The New York Times quietly deleted the word "unsubstantiated" from a story on Twitter's censorship last year of a New York Post article on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The Times on Monday reported that the Federal Election Commission dismissed Republicans' charges against Twitter for banning users from sharing the Post story. The Post found before the 2020 election that Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son, worked in 2015 to arrange meetings between his father, then the vice president, and a Ukrainian businessman under government investigation.
In the piece, the Times wrote that Twitter blocked "people from posting links to an unsubstantiated New York Post article." But the Post article has been extensively substantiated. The contents of Hunter Biden's laptop, which were the subject of the Post's reporting, have been verified by forensics experts, according to the Daily Mail, and Hunter Biden himself has said it is "certainly possible" the laptop was his.
As of Tuesday, the Times's tweet on the story, which includes the word "unsubstantiated," remains up.
Washington Free Beacon reporter Chuck Ross on Monday wrote, "A source familiar with this ruling tells me that the FEC does not call the Biden laptop article 'unsubstantiated.' That's [the New York Times's] language."
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a March congressional hearing that the platform's decision to censor the Post was a "total mistake."
The Republican National Committee, which filed a formal complaint against Twitter with the FEC, said it was "weighing its options" on how to move forward in light of the commission's ruling.