{"id":25490,"date":"2020-05-29T16:21:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T23:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=25490"},"modified":"2020-05-29T16:21:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T23:21:36","slug":"cruz-calls-for-criminal-investigation-into-twitter-over-alleged-sanctions-violations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=25490","title":{"rendered":"Cruz calls for criminal investigation into Twitter over alleged sanctions violations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sen.\u00a0Ted Cruz<\/a>\u00a0(R-Texas) on Friday called on the Trump administration to open a criminal investigation into allegations that Twitter had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran.<\/p>\n

Cruz made his request the same day other top administration officials criticized Twitter for allowing accounts of top Iranian officials to remain active while flagging a tweet by\u00a0President Trump<\/a>\u00a0for \u201cglorifying violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a letter<\/a>\u00a0to Attorney General\u00a0William Barr<\/a>\u00a0and Treasury Secretary\u00a0Steven Mnuchin<\/a>, Cruz alleged that Twitter had violated sanctions by allowing the accounts of Iranian Supreme Leader\u00a0Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a>\u00a0and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to stay active.<\/p>\n

Both Khamenei and Zarif were sanctioned under an executive order signed by Trump last year for promoting terrorism, advancing its ballistic missile program and targeting U.S. civilian vessels.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn early April, Khamenei and Zarif used their Twitter accounts to post anti-American disinformation and conspiracy theories, not authoritative health information,\u201d Cruz wrote. \u201cThey use their accounts provided by Twitter to threaten and taunt their enemies real and imagined. In any event, Twitter\u2019s corporate values and grave misapprehension of the threat that Khamenei and Zarif pose are irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz had written to Twitter in February outlining his concerns around the Iranian accounts.<\/p>\n

Twitter responded to Cruz that the company did not apply its \u201cviolent extremist\u201d policy to the accounts because of the \u201cpublic interest in learning about these types of statements\u201d from military or government accounts.<\/p>\n

Twitter also pointed to the COVID-19 crisis as a reason to allow the accounts to remain active.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Iran\u2019s people uniquely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter is also a place where officials can communicate the challenges they are facing, as well as be held to account by a global audience for their actions,\u201d the company\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0to Cruz. \u201cWe believe this Twitter use case is essential in times of crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz\u2019s letter was sent the same day Twitter flagged a tweet of Trump’s that threatened military action in response to riots in Minneapolis over the police killing of George Floyd. Trump tweeted that \u201cwhen the looting starts, the shooting starts,\u201d prompting Twitter to flag the tweet for \u201cglorifying violence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen.\u00a0Ted Cruz\u00a0(R-Texas) on Friday called on...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25491,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25490\/revisions\/25491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}