Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, shared another batch of newly subpoenaed documents that he said “reveal Facebook bowed to the Biden White House’s pressure to remove posts” from the social media platform on Friday.
A lengthy social media thread dubbed “The Facebook Files Part 2” began with the link to a Wall Street Journal report headlined “Facebook Bowed to White House Pressure, Removed Covid Posts.”
Jordan then wrote that in the summer of 2021, “the White House was mounting a nationwide push for Americans to get vaccinated for Covid-19. Part of that push included a public and SECRET campaign to get Facebook to more aggressively police vaccine-related content, including TRUE information.”
Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, noted it “wasn’t the Biden Admin’s first pressure campaign,” because in July 2021 “FB’s head of Global Affairs asked why FB had been censoring the COVID lab leak theory. The answer was clear: ‘Because we were under pressure from the administration . . . We shouldn’t have done it,’” and provided an email as evidence.
‘SMOKING-GUN DOCUMENTS’ PROVE FACEBOOK CENSORED AMERICANS ON BEHALF OF WHITE HOUSE, JIM JORDAN SAYS
“Biden Administration officials claimed that many Americans were hesitant to get vaccines because of content—including true information—that they saw on Facebook,” Jordan wrote, noting Biden said “they’re killing people” last July.
“Facebook employees initially bristled at President Biden’s accusation,” Jordan wrote, with accompanying emails, before adding “the tongue-lashing directly caused Facebook to re-evaluate its policies about COVID-19 content—discussions that involved high-level company officials including Clegg and then-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.”
Facebook and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jordan wrote that “humorous posts about the vaccine” were the specific thing the White House wanted to shut down. “Seriously, jokes were too much,” Jordan wrote.
“The Biden administration also wanted Facebook to remove TRUE information as well,” Jordan added, noting that “Facebook even considered ‘blackholing’ certain domains.”
“Facebook’s leadership relented in August and agreed to change the company’s content moderation policies because of the Biden Admin’s continued pressure,” Jordan wrote.
“And Facebook caved to the White House. Again,” Jordan wrote, linking to a CNN article headlined, “Facebook takes action against ‘disinformation dozen’ after White House pressure,” that was published on Aug. 18, 2021.
“These subpoenaed documents continue to reveal the Biden administration’s efforts to censor speech,” Jordan wrote before concluding the thread with, “To be continued…”
The second batch of “Facebook Files” came after Jordan shared what he called “smoking-gun documents” proving Facebook censored Americans on behalf of the Biden administration on Thursday.
The House Judiciary Committee Chairman told host Laura Ingraham on Thursday that both he and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced the Free Speech Protection Act that would penalize employees who censor speech.
“If you’re in the government and you’re doing what was happening there [at Facebook], you get fired. You don’t get your pension benefits. There can be civil liability that you’re subject to. You lose any security clearance you may have,” he said. “We want real penalties for people in the government engaging what Professor [Jonathan] Turley called this censorship by surrogate, this coercion, this pressure from government on private companies to censor speech.”
Fox News’ Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.
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