Lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee grilled Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about last year's controversial decision to block a NY Post report about Hunter Biden at a hearing on Friday. The story revealed that Hunter, President Biden's son, introduced him to a top executive at the corrupt Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings years back. The correspondence obtained by the Post upends Biden's narrative that he "never spoke" to his son about his overseas business dealings. It sparked controversy because as vice president, Biden would pressure government officials in Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was investigating the company.
Dorsey again admitted they made a "total mistake" by blocking the Post story. But, he added that they "corrected that within 24 hours."
"It was not to do with the content," Dorsey insisted at Thursday's hearing. "It was to do with the Hacked Materials Policy."
Rep. Steve Scalise: "I want to ask Mr. Dorsey… do you recognize that there is this real concern that there's an anti-conservative bias on Twitter's behalf?" pic.twitter.com/yy7ejY8yxd
— The Hill (@thehill) March 25, 2021
Dorsey said that they have since changed the policy, which blocks articles that base information on "hacked," or stolen, information. But, as Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) noted, Twitter still locked the Post out of its account for weeks, and accused the platform of "acting as a publisher."
“It was literally just a process error," Dorsey countered. "This was not against them in any particular way."
“If we remove a violation we require people to correct it,” he added. “We changed that based on their to wanting to delete that tweet, which I completely agree with. I see it. But it is something we learn.”