Andrew Kerr
The Federal Election Commission reportedly ruled in August that Twitter did not violate election laws by blocking users from sharing a New York Post article based on a cryptographically authentic email from Hunter Biden’s laptop less than a month before the 2020 presidential election.
The FEC ruled that Twitter had “credibly explained” its move to temporarily block the New York Post story from being shared on its platform, according to The New York Times, which obtained an unreleased document outlining the commission’s decision to dismiss a complaint filed by the Republican National Committee in October alleging that Twitter’s censorship of the story was an “illegal in-kind contribution” to then-candidate Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
The FEC found that Twitter’s move to censor the story was a commercial decision based on its hacked materials policy, according to the Times. The commission also ruled that there was “no information that Twitter coordinated” with the Biden campaign in censoring the story.
It’s not clear how many of the six FEC commissioners ruled to dismiss the complaint. FEC Deputy Press Officer Christian Hilland declined to comment to the Daily Caller News Foundation when asked for a copy of the decision.
“Once an enforcement matter is resolved, the FEC has up to 30 days to post the related documents on our website,” Hilland said.
There is no evidence that the New York Post obtained the “smoking gun” email, which Hunter Biden received in April 2015 from an executive of a Ukrainian gas company discussing an introduction to then-Vice President Joe Biden, from a hack.
Hunter Biden has never addressed the authenticity of a 2019 repair quote containing his signature authorizing a Delaware computer repair shop to move data from his Macbook Pro to a store server.
The owner of the repair shop said he provided the contents of the laptop’s hard drive to a lawyer for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani after Hunter Biden failed to retrieve his computer. The repair shop owner also said federal authorities seized the laptop in December 2019.
A cybersecurity expert told the DCNF in October that the email at the center of the New York Post’s story is unquestionably authentic. The expert, Robert Graham, was able to test the DKIM signature within the email’s metadata against a private key on Google’s servers, proving the email’s legitimacy.
Hunter Biden told CBS in April that he does not remember dropping his laptop off at the Delaware computer repair shop in 2019, but added that the device “certainly” could be his.
Hunter Biden revealed in December that federal prosecutors in Delaware were investigating his “tax affairs.”
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told lawmakers during a congressional hearing on misinformation and social media in March that he regrets censoring the New York Post and its story.
“We recognize it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately,” Dorsey said.
RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn told the Times that it was “weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the FEC.”
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