Senator Murphy (D-CT) Requests Review of Foreign Stake in Acquisition of Twitter, Inc.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) sent a letter to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) requesting an immediate investigation into the potential national security concerns arising from the recent takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and a number of foreign private investors, including members of the Saudi Arabian royal family and the kingdom of Qatar. Senator Murphy called attention to Saudi Arabia’s repression of free speech and political dissent inside and outside of the Kingdom’s borders, including the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Murphy referenced allegations by federal prosecutors in 2019 that Saudi Arabia recruited Twitter employees to mine Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users, in violation of US law. Twitter also suspended 88,000 accounts tied to a disinformation campaign backed by the Saudi government after an internal investigation. Senator Murphy directed the committee to examine the degree to which Saudi influence over Twitter’s operations or access to user data could be used to silence critics and activists, or further state-sponsored disinformation campaigns.