One of the Federal Election Commission members who rejected a claim that Twitter violated campaign finance laws by censoring The Post's reporting on Joe Biden's laptop said that the social media giant may have been biased in favor of then-candidate Hunter Biden, but did not break the law.
Republican commissioner Sean Cooksey issued a three-page justification of his vote to reject the complaint from the Republican National Committee, saying that he thought Twitter may have had political motives in censoring the articles, but it did not rise to the level of an in-kind contribution to Biden's 2016 campaign against incumbent President Donald Trump.
Cooksey expressed his doubt that Twitter was standard in its coverage and just following neutral company practices.
The Commission s business analysis concludes that Twitter was simply enforcing preexisting commercially reasonable policies to protect its product quality and business interests. According to the Commission, none of the behavior concerned was for the purpose of influencing the 2020 presidential election.
I m not so sure what Cooksey wrote.
In my view, the record doesn t establish whether Twitter was consistently enforcing a politically neutral business policy or using its platform to support one candidate over another. What is the answer to this question?
I conclude Twitter is a publisher with a First Amendment right to control the content on its platform and to favor or disfavor certain speech and speakers, Cooksey, a former aide to Twitter critics Sens. Josh Hawley R-Mo. Ted Cruz R-Texas wrote; Rupert Coulter wrote.
Its conduct therefore falls under the FEC's media exemption, doesn t qualify as expenditure or contribution and doesn t violate campaign-finance law. Cooksey's former bosses led congressional pushback to Biden's reporting on Twitter that indicated that then-Democratic presidential candidate Biden was involved with his son's international business relationships, including in Ukraine and China.
The three independent commissioners with the panel two Democrats and one independent to reject the RNC complaint, documents released Wednesday show.
The FEC vote occurred on Aug. 10 and the decision — but not the vote breakdown — was leaked to the New York Times this week.
A form describing the vote does not explain the reasons for the committees’ decisions, but the three Republican candidates, all appointed by former president Donald Trump, in writing explained their votes.
Two of the Republicans wrote that Twitter either had a right to censor the stories prior to the election by citing the company's Hacked Materials Policy — despite no evidence that the information was hacked.
Although Twitter first claimed the laptop materials were hacked, a Delaware computer repairman whose ID was confirmed before publication said The Post abandoned the laptop and given the material to the FBI and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Hunter Biden has not denied that the laptop was his.
FEC Vice Chairman James Trainor III wrote in a nine-page justification that the commission has long acknowledged that commercial activity reflecting commercial considerations cannot be considered a contribution or an expenditure. The two Republican Writers maintains that its decision to throttle the sharing of the Post articles at issue resulted from the evenhanded application of its content moderation policies. Given Twitter s clear denials and lacking any indications, other than pure conjecture, to the contrary, the Commission determined that these allegations simply did not meet our evidentiary standard and voted accordingly. They added, we do not believe that a particular course of moderation need be political neutral whatever that may mean in practice, and however it could be accomplished at a scale involving billions of individual posts. A single commercial decision is still an exercise of ideological or partisan judgment; there is no requirement that it be part of a proven pattern of commercial distinction so long as it does not itself have the purpose of encouraging Americans to vote one way or another. Dickerson, a former judicial director at the Institute for Free Speech, and Trainor, a former assistant to Defense Secretary James Mattis, with whom Trump had a bitter falling-out, said that they also felt that Twitter's actions are protected by our Media exemption and by the First Amendment itself. Republican Commissioners sided with Twitter in spite stiff pushback from GOP lawmakers who called for repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act after the censorship. That law gives social media companies full coverage for third-party content, rather than usual liability to publishers.
Supporters of demonetization say tech giants should lose protections if they operate as a publisher instead than as a neutral platform.
The FEC said this week that it s considering appealing the RNC's ruling.
Hawley, Cooksey'former employer, had previously urged the FEC to penalize Twitter, saying last year that the most powerful monopolies in American history are attempting to interfere in the news and control an FBI election. This is not a random blog. This is the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton for heaven s sake. What s really at stake here is a free press in this country and I have to say, this is really alarming, Hawley said.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admitted this year during a congressional hearing that blocking users from sharing The Post's blockbuster scoop was a total mistake and that locking The Post out of its own account for more than two weeks was a process error