WASHINGTON — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has invited three former Biden White House officials to a public hearing on May 1 to discuss the pressure they have placed on companies to censor online content — as the Supreme Court considers government restrictions on platforms such as Whether pressure violates the First Amendment. Just like Facebook, posts and videos can be scraped.
Jordan (R-Ohio) invited former White House digital strategy director Rob Flaherty, former COVID-19 coordinator Andy Slavitt and former COVID-19 digital director Clark Han Clarke Humphrey, after Flaherty and Slavitt ignored Jordan’s earlier subpoena for them to testify in closed-door testimony.
“The Judiciary Committee is continuing to investigate how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with corporations and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to the group.
“In order to enact effective legislation, such as potentially enacting new statutory restrictions on the executive branch’s ability to collaborate with social media platforms and other companies to limit the circulation of content and de-platform users, the Commission must first understand the nature of this collusion and compel it.”
A Judiciary Committee subcommittee focused on the so-called weaponization of government politics will host the hearing if any invited guests are present.
Jordan issued legally binding subpoenas in November requiring Flaherty and Slavitt to testify in January, but the pair chose not to appear.
The Judiciary Council has so far not taken contempt of court action against them, which could result in criminal penalties.
Some details of the White House’s pressure campaign to suppress online speech have emerged in documents, but many details remain vague.
“The committee has obtained documentation demonstrating your central role in communicating the Biden White House’s censorship efforts to social media companies, including White House requests to censor factual information, memes, satire,” Jordan wrote in his letter to Flaherty. and other content.” Constitutionally protected forms of expression. “
“As one of the Biden White House’s key representatives responsible for communications with large social media companies, you may have knowledge of the White House officials responsible for leading Biden’s censorship efforts, as well as information about the intentions behind the various messages you and others send to social media. company,” Jordan added.
“[I]Internal Facebook documents obtained by the committee describe your specific role in threatening senior Facebook executives to censor the speech of Americans, including critics of the Biden administration. These internal records show that you tried to get Facebook to ‘kick people off’ the platform, change its News Feed algorithm and ‘cooperate’ with the Biden administration’s censorship demands. “
The White House had no immediate comment on the planned hearing, nor were representatives for the former officials.
Supreme Court justices last month heard oral arguments in a lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration, which pressures social media companies to remove alleged misinformation, particularly about COVID-19 vaccines error message.
A lawsuit filed by the Republican-led state government uncovered a trove of documents showing that Flaherty and his team exerted intense pressure on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, but sought to compel Flaherty and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki to testify. The latter said in 2021 that Biden aides “flagged” content for removal without success.
Critics of censorship note that speech that is suppressed online often ends up gaining widespread acceptance — for example, a theory that the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a Chinese laboratory, which Facebook had until May 2021, This is subject to review, but for now this is the FBI’s own assessment.
In another example, Facebook and Twitter initially censored an October 2020 Washington Post report about Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop files that showed then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s involvement in his Son’s foreign business relations in China and Ukraine.
The Washington Post report was suppressed after the FBI took over Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, claiming there might have been a “hacking and leaking” operation affecting Biden’s son.