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Jim Jordan subpoenas FBI, DOJ for social media censorship records, CIA sued for intel letter signed by 51

August 18, 2023 | | Print Article

House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan has reportedly subpoenaed the Department of Justice and the FBI for documents related to allegations they’ve been working with social media companies to censor content.

In letters submitted alongside the subpoenas, Jordan wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray that he needs the documents so that the committee may investigate “how and the extent to which the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

The Republican congressman specifically asked for all documents related to the moderation, suppression, or removal of content online, and imposed a Sept. 15th deadline for the agencies to comply.

In the letter, Jordan also referenced previous letters he’d written to both men in April that’d also contained requests for records and documents.

“On April 18, the Committee wrote to you seeking your voluntary cooperation with our oversight. Among other things, we asked for communications between FBI employees and private companies, internal communications, and communications between the FBI and other third parties discussing content moderation,” the letter reads.

“To date, the FBI has produced only a single document: a publicly available transcript of a civil deposition of Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Special Agent in Charge Elvis Chan from Missouri v. Biden,” it continues.

But it gets worse. That single document the FBI produced was evidently full of problems.

“Through its investigation, 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 latest letter reads.

“This production is woefully inadequate and omits voluminous responsive material, including communications between FBI and tech companies, internal communications, and communications between FBI and other executive branch entities,” it continues.

Missing, for example, is any mention that on July 4th, a court “enjoined the FBI from communicating with tech companies for the purpose of influencing their content moderation policies.”

Moreover, the court made this decision in part because of evidence showing that the FBI, Agent Chan, and another agent had “‘jointly participated’ with the social media-companies to such an extent that [they] have become ‘pervasively entwined’ in the private companies’ working to such an extent as to blur the line between public and private action,” as ruled by the court.

In the ruling, Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty specifically argued that during the COVID pandemic, the Biden administration established a veritable “Ministry of Truth” that “used its power to silence the opposition.”

As in “opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power,” the ruling reads.

In other words, the administration tried to silence anybody who disagreed with it.

Speaking of Hunter Biden’s laptop, Jordan’s subpoenas come during the same week that the CIA has been sued over the phony “Russia disinformation” letter that was used in 2020 to silence reporting on the junior Biden’s infamous laptop.

The lawsuit was filed by Judicial Watch, which according to the New York Post is seeking ‘records that could shed light on the process used by the intelligence agency to ‘clear’ a letter falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation.'”

The suit was filed after the CIA reportedly failed to respond to a previous Freedom of Information Act request that was filed in May.

Mike Morell, who was serving as the acting director of the FBI in late 2020 and was one of the “intelligence officials” to sign the letter, later testified to the House Judiciary Committee this past spring that current Secretary of State Antony Blinken had inspired the production of the phony “Russia disinformation” letter.

“Morell testified that on or around October 17, 2020, Blinken served as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign and reached out to him to discuss the Hunter Biden laptop story. According to Morell, although [his] outreach was couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the Post story, it set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement,” a press release from the Judiciary Committee notes.

Vivek Saxena
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