Hawley wants FEC to probe Twitter, Facebook's 'unprecedented suppression' of Biden story

Missouri GOP Sen. John Hawley says Facebook and Twitter’s “unprecedented suppression” of a recent news story about Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden also violates federal campaign finance law and is asking the Federal Election Commission to address the concern. 

“This conduct does not merely censor the core political speech of ordinary Americans, though it certainly does that. Twitter and Facebook’s conduct also appears to constitute a clear violation of federal campaign-finance law,” Hawley wrote in a letter Wednesday to the FEC acting General Counsel Lisa Stevenson. ”Federal law prohibits any corporation from making a contribution to a federal candidate for office.”

Hawley argues that Twitter and Facebook are corporations and that a contribution includes anything of value for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office and that the Biden campaign derives extraordinary value from depriving voters access to information that, if true, would link the former the (former) vice president to corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs.”