Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, joined by Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, announced their intentions to formally question Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey over the social media company’s recent censorship and election interference.
“The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to know what the hell is going on,” Cruz said Thursday morning, after announcing the Senate Judiciary Committee would be issuing a subpoena for Dorsey.
“We’re going to finally have an accounting that is long overdue,” Graham added.
According to Cruz, the Senate Judiciary Committee will be voting on the subpoena on Tuesday with the hopes that Dorsey will be able to testify about the censorship next Friday.
The committee invited Dorsey and Twitter “to come before this committee and the American people and explain why Twitter is abusing their corporate power to silence the press and the cover-up allegations of corruption.”
The call for a subpoena comes after Twitter and Facebook engaged in active censorship of the New York Post’s article alleging Hunter Biden’s monetization of foreign companies’ access to his father, Joe Biden, while the latter was vice president.
When Cruz attempted to share the most recent Post article detailing “more corruption” by the Bidens in China Thursday morning, he says he was stopped by the big tech company.
“Just minutes ago. I tried to share that story on Twitter, and Twitter is actively blocking right now in this instance, stories from the New York Post, alleging corruption, and the Biden plant family receiving millions of dollars from Communist China,” Cruz explained.
“This is election interference and weird 19 days out from an election. It has no precedent in the history of democracy,” he added.
Hawley agreed with Cruz, claiming that the freedom of the press and the election were at risk unless the issue is swiftly addressed.
“We believe in a free press in this country and free elections and the attempt to rig an election which is what we’re seeing here by monopolies is unprecedented in American history,” Hawley said. “They have a lot to answer for.”
Hawley said he hoped the committee would subpoena both Twitter and Facebook.
“They should both come because both engaged in censorship and massive monopolies. They should answer to the full Senate and to the American people,” he said.
40 percent of Americans get their news primarily from @Facebook. Their active censorship of @nypost is an attempt to control the news. I will offer a motion to subpoena @Facebook to answer for this censorship
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 15, 2020
While Cruz and Graham specified that they don’t know if the New York Post stories are true, he said that the focus of the controversy should be on the “big tech billionaires” who exploited their power to manipulate the public’s access to information.
“Let me be clear: I don’t know if these New York Post stories are true or not, those are questions Vice President Biden should answer, but Twitter and Facebook and big tech billionaires don’t get to censor political speech and actively interfere in the election,” Cruz said. “And that’s what they’re doing right now.”
“It’s us today but it could be them tomorrow,” Graham warned Democrats who might be hesitant to engage with the big tech companies.
Cruz and Hawley sent official letters to Dorsey on Wednesday asking him to justify the blatant censorship of the Post’s article. Hawley also included letters to Facebook and the Federal Elections Commission, calling for action against “election interference.”
