Senate subpoenas could force Zuckerberg and Dorsey to testify on New York Post controversy

NelsonG · October 22, 2020

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted in favor of issuing subpoenas for Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Thursday, meaning that there might be two big tech CEO hearings on the horizon.

Republicans in the committee declared their interest in a hearing on “the platforms’ censorship of New York Post articles” after social networks limited the reach of a dubious story purporting to contain hacked materials implicating Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, in impropriety involving a Ukrainian energy firm. Fox News reportedly passed on the story due to doubts about its credibility.

Suspect provenance of Hunter Biden data cache prompts skepticism and social media bans

Tech’s decision to take action against the New York Post story was bound to ignite Republicans in Congress, who have long claimed, with scant evidence, that social platforms deliberately censor conservative voices due to political bias. The Senate Judiciary Committee is chaired by Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a close Trump ally who is now in a much closer than expected race with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison.

According to a motion filed by Graham, the hearing would address:

(1) the suppression and/or censorship of two news articles from the New York Post titled “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad” and “Emails reveal how Hunter Biden tried to cash in big on behalf of family with Chinese firm,” (2) any other content moderation policies, practices, or actions that may interfere with or influence elections for federal office, and (3) any other recent determinations to temporarily reduce distribution of material pending factchecker review and/or block and mark material as potentially unsafe.

Earlier in October, the Senate Commerce Committee successfully leveraged subpoena power to secure Dorsey, Zuckerberg and Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai for testimony for their own hearing focused on Section 230, the critical law that shields online platforms from liability for user created content.

The hearing isn’t scheduled yet, nor have the companies publicly agreed to attend. But lawmakers have now established a precedent for successfully dragging tech’s reluctant leaders under oath, making it more difficult for some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful men to avoid Congress from here on out.