Jim Jordan summons ex-Biden admin officials to House hearing on internet censorship

Politics

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By Steven Nelson

WASHINGTON — House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan invited three former Biden White House officials to appear at a May 1 public hearing to discuss their pressure on companies to censor online content — as the Supreme Court considers whether the administration violated the First Amendment by pressuring platforms such as Facebook to yank posts and videos.

Jordan (R-Ohio) invited former White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty, former COVID-19 coordinator Andy Slavitt and former COVID-19 digital director Clarke Humphrey after Flaherty and Slavitt flouted Jordan’s earlier subpoenas requiring their testimony in closed-door depositions.

“The Committee on the Judiciary is continuing to conduct its investigation into how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote to the group.

“To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with social media platforms and other companies to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand the nature of this collusion and coercion.”

The Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee focused on the alleged political weaponization of government will host the hearing — should any of the invited guests show up.

Jordan issued legally binding subpoenas in November requiring that Flaherty and Slavitt appear at depositions in January, but the pair elected not to appear.

To date, the Judiciary Committee has not taken action to hold them in contempt, which can carry criminal penalties.

Some details of the White House pressure campaign to squelch online discourse have emerged in documents, but many particulars remain murky.

In his letter to Flaherty, Jordan wrote “the Committee has obtained documents that demonstrate the central role you played in communicating the Biden White House’s censorship efforts to social media companies, including the White House’s demands to censor true information, memes, satire, and other constitutionally protected forms of expression.”

“As one of the Biden White House’s primary representatives responsible for interfacing with large social media companies, you likely have knowledge about the White House officials responsible for leading the Biden censorship regime as well as information regarding the intent behind various messages you and others sent to social media companies,” Jordan added.

“[I]nternal Facebook documents obtained by the Committee illustrate your specific role in threatening high-ranking Facebook executives to censor Americans’ speech, including critics of the Biden Administration. These internal notes reveal that you sought to have Facebook ‘kick people off’ the platform, change its newsfeed algorithm, and ‘play ball’ with the Biden Administration’s censorship demands.”

The White House did not immediately comment on the planned hearing, nor did representatives for the former officials.

Supreme Court justices last month heard oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by Missouri and Louisiana against the Biden administration for pressuring social media companies to remove alleged misinformation, especially about COVID-19 vaccines.

The litigation by the Republican-led state governments turned up a cache of documents showing that Flaherty and his team heavily pressured platforms like Facebook and Twitter, but attempts to force testimony from Flaherty and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who said in 2021 that Biden aides were “flagging” content for removal, were unsuccessful.

Censorship critics note that speech suppressed online often ends up gaining widespread acceptance — such as a theory that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged from a Chinese lab, which Facebook censored through May 2021, but which now is the FBI’s own assessment.

In another instance, Facebook and Twitter initially censored The Post’s October 2020 reporting on documents from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that showed then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was involved in his son’s foreign business relationships in China and Ukraine.

The Post’s reporting was suppressed after the FBI, which had taken possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, claimed that there could be a “hack and leak” operation impacting Biden’s son.