Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, served subpoenas on the FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday in relation to allegations that the two organizations colluded with Big Tech companies to restrict stories like the New York Post’s report about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Mr. Jordan informed Christopher Wray, head of the FBI, and Merrick Garland, attorney general, in a letter that records of conversations are required to ascertain if the federal government “coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.” Then, with a deadline of September 18, he demanded that the FBI and DOJ turn over all internal emails and documentation pertaining to the moderation, removal, or suppression of content on social media sites.
“Numerous documents that have been made publicly available reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online directly and by proxy,” the letters said. “It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which DOJ officials have coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech. The scope of the Committee’s investigation includes understanding the extent and nature of DOJ’s involvement in this censorship.”
It noted that the DOJ and FBI have only produced one document, which was “a publicly available transcript of a civil deposition of Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan from Missouri v. Biden,” referring to a social media case that accuses the federal government’s contact with social media companies for alleged misinformation violated the First Amendment.
That lone document “omits voluminous responsive material, including communications between DOJ and tech companies, internal communications, and communications between DOJ and other executive branch entities,” Mr. Jordan also wrote.
In Missouri v. Biden, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction directing the Biden administration to stop some discussions with social media companies regarding censorship while the case is still being litigated.
Issued last month, the court found that “‘domestic disinformation’ was also flagged by the FBI for social media platforms” and that “just before the 2020 election, information would be passed from other field offices to the FBI 2020 election command post in San Francisco. The information sent would then be relayed to the social-media platforms where the accounts were detected.”
Mr. Jordan’s letter, in referring to the case, noted that ruling included the FBI’s and DOJ’s interactions with big tech firms.
“A federal judge has found that the communications of various executive branch entities with social media platforms, including the Department of Justice, very likely violated Americans’ First Amendment rights,” the chairman wrote. “Yet you have produced nothing of substance in response to the Committee’s request.”
Neither the DOJ nor the FBI have publicly responded to the subpoena.
Ruling Status
Despite the fact that Mr. Doughty’s decision was applauded as a victory for free expression, a federal appeals court last month decided to put the order on hold.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the State Department, the DOJ, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were prohibited from taking a number of actions with regard to social media companies, according to Mr. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Specifically, the agencies and their staff members were prohibited from meeting or contacting by phone, email, or text message or “engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech,” according to the injunction.
The authorities are also prohibited from identifying objectionable material in social media posts and reporting it to the corporations with demands for action, such as removing or otherwise reducing its reach. Also prohibited is encouraging or otherwise pressuring social media firms to alter their policies on the deletion, reduction, or limitation of content that comprises legally protected free speech.
“This could be arguably one of the most important First Amendment cases in modern history,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, one of the plaintiffs, told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in an interview after the ruling.
“If you look at the opinion that the judge lays out, he takes from our argument that this is basically one of the most massive undertakings of the federal government to limit American speech in the history of our country,” Mr. Landry continued. “The things that we uncovered, in this case, should be both shocking, appalling, and concerning for all Americans.”
The CEOs of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other businesses were served subpoenas earlier this month by Mr. Jordan’s office for documents regarding the government’s alleged collaboration with corporations to remove posts and censor particular sorts of content. Republicans have long claimed that these companies have shown hostility toward them and other conservatives, and that they are more inclined to censor them.
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