Both the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were served subpoenas by the House Judiciary Committee with regard to the panel’s ongoing investigation into Big Tech’s censorship practices.
The subpoenas, obtained by Fox News, demand that the FBI and DOJ surrender required documents by Sept. 18 at 9:00 a.m. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and the Republicans on the committee call on the agencies for communications they have had with companies and third-party groups.
“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and the extent to which the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote in letters he sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday.
“Your response without compulsory process has, to date, been woefully inadequate,” the congressman added.
In the subpoena, Jordan pointed to the recent Missouri v. Biden case, in which the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana held that the administration “jointly participated” with social media companies to such an extent they became “pervasively entwined” so as to “blur the line between public and private action.”
The DOJ fired back in a statement to Fox News:
The Department, including the FBI, does not censor content on social media platforms. Private companies have the sole authority to make decisions to protect their platforms and users. As with all the Committee’s various requests, the Department remains committed to working with the Committee to fulfill their informational needs.
And the FBI likewise released a statement absolving itself of collusion with Big Tech:
The FBI remains committed to cooperating with the committee in good faith. The FBI does not censor content on social media. We are a law enforcement and intelligence agency responsible for working with companies in a lawful way to protect our communities from child predators and terrorists, as well as hostile foreign countries like China, Russia, and Iran who are looking to exploit social media platforms to commit crimes or threaten national security.
“When the FBI identifies information that a hostile foreign actor is behind a social media account, we share that information with the company,” the bureau added. “Social media companies independently decide what, if any, action to take on their own platforms for their own customers.”
The Judiciary Committee’s investigation led it to subpoena the heads of Google, Amazon, and Facebook earlier this year.
In Missouri v. Biden, the judge blocked several executive branch agencies and departments from coordinating with social media companies, a move intended to prevent them from violating the First Amendment. Moreover, the court found that the FBI flagged “domestic disinformation,” passing this information along to the FBI’s election command center in San Francisco, and from there relaying it back to the social media platforms.
In the new subpoenas to the DOJ and FBI, Jordan noted that the government has not cooperated with the Judiciary Committee and has produced “only a single document,” namely a publicly available transcript of a civil deposition of FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan from Missouri v. Biden.
Jordan chided the agencies, informing them that “the Committee has uncovered evidence that contradicts several statements in Agent Chan’s deposition, particularly as they relate to his communications with social media platforms.”
The chairman added that “This production … omits voluminous responsive material, including communications between DOJ and tech companies, internal communications, and communications between DOJ and other executive branch entities.”
Jordan has released communications between the government and Facebook. Released to the public in July, the “Facebook Files” reveal that the Biden administration worked with the social media company in censoring Americans on Facebook who disagreed with White House policy on Covid.
Meanwhile, Big Tech has been scoring wins in state legislatures throughout the country.
Oregon, for example, is just one of several states in which proposals to protect user privacy were shot down thanks to lobbying from the tech industry.
The legislation debated in Oregon would have granted citizens the ability to sue companies for violations in what is known as a “private right of action.”
But when the bill was taken up in the spring, representatives from TechNet, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and the State Privacy and Security Coalition succeeded in persuading the Democrat-controlled Legislature to shoot down the proposal.
Once upon a time, Silicon Valley was worried about having to wage a 50-front battle against every state legislature in the nation, and attempted to use its influence to have Congress pass legislation favorable to it. Now, however, Big Tech has realized its lobbying efforts can be just as successful at the state level as in D.C. Thus, the industry has been spending less of its money on Congress, moving those resources to the states.
As Judge Terry A. Doughty said in Missouri v. Biden, the federal government and Big Tech are now “pervasively entwined.” Silicon Valley has essentially become the Thought Police for the Democratic Party, allowing them to violate the First Amendment without technically breaking the law.
