#Twitter CEO will be subpoenaed to testify on Post censorship

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday said they will hold a hearing Tuesday to compel Twitter’s chief executive to testify about censorship of The Post’s reporting on Ukraine- and China-related documents from a Hunter Biden hard drive.

“This is election interference and we’re 19 days out from an election. It has no precedent in the history of democracy,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters.

“Chairman Lindsey Graham and I have discussed this at length and the committee today will be noticing a markup on Tuesday to issue a subpoena to Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee next Friday.”

Republicans hold a majority on the committee. It’s unclear what Democrats, in the minority, could do to potentially slow the plans.

“If the Democrats were to try to play procedural games to delay the subpoena until after the election, that would be obvious and transparently political,” Cruz said.

Graham (R-SC), stepping out into the hallway to discuss the urgent matter amid his Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, told reporters “we’re going to finally have an accounting that’s long overdue these social media platforms have a dominance in our lives, they’re newspapers, they’re TV stations, radio stations, they’re publishers.”

“You may be a Democrat, saying I don’t want to hear the New York Post. It could be you tomorrow,” Graham warned.

The Post’s initial censored story Wednesday described an email indicating Hunter Biden introduced his vice-president father to an executive at Ukraine energy firm Burisma, despite Joe Biden saying he never discussed his son’s “overseas business dealings” with him.

Twitter blocked users Thursday from sharing a story from The Post that describes Hunter Biden’s alleged pursuit of a China business deal.

The company said without evidence that the material may have been hacked.

The hard drive was shared with The Post by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney to Trump, after he received it from a Delaware computer repairman. The repairman says he legally accessed the content under an abandonment contract clause when Hunter Biden did not collect a damaged laptop within 90 days.

Republican lawmakers and President Trump on Wednesday cited the article censorship by Twitter and Facebook in calls for reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a foundational internet liability shield for sites that host third-party content.

Supporters of reforming Section 230 say tech giants should lose protections if they operate as a publisher, rather than as a neutral platform.