As if the long and detailed stream of evidence that reporters such as Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others have revealed this year, proving that during the Trump Administration and, especially, under Biden, agents of the federal government pressured, antagonized, and cajoled Twitter and Facebook’s parent, Meta, to censor information and opinions about important issues such as the Hunter Biden laptop, COVID-19, the experimental mRNA jabs, lockdowns, masks, Ukraine, and more, House Judiciary Chair Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) just turned that stream of evidence into a river as wide as the Mississippi and as long as the Amazon.
On July 27, Jordan started things simply, with a brief Twitter (or X) post to begin a thread that is both devastating in detail and stunning, thanks to what it reveals about the sheer intensity of the Bidenista hatred of free speech.
“THE FACEBOOK FILES, PART 1: SMOKING-GUN DOCS PROVE FACEBOOK CENSORED AMERICANS BECAUSE OF BIDEN WHITE HOUSE PRESSURE”
And in his next post, he adds the very important context:
“Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House.”
And the emails “came to light” because the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is conducting an investigation into federal government censorship via social media. As shocking as it might seem, Meta has been slow to respond to committee requests for communications, but maybe, just maybe, the committee threat to hold Mark Zuckerberg in contempt for withholding the documents got ol’ Zuck to comply.
And maybe, just maybe, this new release will help more Americans see the falsity in then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s 2021 claim that “We [the Biden administration] don’t take anything down, we don’t block anything. Facebook and any private sector company makes [sic] decisions about what information should be on their platform.”
“During the first half of 2021, social media companies like Facebook faced tremendous pressure from the Biden White House—both publicly and privately—to crack down on alleged ‘misinformation.’"
Next, Jordan provided a copy of an official FB communication, noting:
“In April 2021, a Facebook employee circulated an email for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, writing: ‘We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House’ to remove posts.”
Ah, yes. Even while being pressured like the victims of a mafia, the FB crew fall back on their corporatist, Environmental Social Governance (ESG) claptrap term, “stakeholders.” How quaint.
Related: CENSORSHIP: Facebook, Twitter Remove Trump Video For 'Harmful COVID Misinformation' | MRCTV
Guess who is not considered a “stakeholder” in this government-corporate arrangement?
Next, Jordan offered another FB email, and his observation:
“In another April 2021 email, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president for global affairs, informed his team at Facebook that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor to President Biden, was ‘outraged . . . that [Facebook] did not remove’ a particular post.”
And Jordan added:
“What did the Biden White House want removed? A meme. That’s right, even memes weren’t spared from the Biden White House’s censorship efforts.”
That meme being the oft-used image of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a television screen in the film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” with the upper frame displaying the phrase, “10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear…” followed by the lower phrase-payoff, “’Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled…’”
Which actually could be the case, if the government had not granted the pharma corporations legal immunity from injury suits should their “emergency authorization” experimental gene serums prove to, say, increase the risk of heart injury, or stroke, nerve damage, blood clots, or cause menstrual problems or other maladies…
Congressman Jordan offered more in this story, which, again, is just one example of many, Tweeting:
“When Clegg ‘countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US,’ Slavitt disregarded the warning and the First Amendment.”
Indeed, Clegg claimed that Slavitt believed the meme “demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines among those the Biden Administration is trying to reach.”
And that’s a bad thing?
Indeed, whether it does or does not, whether “inhibiting confidence” is in line with government agendas (already not sanctioned by the US Constitution, which doesn’t have a “fight viruses and pay for jabs” clause) or it isn’t, those are matters with utterly no relevance for any Constitution-abiding official.
And things got worse from there. Tweeted Jordan:
“What happened next? Facebook panicked. In another April 2021 email, Brian Rice, Facebook’s VP of public policy, raised the concern that Slavitt's challenge felt ‘very much like a crossroads for us with the [Biden] White House in these early days.’”
Offering even more FB documentation, Jordan added:
“But Facebook wanted to repair its relationship with the White House to avoid adverse action: ‘Given what is at stake here, it would also be a good idea if we could regroup and take stock of where we are in our relations with the [White House], and our internal methods too.’”
And guess what the Facebook gang did? Did they fight for free speech, or collapse like a balloon brought into cold air?
They seemingly became Bidenista lapdogs, and even went after a Tucker Carlson video, even though it didn’t violate any FB policies. Tweeted Jordan:
“To appease the Biden White House, talking points were drafted for Clegg. Facebook was ready to tell the White House that it had demoted a video posted by Tucker Carlson by 50% in response to the White House’s demands, even though the post didn’t violate any policies.”
And this is just a sampling of what Facebook did to Carlson, people posting memes, and, possibly, you and me, here at MRCTV.
All of which makes the current battle over this Biden-Facebook-social-media pressure to censor issue even more immediately important.
As MRCTV has reported, this matter currently is the subject of two massive lawsuits, Missouri et al. v. Biden et al. and Kennedy et al. v. Biden et al., which allege the Biden administration colluded with social media corporations to infringe on free speech rights, by censoring content and by blocking public access to valid health information related to alternative COVID-19 treatments and the mRNA jabs.
The suits were consolidated earlier this week by On July 4,
Judge Terry A. Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued an injunction in “Missouri…” blocking Biden from continuing its nefarious practice of influencing social media. Even without these new revelations from Jordan, Doughty in is 155-page July 4 ruling found the then-existing evidence so compelling, he predicted that the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim” against the “White House … FBI … CDC NIAID … CISA” and the other federal government defendants.
On July 14, a three-judge panel for the Fifth Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, placed a stay on Judge Doughty’s injunction, allowing the Biden Administration to continue its interaction with social media for the purposes of censorship until the trial, and on July 24, Judge Doughty consolidated the “Missouri et. al. v Biden et. al.” and the “Kennedy et. al. v Biden et. al.” suits into one, writing:
“The issue of suppression of free speech by the government by coercing and/or significantly encouraging social media platforms is the same. Both cases involve the exact same Defendants and are pending in the same district and division before the same judge.”
The trial is set to begin on August 10.
Meanwhile, it will be up to us to spread the news about this unscrupulous and oppressive use of our own tax money against us via the Biden Administration’s strong-arm tactics against social media.
And if people don’t think there is a threat behind the government entreaties to social media, they need merely familiarize themselves with Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Decency Act. It grants social media and other websites immunity from defamation suits should a user post something that might harm another person, and it grants the online platforms protection against state action for any error the media platforms might make in allowing something like child porn to slip through. But Section 230 only grants these protections if the federal government (read: the FCC) determines that the host was “curating” the content “in good faith” which is an obvious ambiguity that gives the feds total arbitrary power to pull the protections for any reason the feds desire.
Thus, when the Biden Administration asks your social media site to cut a post or a user, it’s likely you might consider what will happen to your Section 230 status if you don’t “comply.”
And, of course, none of the FCC powers is constitutional, when viewed from an originalist standpoint. We are left to watch as the Biden team are revealed to have been laying intense pressure on social media to censor us, social media often complied, and the Biden propagandists like Jen Psaki offered completely unbelievable statements about it.
And we are left to tell our friends and neighbors. No one should become accustomed to his. Freedom of speech is in the balance.
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