Federal Election Commission Rules Twitter Didn’t Violate Law in Blocking 2020 Hunter Biden Stories

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The Federal Election Commission has ruled in Twitter’s favor in a complaint alleging that it violated election law when it banned stories about Hunter Biden during the 2020 election.

The agency determined the platform acting for commercial reasons rather than for political purposes, according to the outline of a ruling leaked to The New York Times on Monday.

Twitter banned the reports about President Joe Biden’s son in October, just weeks before the election, after The New York Post obtained documents describing his business dealings with companies in countries such as Ukraine and China. The website indicated the documents violated its “hacked materials” policy, despite The Post noting they came from a damaged laptop the junior Biden behind a computer repair shop in Delaware. Facebook took similar measures by restricting users’ ability to share stories on the topic.

However, Twitter reversed the action in a matter of days. “Our New York Post article was not great,” CEO Jack Dorsey wrote at the time. “And blocking URL sharing via tweet or [direct message] with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable.”

Subsequent research found the effort to suppress the stories backfired, with one study by media-intelligence firm Zignal Labs indicating shares for The Post’s initial article “nearly doubled” after Twitter’s attempt to prevent its spread.

A complaint in the matter was filed by the Republican National Committee. The commission similarly rejected allegations that Twitter had violated the law by suppressing Republican users, along with appending labels to former President Donald Trump’s tweets warning users against them, saying the claims were “vague, speculative and unsupported by the available information.”

RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said the Republican Party was “weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the FEC.”