Today, America First Legal (AFL) released documents obtained from litigation against the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), revealing CISA flagged text messages supporting President Donald J. Trump for potential censorship.
Documents previously obtained by AFL reveal that CISA was actively working to censor narratives about mail-in voting risks as “disinformation” ahead of the 2020 election. These new documents released today reveal that even after the election took place, CISA continued to be more concerned with securing Director Krebs’s narrative that this was “the most secure in American history,” rather than investigating whether the election was actually secure.
CISA Flagging Pro-Trump Political TextMessages
On November 9, 2020, the day after the 2020 election, Brian Scully, a member of the “DHS Countering Foreign Interference Task Force” of CISA, sent an email with the subject “Text Msgs.” The email contained screenshots of fundraising texts for President Trump and the #StopTheSteal effort.
In his email, Scully noted, “A text message I just received. Fundraising around stop the steal.”
A colleague at CISA replied “What’s your thoughts on how to handle? Or just for FYSA?” This email suggests that CISA was looking for every opportunity to take action to potentially censor conservative pro-Trump speech.
Scully replied, “I think FYSA. Not sure we can do anything with something I get on my own.”
CISA’s Post-election “Disinformation Sitrep”
After election day, CISA continued to collect mis- and dis-information reports through “official channels” and “3rd Party fact checkers.” Despite CISA’s understanding that the 2020 election actually presented more risks due to the widespread adoption of mail-in voting, CISA officials automatically assumed all reported suspicions of fraud to be part of a “False Narrative” that required “counter-messaging.”
You must be logged in to post a comment Login