US election 2020: Trump attacks Facebook, Twitter for censoring Joe Biden article

Donald Trump has rebuked Facebook and Twitter for blocking links to a article about Joe Biden son’s dealings in Ukraine.

Donald Trump arrives at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland to board Air Force One for the flight to Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday. Picture: AFP

US President Donald Trump has rebuked Facebook and Twitter for blocking links to a New York Post article purporting to expose corrupt dealings by election rival Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine.

The newspaper said this week it had obtained a computer abandoned by Hunter Biden that implicated his father in his Ukraine business affairs.

The former vice-president and Democrat nominee for the November 3 election has repeatedly denied any such involvement. “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad,” the newspaper’s headline read.

As Mr Biden’s campaign denied he had ever met the businessman, Facebook and Twitter on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) placed restrictions on linking to the article, saying there were questions over its veracity.

“This is part of our standard process to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said Facebook spokesman Andy Stone.

Twitter said it was limiting the article’s dissemination due to questions about “the origins of the materials” included in the article.

Republicans were outraged by what they called partisan censorship. Mr Trump, who trails Mr Biden in polls less than three weeks before the presidential election, blasted the two social media giants. “So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of ‘Smoking Gun’ emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost,” Mr Trump posted on Twitter. “It is only the beginning for them. There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician.”

At a rally later in Des Moines, Iowa, Mr Trump said his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s Twitter account was blocked after she shared the Post story. “Because she is reporting the truth! They close down her account,” he said.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey expressed regret over how Twitter communicated what it was doing with the article. “Our communication around our actions on the @nypost article was not great. And blocking URL sharing via tweet or DM with zero context as to why we’re blocking: unacceptable,” he tweeted.

It was a telephone call between Mr Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky about opening an investigation into Hunter Bidens affairs that eventually led to the impeachment of the President. Mr Trump was cleared at a Senate trial.

The Post said the computer had been left by Hunter Biden at a Delaware computer repair shop in April last year. The unidentified shop owner told the newspaper that after the computer seemed to have been forgotten, he copied the hard drive and gave the machine to federal authorities. The shop owner passed the hard drive copy to Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer, who provided it to the newspaper.

While the Biden campaign did not deny the existence of the computer or validity of the emails on it, Mr Giuliani has a record of dispersing disinformation about both Bidens and Ukraine.

The Post criticised Facebook and Twitter for helping Mr Biden’s campaign, saying no one had disputed the story’s veracity. “Facebook and Twitter are not media platforms. They’re propaganda machines,” it wrote in an editorial.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley, in a letter to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, said the “seemingly selective” blocking “suggests partiality on the part of Facebook”.

The Post report, he said, is “clearly relevant to the public interest” and reveals “potentially unethical activity by a candidate for president”.

“Twitter’s censorship of this story is quite hypocritical, given its willingness to allow users to share less-well-sourced reporting critical of other candidates,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz said in a letter to Mr Dorsey.

The story revived criticisms that Mr Biden, when he was in charge of the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy, took actions to help his son and the Ukrainian energy company whose board Hunter Biden sat on, Burisma. Mr Biden has repeatedly rejected such allegations. “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in September last year.

The story focused on one email from April 2015, in which Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi thanks Hunter for inviting him to a Washington meeting with his father. But there was no indication when the meeting was scheduled or whether it ever happened.

“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” the Biden campaign said.

Mr Trump’s campaign, battling to overcome a steep polling deficit to Mr Biden, quickly issued a statement saying the emails were proof Biden “lied to the American people” about his son’s business dealings.

AFP