Twitter CEO
Jack Dorsey will be subpoenaed by Senate Republicans next week and questioned on why the
social media company blocked two New York Post articles alleging Hunter Biden corruption while his father was vice president, Sen.
Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told "Outnumbered Overtime" Thursday.
The Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee told host Harris Faulkner he couldn't tweet out the second article while he was in the confirmation hearing for Judge Amy Coney Barrett earlier in the day.
"Let me be very clear, Twitter is interfering in this election. They are censoring the press," Cruz said, and further explained, "silencing the media is a direct violation of the principles of the First Amendment."
The "One Vote Away" author slammed Dorsey as "behaving as
Joe Biden's press secretary," saying he needs to answer why he is "trying to hide Joe Biden from any scrutiny or allegations of corruption."
President Trump called for the repealing of Section 230 in reaction to the censorship and after Twitter blocked White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany's account.
"So terrible that Facebook and Twitter took down the story of “Smoking Gun” emails related to Sleepy Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in the @NYPost. It is only the beginning for them. There is nothing worse than a corrupt politician. REPEAL SECTION 230!!!" Trump wrote.
Cruz pointed out the hypocrisy from the social media giants, stating that "Twitter and Facebook, they don't do this for all of the attacks on Donald Trump."
Twitter didn't block the New York Times' stories about Trump's taxes, despite them not being released nor the "now totally debunked" Steele dossier with "all sorts of scurrilous sex allegations about the president," Cruz said.
"People tweet about that all the time, but when it comes to Joe Biden, Twitter has decided that they are using their multi-billion dollar monopoly power to try to silence all discussion and keep the voters ignorant," he said. "It is big tech censorship has always been bad, but they really crossed a line in the last 24 hours.
Senate Judiciary Committee leaders announced they will vote on a subpoena Tuesday for Dorsey to testify before the committee on Friday, Oct. 23. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he hoped the committee would vote to subpoena Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, too.
Cruz said senators should ask Dorsey: "What are your standards, Mr. Dorsey? Why are you choosing to silence this media story and not other stories? How do you determine who gets to speak in America and who doesn't? And how do you get to decide that you can use your corporate treasury to give what is, in effect, a multi-million dollar campaign donation to the Biden campaign, just 19 days out from an election?"
Cruz concluded Silicon Valley billionaires are "drunk with power."
The Biden campaign said the former vice president engaged in "no wrongdoing."
Jamal Brown, a Biden campaign spokesman, told Cheddar TV Thursday: “Twitter’s response to the actual article itself makes clear that these purported allegations are false and not true.”