Category: US Politics

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) is applied too broadly to social media companies in a recent letter. The law, which was passed at the beginning of the dot-com era, allows internet companies to avoid liability for content that has been posted by users on their platform. According to Thomas, “many courts have construed the law broadly to confer sweeping immunity on some of the largest companies in the world.”

According to a report by Axios, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that Section 230 of the CDA should be narrowed. Section 230 grants broad legal protections to social media companies with regard to content posted by users.

In a statement issued in response to a petition for writ of certiorari, Justice Thomas argued that Section 230 declares that social media platforms are not “publishers,” which means that they cannot be held liable for content posted by their users. Some industry analysts have suggested that platforms should be responsible for certain content on their platform, and for the censorship of content from their platforms, an act that makes them a publisher instead of a platform.

Enacted at the dawn of the dot-com era, §230 contains two subsections that protect computer service providers from some civil and criminal claims. The first is definitional. It states, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” §230(c)(1). This provision ensures that a company (like an e-mail provider) can host and transmit thirdparty content without subjecting itself to the liability that sometimes attaches to the publisher or speaker of unlawful content.

Justice Thomas went on to argue that many courts around the nation have construed the law too broadly, offering liability protection to some of the most powerful companies in the world.

“When Congress enacted the statute, most of today’s major Internet platforms did not exist. And in the 24 years since, we have never interpreted this provision,” Justice Thomas wrote. “But many courts have construed the law broadly to confer sweeping immunity on some of the largest companies in the world.”

Breitbart News reported in June that the Department of Justice was preparing a proposal that would repeal Section 230 of the CDA. A reversal would likely have a major impact on popular social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on this story.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s official public schedule shows several gaps during which he could have met with a Burisma adviser in 2015, despite claims by the Biden campaign that the meeting could not have happened because it was not on Biden’s “official schedules.”

On Wednesday morning, the New York Post reported that Biden had met with an official from Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company on whose board Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, served in a highly-paid position.

The Post cited an email it obtained from an abandoned hard drive that appeared connected to Hunter Biden.

The former vice president had previously denied ever speaking to his son about his overseas business interests. The campaign pushed back against the Post report, saying there was no such meeting on Biden’s “official schedules.”

But Breitbart News contribute Peter Schweizer told conservative radio host Mark Levin on Wednesday evening that Biden’s schedule had enough gaps in it that day to hold other meetings.

The date of the meeting would appear to be April 16 or 17. The Post reported that the email was sent on April 17, 2015:

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.

The time of the email was 6:00 a.m. PDT — 9:00 a.m. EDT. It refers tossing Hunter Biden “yesterday,” so the meeting likely occurred on the 16th, though it could have happened early the 17th, or earlier in the week.

Biden’s schedules for that week leave ample room for other meetings, in between speeches and official events.

As Breitbart News reported earlier Wednesday, Biden has certainly taken other meetings that were not on his official schedule.

Schweizer told Levin that the gaps in the schedule make Biden’s denial implausible.

“Now, if you’re gonna have a sleazy meeting with somebody, are you gonna put that on your official schedule?” Levin asked.

Schweizer laughed, and directed the public to the obamawhitehouse.archives.gov website.

“You can look at Joe Biden’s schedule that day. You know what it has? It has two gaps that are three hours or more.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His newest e-book is The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Facebook has reduced the distribution of a New York Post story containing bombshell information indicating that — contrary to his previous denials — Joe Biden allegedly did meet with an adviser to the board of Burisma while he was vice president, arranged by his son Hunter, who was then working as a lobbyist for the company. Twitter followed suit soon after, labeling links to the story “unsafe.”

The story made the front page of the Post, which also reveals that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is investigating emails provided to it by a whistleblower, allegedly between Hunter Biden and executives at Burisma.

His father has previously said, “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.”

But according to emails obtained by the Post, Hunter introduced his father to a Burisma executive less than a year before the then-vice president pressured the Ukrainian government into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

Facebook spokesman and former Democrat staffer Andy Stone announced the decision on Twitter, and also practically invited Facebook’s supposedly neutral fact-checkers to challenge the story.

Significantly, the social network took the rare step of acting in advance of a decision by its “third-party fact-checkers,” on which it usually relies on to defer responsibility for censoring news publishers.

That move is practically unprecedented, arguably protecting the former vice president from a major political scandal at a critical time in the 2020 election.

“While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, I want be clear that this story is eligible to be fact checked by Facebook’s third-party fact checking partners,” said Stone. “In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.”

Twitter followed Facebook’s lead, censoring existing links to the New York Post article as “unsafe,” and preventing people — including the newspaper’s own employees — from posting new ones.

