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The Federal Election Commission is responsible for enforcing the laws governing federal election campaign funding and spending. Last year, the commission dismissed a complaint filed against his Twitter and its executives, alleging they violated federal law. Given the recent public disclosure of her internal and external Twitter communications with campaigns and political party organizations, the FEC should reopen its investigation. A determination must be made as to whether the dismissal was based on false information provided by Twitter.
In 2021, the FEC investigated three consolidated complaints filed against Twitter, Jack Dorsey, Brandon Borrman, and the Biden for the President campaign. Dorsey is the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, and Borrman is the former VP of Global Communications at Twitter.
According to a “fact and legal analysis” report prepared by FEC general counsel, the complaint alleges Twitter made “prohibited corporate contributions in kind” to the Biden campaign. Prohibits donating “anything of value” to a candidate. For example, if you allow a campaign to use a company-owned rental property for free, it is an illegal contribution-in-kind.
Republicans launch probe into Twitter, Facebook for collusion with Biden admins, censored speeches
The lawsuit alleges that Twitter made an in-kind contribution by blocking users from tweeting links to, and certain information derived from, the New York Post article about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The complaint alleges that Twitter “restricts or “shadowbans” the visibility of Republican supporters” and “suppresses the distribution of interviews with Hunter’s former Biden business and his alleged associate.” claimed to have been involved in The latter allegation referred to Tony Bobrinski, who claimed he had been duped by Biden, and claimed the Biden family was involved in “an influence-selling operation.” The lawsuit also alleges that Twitter illegally coordinated actions with the Biden campaign, causing the campaign to “willfully accept prohibited corporate contributions.”
The repeated release of Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter files” revealed the company’s practice of surreptitiously “blacklisting” certain tweets, raising questions about what the company told the FEC.
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After investigating the allegations, six commissioners voted to dismiss the complaint. However, the decision was made because Twitter told his FEC that the action had “genuine commercial grounds” and was “not intended to influence,” according to the general counsel’s report. , was based on stating that it did not make illegal corporate donations. federal election. ”
In addition, Twitter said, “We have filed an affidavit by the US Public Policy Officer. [Lauren Culbertson] She and other Twitter employees [the Biden Committee]”Before Twitter took action to suppress the New York Post’s revelations. The general counsel also reported, ‘The Biden Commission said it did not coordinate with Twitter.’
The “legitimate commercial justification” Twitter supposedly provided was its policy against distributing “hacked” material.there was still no evidence that the material had been hacked; The New York Post article made it very clear that the information came from a laptop Hunter Biden left behind at a computer repair shop. Moreover, Twitter had no qualms about distributing articles based on confidential documents illegally released by Edward Snowden in 2013.
Also, there was no evidence that the information on the laptop was incorrect. Neither Hunter Biden nor the Biden campaign “publicly denied the authenticity of the laptop documents.”
No wonder a recently published internal communication indicates that Twitter’s own policy communications manager stated that they were “struggling to understand the policy rationale for marking this as unsafe.” .
These disclosures indicate that the FEC may have dismissed these complaints based on Twitter’s false and incomplete responses.
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While the commission appeared to have accepted Twitter’s claims that it acted for “good faith commercial reasons” at face value, the fact that executives inside Twitter had questioned the suppression of the story certainly proved I question that claim.
Additionally, now-public communications between Twitter and various political sources cast doubt on whether Twitter was truthful when it denied any communication with the Biden campaign on these issues. That, too, appears to be a major factor in the FEC’s dismissal of the complaint. The general counsel’s report states, “There is no evidence that Twitter coordinated its actions with the Biden Commission, and therefore the actions did not constitute a donation.”
Given the recent public disclosure of internal and external Twitter communications with campaigns and political party organizations, the FEC should reopen its investigation. It remains to be determined whether that dismissal was based on false information provided by her Twitter.
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When they dismissed the FEC’s lawsuit, some of the commissioners said that under federal law they were entitled to media immunity for publishers, even if they were involved in the lawsuit in which Twitter was prosecuted. Said In 2020, “Is Twitter a publisher? No, it’s not. We distribute information.”
There is now reason to believe that Twitter and its executives have misled and outright lied to the FEC. The Commission should reopen its investigation and submit a subpoena to Twitter for all materials and communications related to these matters to determine whether it violated federal campaign finance laws. We also need to investigate whether the individual who submitted it has committed perjury, so we need to refer them to the Department of Justice for possible criminal liability.
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