Fact check: Post falsely claims Elon Musk exposed a Jack Dorsey-Hunter Biden connection

Nate Trela, USA TODAY
·3 min read
168
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.
  • Oops!
    Something went wrong.
    Please try again later.

The claim: Image shows Elon Musk tweeted that Jack Dorsey was paid to suppress Hunter Biden info

Earlier this month, Twitter's new owner Elon Musk created a stir after he promoted the release of internal documents showing how the company struggled to deal with a salacious news story about Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son, during the 2020 presidential election.

Still, some social media users are claiming Musk went a step further and tweeted that Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of the company and former CEO, accepted money to suppress damaging information about the younger Biden.

"The Democrats paid the CEO (sic) Jack Dorsey of Twitter millions of dollars to block and delete people's pages during the 2020 election That posted anything about Hunter Biden's laptop," reads the text in an image posted to Facebook on Dec. 4 (direct link, archive link). "Let me say that again the democratic party paid millions to block stories about the Biden's (sic)."

The post was shared more than 1,000 times in four days, and the image is mocked up as if it were a tweet from Musk.

But there is no evidence that Musk published the tweet.

USA TODAY reached out to Twitter and the social media user who shared the claim for comment.

Follow us on Facebook! Like our page to get updates throughout the day on our latest debunks

No record Musk issued tweet

USA TODAY found no record of the purported tweet on Musk’s official Twitter account nor was it in an archive of his tweets.

In addition, the tweet in the image uses a font and formatting that is different from Twitter's style, including a stray space to start the second paragraph. There is no timestamp to the right of the username where it displays on legimitate tweets. The image also contains several grammatical and punctuation errors, something Musk's tweets do not typically have.

There is no evidence that Dorsey was paid to suppress damaging information about Hunter Biden.

Journalist Matt Taibbi published a Twitter thread detailing documents he obtained showing the company's internal deliberations days before the 2020 election. As Taibbi reported, Twitter was wrestling with issues related to a New York Post article about images found on Hunter Biden's laptop that were pornographic in nature. Twitter ultimately chose to block tweets promoting the article, and Republican and Democratic political operatives are said to have lobbied Twitter about the Post story.

Still, there is nothing in Taibbi's reporting – or in any other credible news report – related to Dorsey being paid to withhold information.

USA TODAY has previously debunked claims about Musk, including baseless assertions that he wants to buy Snapchat and plans to charge they/them users more for Twitter verification.

PolitiFact also debunked the image.

Our rating: Altered

Based on our research, we rate ALTERED an image that purports to show Elon Musk tweeted that Jack Dorsey was paid to suppress Hunter Biden info. There is no record of Musk tweeting such an accusation nor are there any credible news reports about it. In addition, the font and formatting in the image differ from Twitter's style.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.

Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Fake tweet accuses ex-Twitter CEO of protecting Bidens