Republicans slam Big Tech 'censors' over 'authenticated' Hunter Biden laptop

Several prominent Republicans criticized Big Tech after a New York Times report published Wednesday said emails recovered from a laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a repair shop in Delaware have been "authenticated."

In September 2020, The New York Post published the contents of that laptop, which purportedly showed that Hunter Biden and his father, then-candidate Joe Biden, had engaged in corrupt activities involving Ukrainian and Chinese corporations.

Per the Times article, a grand jury is continuing to investigate Hunter Biden's international business dealings. The 25th paragraph of that article contained a reference to emails between Hunter Biden and an associate that were "obtained … from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop." The article goes on to explain that the "email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation."

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Due to questions about the laptop's provenance, social media sites suppressed the story in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, according to The Washington Post. Fox News declined to run the story, and even at The New York Post, the decision to publish material from the laptop was contentious.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) told The New York Post on Saturday that Congress must "rein in Big Tech censors," while Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said "Big Tech leaders who participated in censoring the truth should answer to Congress and the American people in sworn testimony."

Former President Donald Trump released a statement Friday claiming the Times had "admitted that it participated in an effort to rig the election for Joe Biden." In 2020, the Times cast doubt on the veracity of the laptop story but played no direct role in suppressing it.