Ranking Member Raskin and Rep. Goldman Press Comer for Hearing on Alarming Reports that X Is Selling Premium Services to Terrorist Groups and Sanctioned Entities

Washington, D.C. (March 11, 2024)—Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and Rep. Dan Goldman urged Chairman James Comer to hold a hearing to examine troubling reports indicating that X (formally Twitter) is selling its Premium services to U.S.-designated terrorist groups and sanctioned entities.

“[T]his raises significant concerns that X may be violating U.S. sanctions law by facilitating financial transactions from terrorist organizations and other entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, including senior leaders of Hezbollah, Iranian news outlets, and Russian state media. [...] If these new allegations prove to be true, these transactions would not only violate U.S. sanctions law, but also pose a national security threat.  We hope Committee Republicans share our concern for potential sanctions violations, aligning with our common goal of combating corruption and prioritizing national security,” wrote the Members in the letter.

On February 14, 2024, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) published a report identifying nearly two dozen “blue checkmark” accounts linked to U.S.-sanctioned entities.  This included Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and the terrorist group’s deputy Secretary-General Naim Qassem, both of whom are listed as “Specially Designated Nationals,” (SDNs) under the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).  Further, the terrorist leader, Nasrallah, apparently received Premium subscription services from X, and Nasrallah’s X account was “ID verified,” which would have required him to send an image of a government-issued ID and a selfie to X, confirming that the X user was in fact Nasrallah.

TTP also identified numerous accounts of other U.S.-sanctioned entities, such as those belonging to Iran’s Press TV and Russia’s Tinkoff Bank, with gold checkmarks—a signifier of X’s “Verified Organization” status which, until January 2, 2024, cost a minimum $1,000 per month.

Additionally, it appears that some of these sanctioned entities may have received advertising revenue from X.  X policy allows users who pay for Premium services to receive a share of the revenue generated from advertisements displayed in replies to the user’s posts and, according to the TTP report, nearly 70% of the identified accounts featured advertisements in replies to posts.

“If X provided any of these accounts revenue as part of its advertisement revenue sharing policy, it would have violated U.S. law by conducting financial transactions with sanctioned entities.  X’s public response to TTP’s reporting was insufficient and alarming.  Shortly after the publication of the TTP report, X’s Safety account made multiple statements that conflict with X’s own policies on purchasing Premium,” the Members concluded.

Click here to read the letter.

###