunter Biden introduced his father to a top executive at Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where he worked.

Joe Biden repeatedly refused to answer questions about the matter but finally broke his silence Wednesday while doing an interview with a Wisconsin TV station from his Delaware home.

Biden blasted Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who is using a Senate committee he chairs to probe Hunter Biden, and ripped President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani for peddling “garbage.”

“This is the same garbage—Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s henchman. It’s a last-ditch effort in this desperate campaign to smear me and my family,” Biden said on WISN.

Reporter Adrienne Pedersen said to Biden, “Wisconsin’s Republican senator, Ron Johnson, put out a statement on Homeland Security letterhead saying Hunter Biden, together with other Biden family members, profited off the Biden name.” She asked Biden if there was any “legitimacy” to the claims.

“None whatsoever!” Biden said emphatically.

Biden said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has criticized Johnson’s move.

“Even the man who served with him on that committee, the former nominee for the Republican Party, said there’s no basis to this,” Biden said. “And the vast majority of the intelligence people have come out and said there’s no basis at all. Ron should be ashamed of himself!”

Last week, following Twitter’s decision to ban sharing the Post stories about a mystery laptop containing emails that allegedly show international influence peddling by Hunter Biden, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned Dorsey that he should expect to be called before the Senate committee to explain his platform’s censorship policies.

Twitter blocked sharing of the Post stories and locked the Post out of its platform after the outlet published the pieces, citing its “hacked materials” policy. After an outcry, Dorsey apologized for censoring the Post’s link, claiming Twitter would update its policies.

“Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix. Our goal is to attempt to add context, and now we have [the] capabilities to do that,” Dorsey tweeted on Friday.

The platform re-activated sharing for the Post’s story late last week. As The Daily Wire reported, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study released Monday showed that Twitter’s censorship had the precise opposite effect from what was intended and that presumed censorship of “conservative” material “nearly doubled” attention on the Biden allegations.

Related: Senate Panel Will Not Vote To Subpoena Twitter, Facebook CEOs Over Bias After Republicans Object

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