United States
White House: Twitter documents are red herrings
US President Joe Biden and his son Hunter on vacation in the US state of South Carolina. photo
© Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/dpa
Did Twitter intentionally withhold a story about Joe Biden’s son Hunter during the 2020 campaign? That’s what Elon Musk says and shares corresponding tweets from a journalist. Now there is a statement from Washington.
The White House sees the recent publication of internal Twitter documents regarding the son of US President Joe Biden as a diversionary maneuver.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said it was an interesting “coincidence” that the filings were “full of old news” being released at a time when Twitter was being asked “very serious questions about the growing levels of anger , hate and anti-Semitism on its platform” – and questions about how the group allows this to happen. “It’s a red herring,” she said.
Twitter boss Elon Musk had shared tweets about internal Twitter documents about the controversy surrounding a New York Post article that appeared shortly before the 2020 presidential election. The article included an email from Biden’s son, Hunter, related to his overseas business, which has often been the subject of political attacks on Joe Biden.
Musk shared a series of tweets from a journalist. These showed, among other things, several screenshots of internal communication, after which there was also a controversial debate internally on Twitter about blocking the article. Musk wrote that the story was deliberately withheld.
Twitter blocked the newspaper’s article and account at the time because the report allegedly violated rules prohibiting the dissemination of information obtained through illegal hacks. The then Twitter boss Jack Dorsey later admitted that the action against the “New York Post” was a mistake. Twitter then changed its rules.
Musk bought Twitter for around $44 billion at the end of October. Before the congressional elections in November, he campaigned on the platform for the Republicans. He also unlocked the account of former US President Donald Trump.