“This is a Big Tech information coup,” said the New York Post’s op-eds editor, Sohrab Ahmari. “This is digital civil war.”

“I, an editor at the New York Post, one of the nation’s largest papers by circulation, can’t post one of our own stories that details corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Joe Biden.”

A Twitter spokesman said the link was being banned across the platform “in line with our Hacked Materials Policy as well as our approach to blocking URLs.”

Twitter also claimed the article lacked “authoritative information,” but did not explain this position further.

The censorship drew instant condemnation from Republicans. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said, “So Facebook is going to actively censor a [New York Post] investigative story on the Democrat candidate for president. But rest assured, Facebook is a neutral platform with no political viewpoints!”

“I want to know on what grounds you are actively censoring a news report about potentially illegal corruption by the Democrat candidate for president,” said Hawley in a follow-up tweet. “If you have evidence this is ‘disinformation,’ disclose it immediately.”

“Expect a formal inquiry from my office.”

In a tweet later in the day, Hawley posted the full text of his letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, calling on him to explain his company’s actions.

In a tweet posted to the Trump War Room twitter account, the Trump campaign accused Facebook of election interference.

“This is a Facebook employee. Facebook is actively interfering in the election. Facebook is rigging the election for Joe Biden.”

“This is straight-up election interference by Facebook, being announced by their comms person who touts in his bio numerous past jobs with Dems,” said Donald Trump Jr. “Big Tech is openly trying to rig this election for Biden & should be held accountable immediately.”

The Post has responded with an article titled, “Facebook censors The Post to help Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.” The Post writes, “Censor first, ask questions later: It’s an outrageous attitude for one of the most powerful platforms in the United States to take.”

Breitbart News has reached out to Facebook and Twitter for comment.

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. His new book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which contains exclusive interviews with sources inside Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, is currently available for purchase.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday slammed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) attack on “dark money,” noting that Fortune 500 companies and Wall Street “overwhelmingly favor” Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Whitehouse attacked dark money’s alleged influence in American politics and elections. The Rhode Island Democrat spent his 30 minutes allotted for questioning Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s qualifications for the Supreme Court by attacking conservative institutions such as the Federalist Society. During his time, he failed to ask Barrett one question.

Cruz noted that most super PAC spending during the 2016 presidential election benefitted Democrats over Republicans. He explained:

Our Democratic colleagues when they address the issue of free speech, of so-called ‘dark money,’ and campaign finance contributions, are often deeply, deeply hypocritical. And, they don’t address the actual facts that exist. Here are some facts, of the top 20 organizations spending money for political speech in the year 2016, 14 of them gave virtually of their money to Democrats. And another three split their money evenly, so only three of the top 20 gave money to Republicans, what did that mean in practice? That meant that the top 20 super PACs donors contributed $422 million to Democrats and $189 million to Republicans.

“Those who give those impassioned speeches against dark money don’t mention that their side is funded by dark money with a massive differential,” Cruz added.

Breitbart News’ John Binder reported in September that “all the big banks” on Wall Street have backed Biden over Trump during the 2020 presidential election.

CNN wrote:

The securities and investment industry donated just $10.5 million to Trump’s presidential campaign and outside groups aligned with it, according to a new tally by OpenSecrets. It has sent nearly five times as much cash, $51.1 million, to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

That means Trump is losing the fundraising race among Wall Streeters by a slightly greater magnitude than in 2016. During that cycle, former New York Senator Hillary Clinton and groups aligned with her raised $88 million from the securities and investment industry, while Trump took in just $20.8 million. [Emphasis added]

…

But a CNN Business analysis of OpenSecrets research shows that Biden is beating Trump in fundraising from all of America’s big banks — in some cases by wide margins.

However, despite Whitehouse’s protestations about the influence of dark money in American politics, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Rhode Island Democrat has his own problems with dark money.

The Journal explained:

[O]n Tuesday Mr. Whitehouse refused to abide by the normal practice for congressional witnesses of answering questions.

Mr. Whitehouse knew that, if he answered questions, he was under legal obligation to tell the truth. House Republicans might have asked him about the dark-money outfit Arabella Advisors. This for-profit entity oversees nonprofits including the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund, which together reported nearly a billion dollars in revenue in 2017 and 2018.

Arabella affiliate Demand Justice ran a smear campaign against Brett Kavanaugh and is now calling for Democrats to pack the Supreme Court. Demand Justice bills itself as a “project” of the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund, and in public disclosures it lists the same office address as the two nonprofits.

Mr. Whitehouse’s silence about his own ties to dark-money networks shows his goal isn’t to clean up politics. He wants to silence those who disagree with him. If Mr. Whitehouse holds power in the Senate majority next year, do not expect what Joe Biden says will be a new era of comity and fair play.

