WASHINGTON – House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday subpoenaed President Biden’s former White House digital strategy director Rob Flaherty to testify about his actions in pressuring digital platforms to censor content – ahead of what is expected to be a landmark Supreme Court case focused on his case. action.
Flaherty must sit for committee questions on Jan. 11, Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a legally binding request for testimony, which follows an unsuccessful attempt to compel former administration officials to testify in state lawsuits brought by Missouri and Louisiana. which the Supreme Court will consider in its next term.
“The committee has obtained documents that show the key role you played in communicating the Biden White House’s censorship efforts to social media companies, including White House demands to censor factual information, memes, satire and other constitutionally protected forms of expression,” Jordan wrote to Flaherty. , who left the White House in June for a position with Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign.
“Your testimony will inform the Committee’s legislative reform aimed at preventing the Executive Branch from using its vast powers to pressure social media platforms to censor unsavory views,” Jordan wrote.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Thursday subpoenaed President Biden’s former White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty. AP
The pending Supreme Court case, whose oral arguments have not yet been scheduled, follows a lower court ruling that restricts the government’s ability to pressure companies to delete speech they dislike. The decision was made in response to a lawsuit brought by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who argued that the Biden administration violated America’s First Amendment right to free speech.
The lawsuit produced a trove of documents showing Flaherty and his team relied on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, primarily to limit the spread of alleged misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine.
However, attempts to compel Flaherty’s testimony in the case, as well as an appearance from former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who declared in July 2021 that Biden aides “flagged” content for removal, were unsuccessful.
US District of Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction on July 4 that prohibits federal officials from pressuring companies to release constitutionally protected speech.
Many details about Flaherty’s actions remain unclear.
For example, Jordan on Thursday morning released emails obtained by the Judiciary Committee that showed Flaherty also leaned on Google’s YouTube in an effort to push back, but those emails only vaguely referred to White House pressure on company officials — such as messages internal April 2021 that stated that “the White House is very interested in our work on border content” without describing the content specifically.
Jordan also issued a subpoena to former White House COVID-19 coordinator Andy Slavitt, who was ordered to testify on January 9.
Flaherty must sit for committee questions on Jan. 11, Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in a legally binding request for testimony, which follows an unsuccessful attempt to compel former administration officials to testify in state lawsuits brought by Missouri and Louisiana. Rob Flaherty/Twitter
White House spokesman Ian Sams called the subpoena “baseless” and a “political stunt,” but did not say how or whether the executive branch would seek to counter the demands.
“Once again, extreme House Republicans are issuing baseless subpoenas just to play to their far-right base with out-of-the-mainstream positions,” Sams said.
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“The Biden administration has encouraged responsible action to protect public health, safety and security in the face of challenges such as deadly pandemics and foreign attacks on our elections,” he added.
“Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to consider the impact of their platforms on the American people, but make free choices about the information they convey.”
An attorney for Flaherty did not immediately respond to a request for comment and Slavitt could not immediately be reached for comment.
Federal efforts to rely on companies to delete online speech ahead of Biden’s presidency intensified after hackers linked to the Russian government allegedly obtained and released the emails of prominent Democrats during the 2016 election campaign.
Opponents of censorship note that once-blocked content often finds widespread acceptance — such as the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese lab doing risky research, which Facebook censored until May 2021, but which is now the official view of the FBI and other parts of the US government.
In another example, Facebook and Twitter censored The Post’s October 2020 report about documents from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that showed then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was involved in his son’s foreign business ties, despite claims to the contrary.
YouTube deleted the Post’s exclusive interview with Capitol mobster Aaron Mostofsky. NY Post
The Post’s report was suppressed after the FBI, which had seized Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, alleged that there may have been a “hacking and leaking” operation affecting Biden’s son.
Other examples of censorship have removed primary source material about important events in American history.
YouTube, for example, deleted a video interview The Post conducted inside the Capitol with a New Yorker who stormed the building to disrupt the certification of then-President Donald Trump’s election defeat.
The platform claimed in June 2022 that the video spread misinformation about election fraud, but relented after The Post placed censorship on its front page.
Still, YouTube continued to delete other primary source material from the unprecedented unrest, including footage released by the House select committee investigating the riots.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
