What happened after the Hunter Biden–Burisma emails story in October 2020?
A look back at the social media restrictions and disputes that followed a New York Post report linking Hunter Biden, Burisma and his father.
What was the state of play on 19 October 2020, days after a New York Post article put a Ukrainian gas company back into United States election politics? The dispute had begun on 14 October 2020, and it was still unfolding.
On 14 October, the Post reported that newly uncovered emails suggested Hunter Biden had introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas firm. The newspaper said it had obtained the alleged emails from Rudy Giuliani, described as a top adviser to Donald Trump.
The platforms acted the same day. Twitter and Facebook announced that they were limiting the distribution of the article until it had been fact-checked.
On 15 October, Twitter locked the Trump presidential campaign's account for sharing private information without that person's permission, in connection with a controversial Hunter Biden video. The account was later unlocked.
The episode belonged to a wider set of conspiracy theories that Trump and his allies promoted around the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal. These included accusations against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, as well as a theory that blamed Ukraine, rather than Russia, for interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