“The senator from Rhode Island spoke about big corporate powers, without acknowledging that the contributions from the Fortune 500 in the presidential election overwhelmingly favors Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Cruz said. “Without acknowledging that the contributions from Wall Street in this election overwhelmingly favor Joe Biden and the Democrats.”

Sean Moran is a congressional reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took the opportunity during his platform at the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearing on Tuesday to discuss one of the touchstone topics concerning Barrett being seated on the U.S. Supreme Court: the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion on demand the law of the land, and the efforts of pro-lifers to reverse the ruling.

Cruz said:

I do think that it is interesting that our Democratic colleagues, No. 1, do not discuss what would actually happen if there came a day in which Roe v. Wade were overruled, which is namely that it would not suddenly become the case that abortion was illegal but rather it would revert to the status of the laws [as has] been for nearly 200 years of our nation’s history. Which is that the question of the permissibility of abortion is a question for elected legislatures at the state levels and at the federal level.

“It is difficult to dispute that there are great many jurisdictions, including jurisdictions like California and New York, who even if Roe v. Wade were no longer the law of the land, their elected legislatures would almost certainly continue unrestricted access to abortion with virtually no limitations,” Cruz said.

Moreover, Cruz pointed out, while Democrats seem concerned that Barrett would bring a pro-life component to the court, they are in no way concerned that liberal judges embrace abortion rights to the extreme, including those who voted against the federal ban on partial birth abortion — the practice of aborting a baby by delivering it legs first and then sucking out the brain.

“What I find interesting, though, it that our Democratic colleagues do not discuss what is really the radical position of the most liberal justices on the Supreme Court, which is no restrictions whatsoever are permissible when it comes to abortion,” Cruz said.

Cruz noted that he took part in the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart case as an Amicus.

“The case concerned the constitutionality of the federal ban on partial birth abortion,” Cruz said. “That was legislation that passed Congress, signed into law, that made the really gruesome practice of partial birth abortion illegal.”

“An overwhelming majority of Americans believe partial birth abortion should be prohibited,” Cruz said. “Even those who identify as pro-choice.”

The High Court upheld the federal partial birth abortion ban on a 5/4 vote.

“That means there were four justices ready to strike it down,” Cruz said. “Ready to conclude that you can’t ban partial birth abortion. That you can’t ban late term abortion.”

The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose seat Barrett will fill if she is confirmed, wrote the dissent in Gonzales v. Carhart.

Since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, more than 59 million abortions have been performed across the United States.

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Tara Reade is writing a memoir to detail her journey since she came out against Joe Biden and alleged that he sexually assaulted her in 1993.

In March, Reade, like several other women before her, went public with claims that Biden had touched her inappropriately without consent. That incident is to be told in Reade’s new book, Left Out: When The Truth Doesn’t Fit In, which is set to be released on October 27, one week before the presidential election.

According to Fox News, the excerpt reads:

Tara Reade shares the aftermath of the re-victimization of speaking out about her sexual assault, with then-Sen. Joe Biden in 1993, where the shaming, attacks and threats instigated by the media set (sic) her into a personal tailspin. Tara-rized viciously by cyberbullies, receiving death threats, and fearing for her life and those of her family, Tara tells how living with no regret and coming forward was right for her conscious (sic). The moment that defines Tara will not confine, but instead move her forward by reclaiming her identity and pulling back together the pieces of life left.

While Biden has denied Reade’s claims, Jacquie Jordan, founder of TVGuestpert Publishing, told Fox News that she believes Reade’s story is “worth” understanding.

“As a woman-owned business, we believe Tara Reade’s story was worth being written, memorialized and shared,” Jordan said.

Reade spoke exclusively to Fox News about the book and she hopes “by being really frank about my life, about what has happened to me, and how I keep forward” will assist other sexual assault survivors.

In her comments to Fox News, Reade insisted that her book will not focus fully on the election or Joe Biden, saying, “It’s about my life and what it’s like to experience trauma and then move forward.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with the election,” Reade said. “I do discuss Joe Biden and how I experienced Joe Biden as a staffer and as a woman. And it was not a positive experience, yet he is going to the most powerful position in the Western world.”

Reade said she hopes those that read her memoir will get the “truth.” Reade said:

It’s just about the human experience. It’s about trying to move through trauma, move through – and when you try to get heard, what it’s like to really, you know, move through all of that that I experienced, losing my job, losing my career, that all of the smears that I experienced and then trying to piece together my life back.

“I don’t regret coming forward, but it definitely feels like things were broken in a million pieces and I’m trying to piece together back my life,” Reade added.