The New York Post, one of the country’s largest newspapers, has been locked out of its Twitter account by the tech giant for two weeks.
Twitter locked the outlet out of its account for publishing and sharing stories about materials from a laptop that purportedly belonged to Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Emma-Jo Morris, the New York Post’s deputy politics editor and one of the two journalists with a byline on the stories about the laptop and its hard drive, documented the timeline in a tweet.
“The Democratic nominee for President is calling this story a ‘Russian disinformation campaign.’ Twitter has revoked NY Post account access for 2 weeks over it,” she wrote.
The Washington Examiner has repeatedly reached out to Twitter to see if there are ongoing deliberations about the social media company changing its enforcement decision now that the site’s guidelines on hacked materials have changed.
The Democratic nominee for President is calling this story a “Russian disinformation campaign.” Twitter has revoked NY Post account access for 2 weeks over it. pic.twitter.com/LcQ5diemyb
— Emma-Jo Morris (@EmmaJoNYC) October 28, 2020
Twitter has not responded to most requests for comment but has said on occasion that it is not retroactively changing its enforcement decisions and is requiring the outlet to delete old tweets containing the story that it said were in violation of its old policies.
On Wednesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz grilled Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on continuing to lock the newspaper out of its account during his testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.
“Today, right now, the New York Post is still blocked from tweeting, two weeks later,” Cruz said.
“Yes, they have to log into their account, which they can do at this minute, delete the original tweet, which fell under our original enforcement actions, and they can tweet the exact same material from the exact same article, and it would go through,” Dorsey replied, but Cruz continued to press the issue.
“So Mr. Dorsey, your ability is you have the power to force a media outlet — let’s be clear, the New York Post isn’t just some random guy tweeting. The New York Post has the fourth-highest circulation of any newspaper in America. The New York Post is over 200 years old. The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton. And your position is that you can sit in Silicon Valley and demand of the media that you can tell them what stories they can publish and you can tell the American people what reporting you can hear. Is that right?” Cruz fired back.
Dorsey maintained his position that the newspaper can regain access to its account if it deletes the tweets.
The materials linked to Hunter Biden come from a laptop and hard drive that were left at a computer shop in Delaware but never retrieved by the owner. Although Joe Biden has dubbed the ensuing stories to be part of a “smear campaign,” neither he nor his son has denied the authenticity of the hardware’s contents.
Democrats and some former intelligence officials have said the laptop story could have ties to a Russian disinformation campaign, but Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the Justice Department, and the FBI, which possesses the laptop, don’t believe that is the case.
Twitter has not yet responded to an inquiry from the Washington Examiner sent on Wednesday. As of Wednesday afternoon, the last tweet sent by the New York Post was on Oct. 14 at 2:16 p.m. The former vice president is set to face off against President Trump on Election Day in less than one week.
