Rep. Jordan highlights panel’s role in revealing government and Big Tech censorship.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Exposes Collusion Between Big Tech and Big Government
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs the Weaponization subcommittee, has made a shocking revelation. According to him, the panel’s investigation has uncovered smoking gun documents showing how Big Tech and Big Government worked together to stifle free speech online.
On Aug. 7, Mr. Jordan took a bold stand against the Biden administration’s censorship-by-proxy scheme. He joined 12 congressional Republicans in a lawsuit, accusing the administration of pressuring social media companies to suppress free speech.
The Weaponization subcommittee recently obtained a cache of files that provide evidence of government collusion with Facebook. These files document the silencing of speech protected under the First Amendment.
Related Stories
“We know through the Facebook Files that the Biden Administration directed Big Tech companies to censor speech the government disagreed with, and launched a pressure campaign when companies did not comply with these censorship orders quickly enough,” Mr. Jordan said.
In May 2022, Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden and multiple government agencies. They alleged that these agencies pushed social media platforms to censor posts and remove accounts, constituting one of the greatest assaults on freedom of speech in U.S. history.
Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana ruled in favor of the attorneys general on July 4. He issued an injunction that banned government agencies from collaborating with Big Tech companies to censor social media posts.
The Biden administration appealed, and on July 14, a three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans granted the government’s request to temporarily lift the censorship-by-proxy ban.
In its appeal, the Biden administration argued that the injunction caused “irreparable harm” because it prevented federal agencies from communicating with social media companies for legitimate reasons, such as fighting crime.
Judge Doughty denied the Department of Justice’s request to stay his earlier ruling.
“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears,” Judge Doughty wrote on July 10. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.”
Lawyers for the DOJ filed an emergency stay of the injunction at the 5th U.S. District Court of Appeals, resulting in the appeals court’s decision to pause the ban on government agencies contacting social media platforms.
According to Mr. Jordan, the Weaponization committee has discovered “smoking gun” evidence of collaboration between Biden administration members and Meta, Facebook’s parent company. This evidence includes the deletion of COVID-19 pandemic information, such as vaccine misinformation and the lab leak theory.
One email reveals that Meta employees felt “under pressure” from the administration to suppress posts about the lab leak theory. Another email indicates that an employee informed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg about the pressure to remove COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content.
“What’s most concerning to me is the attack the left now has on the First Amendment. You stop and think about every single right we enjoy as Americans under the First Amendment has been assaulted over the last couple of years. Every single one,” Mr. Jordan passionately expressed during a speech to a Republican women’s club in Loveland, Ohio, on Aug. 7.
During a July 27 press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended the administration’s stance on social media companies. She emphasized the responsibility these platforms have to consider the impact of their content on the American people while making independent decisions.
In a letter to the editor, a concerned citizen wrote:
" Conservative News Daily does not always share or support the views and opinions expressed here; they are just those of the writer."
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases
Now loading...