Twitter Won’t Unlock NY Post Account Until Hunter Biden Posts Deleted

Then Vice President Joe Biden waves as he walks out of Air Force Two with his granddaughter, Finnegan Biden (C) and son Hunter Biden (R) upon their arrival in Beijing on Dec. 4, 2013. Ng Han Guan/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter hasn’t unlocked the New York Post’s account, four days after the newspaper published several bombshell reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails, according to several of the paper’s editors.

Emma-Jo Morris, a politics editor with the paper, wrote that it’s now “day 4” of Twitter blocking the Post’s “account access unless we self-censor.” The paper’s opinions editor, Sohrab Ahmari, also confirmed the locked account.

Biden’s campaign and Biden have disputed some of the allegations, with Biden saying that it’s a “smear campaign” in remarks delivered over the weekend.

“It’s now been four days since The Post dropped the first Hunter Files story, and neither Joe nor Hunter has disputed a single material fact,” Ahmari said on Twitter. “The easiest thing they could do is to say, ‘That laptop isn’t ours, Hunter didn’t send/receive those e-mails.’ Yet, they haven’t done that.”

As of the afternoon of Oct. 18, the Twitter account showed the NY Post’s last tweet was on Oct. 14.

“Anyone who looks at The Post’s Twitter feed can’t even see the tweets about the Biden stories, which have been replaced by messages saying, ‘This Tweet is no longer available,’” the Post wrote on Oct. 16.

A Twitter spokesperson told Fox News over the weekend that the Post “has been informed what is necessary to unlock their account.”

Both Twitter and Facebook have faced a bevy of criticism this week after the Post’s initial report on Hunter Biden was barred from being shared on Twitter and its reach being limited on Facebook.

That article, which used alleged emails that were sourced from a laptop, showed communication between Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and a Ukrainian energy company adviser. Hunter Biden’s work at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company that was started by an oligarch long accused by Ukrainian officials of corruption, was the focus of President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry and trial beginning last year.

Previously, Twitter said the newspaper’s articles violated the social media website’s hacked materials policy. The Post disputed the company’s assertions, saying: “Information in the reports came from data extracted from a MacBook Pro laptop that a Delaware repair shop owner has said was dropped off in April 2019 but never picked up.”

On Oct. 16, Twitter updated its policy, writing, “Our work to limit the spread of misleading information goes beyond elections. Starting today, before you Retweet or Quote Tweet any labeled Tweet that breaks our misleading information rules, you'll see a prompt.”

Twitter said in a statement to the Post: “While we’ve updated the policy, we don’t change enforcement retroactively. You will still need to delete the Tweets to regain access to your account.”

A Facebook executive said last week that it would limit the reach of the article after fact-checkers determine the authenticity of the claims.

President Donald Trump and other top Republicans have now accused Twitter of engaging in censorship and election interference.

The move prompted the Senate Judiciary Committee to announce that it will vote to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey about alleged election interference to support Biden’s candidacy.

A day later, the Republican National Committee filed a Federal Election Commission complaint targeting Twitter and Dorsey, claiming that online censorship of the Post’s article about Hunter Biden’s business dealings is an “illegal corporate in-kind political contribution” to Biden’s campaign.

The committee said it “believes that Twitter has violated [the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act] and the Commission’s Regulations by making corporate in-kind contributions to Biden for President,” according to the complaint. Fox News first reported on the filing on Oct. 16.

There have also been suggestions from Trump and other GOP lawmakers that under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Twitter should be considered a publisher and therefore subject to lawsuits.

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates told news outlets last week that Biden had “carried out official U.S. policy toward Ukraine and engaged in no wrongdoing,” and that some “Trump administration officials have attested to these facts under oath.”