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 to pressure digital platforms to censor the content, ahead of what is expected to be a landmark Supreme Court case focusing on his behavior.
Flaherty must appear for committee questions on Jan. 11, Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in the legally binding demand for testimony, which follows failed attempts to force the former administration official to testify in a state lawsuit brought by Missouri and Louisiana, which the Supreme Court will consider in its next term.
“The Committee has obtained documents demonstrating the central role you played in communicating the Biden White House’s censorship efforts to social media companies, including the White House’s demands to censor factual information, memes, satire, and other constitutionally protected forms of expression,” Jordan said. she wrote to Flaherty, who left the White House in June to take a position on Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign.
“His testimony will inform the Committee’s legislative reforms aimed at preventing the Executive Branch from exercising its immense power to pressure social media platforms to censor unfavorable views,” Jordan wrote.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed President Biden’s former White House digital strategy director Rob Flaherty on Thursday. AP
The pending Supreme Court case, for which oral arguments have not yet been scheduled, comes after a lower court ruling that restricts the government’s ability to pressure companies to suppress unfavorable speech. That ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Republican state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who argued that the Biden administration was violating Americans’ First Amendment free speech rights.
The lawsuit revealed a trove of documents showing that Flaherty and his team relied on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, particularly to limit the spread of alleged misinformation about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.
However, attempts to force Flaherty’s testimony in the case, as well as the appearance of former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who proclaimed in July 2021 that Biden’s advisers were “flagging” content for her elimination, they were unsuccessful.
Louisiana U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction on July 4 prohibiting federal officials from pressuring companies to remove constitutionally protected speech.
Many details about Flaherty’s actions remain unclear.
For example, Jordan on Thursday morning released emails acquired by the Judiciary Committee showing that Flaherty also leaned on Google-owned YouTube, but those emails only vaguely refer to White House pressure on White House officials. the company, such as an internal message from April 2021 noting that “the White House is very interested in our work on borderline content” without specifically describing that content.
Jordan also issued a subpoena to former White House COVID-19 coordinator Andy Slavitt, who will be ordered to testify on January 9.
Flaherty must appear for committee questions on Jan. 11, Jordan (R-Ohio) wrote in the legally binding demand for testimony, which follows failed attempts to force the former administration official to testify in a state lawsuit brought by Missouri and Louisiana. Rob Flaherty/Twitter
White House spokesman Ian Sams called the subpoenas “baseless” and a “political stunt” but did not say how or whether the executive branch would try to resist the demands.
“Once again, extremist House Republicans are issuing baseless subpoenas just to please their far-right base with positions far removed from the mainstream,” Sams said.
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“The Biden Administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health and safety when faced with challenges such as a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections,” he added.
“Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a fundamental responsibility to take into account the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but they make independent decisions about the information they present.”
A lawyer for Flaherty did not immediately respond to a request for comment and Slavitt could not immediately be reached for comment.
Federal efforts to lean on companies to silence online speech predate Biden’s presidency and intensified after hackers linked to the Russian government allegedly obtained and published the emails of prominent Democrats during the 2016 election campaign.
Opponents of censorship point out that content that was once restricted often ends up gaining widespread acceptance, such as the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese lab that was conducting risky research, which Facebook censored until May 2021, but that is now the official opinion of the community. FBI and other sections of the United States government.
In another case, Facebook and Twitter censored the Post’s October 2020 report on documents from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop that showed then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was involved in his son’s overseas business relationships, a despite stating the opposite.
YouTube removed an exclusive Post interview with Capitol rioter Aaron Mostofsky. New York Post
The Post’s reporting was suppressed after the FBI, which had seized Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, claimed there may have been a “hack and leak” operation involving Biden’s son.
Other cases of censorship have removed primary source material about important events in American history.
YouTube, for example, removed a video interview The Post conducted inside the Capitol with a New Yorker who broke into 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 included the censorship on its front page.
Still, YouTube removed other primary source material from the unprecedented chaos, including footage released by the House select committee investigating the riot.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn