Senator Calls for Criminal Investigation of Twitter

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is calling on the Justice Department and the Treasury Department to conduct a criminal investigation into Twitter probing whether the tech giant is violating U.S. sanctions against Iran by providing Iranian leaders an online platform.

In a letter addressed to Attorney General William Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Friday, Cruz accused Twitter of violating sanctions that prohibit American corporations from providing services to the Middle Eastern nation’s leaders by allowing top officials to remain on the site. In February, Cruz had previously written to Twitter urging the social media company to remove Iranian leaders from the platform in a letter with three other Republican senators.

“I believe that the primary goal of (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act) and sanctions law should be to change the behavior of designated individuals and regimes,” Cruz wrote. “But when a company willfully and openly violates the law after receiving formal notice that it is unlawfully supporting designated individuals, the federal government should take action.”

Cruz’s latest calls for a federal probe into Twitter’s potential violations of U.S. sanctions come on the heels of controversy surrounding the site’s decision to censor two of President Donald Trump’s tweets this week. (Read more from “Senator Calls for Criminal Investigation of Twitter” HERE)

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