Republicans SUBPOENA two former White House officials – including a top Biden campaign aide – in probe into censoring of ‘misinformation’ during COVID: New report also claims collusion with YouTube

By James On Nov 30, 2023

Republicans bring in two former White House officials to talk about social media censorship.

Robert Flaherty, the former White House digital strategist and now Biden’s deputy campaign manager, and Andrew Slavitt, the former senior adviser to the Biden administration’s pandemic response team, have been hit with subpoenas by House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan.

Flaherty is at the center of a case in which the Biden administration is accused of pressuring social media companies to remove posts they consider “misinformation.”

In September, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the White House, the Surgeon General, the CDC and the FBI cannot “force” social media platforms to remove posts the government doesn’t like.

Republicans bring in two former White House officials to talk about social media censorship

The advisory noted that, since at least early 2021, “a group of federal officials have been in regular contact with virtually every major U.S. social media company about the spread of ‘misinformation’ on their platforms.”

Those platforms included Facebook, Twitter (now known as X), YouTube and Google, which were peppered with government requests to remove content, the judges found.

At one point, a White House official told an unnamed platform to remove a post “as soon as possible” and instructed it to “keep an eye on tweets that fall into the same genre,” according to the submission.

Topics covered in the lawsuit included COVID-19 vaccines, the Wuhan lab leak theory, the FBI’s handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop and allegations of election fraud.

But last month, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have hampered the Biden administration’s ability to communicate with social media companies.

She agreed to fully honor the government’s call at some point during her term.

Jordan requested that Flaherty and Slavitt appear this summer, but they declined. Now the weight of a subpoena puts further pressure on the couple to comply.

In his letter, the chairman said he felt Flaherty and Slavitt had played a “central role” in communicating the Biden White House’s censorship efforts to social media companies, “including the White House’s demands for real information, memes, censor satire and other constitutionally protected information. forms of expression.’

The subpoenas were dropped a year after the so-called “Twitter Files” were released, revealing the companies’ censorship policies before Elon Musk’s takeover.

That prompted a congressional hearing, during which Jordan brought in Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, two who were given access to the files. Taibbi is testifying again Thursday at a second censure hearing.

“To develop effective legislation, such as the possible introduction of new legal restrictions on the executive branch’s ability to work with social media platforms and other companies to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the commission must first understand the nature of this conspiracy and coercion,” the letters to Flaherty and Slavitt read.

Documents obtained by the Judiciary Committee showed that Flaherty worked closely with Google-owned YouTube in removing information that could cause vaccine skepticism.

Flaherty wrote in an email: first obtained by Fox Businesstold Google team members in April 2021 that he wanted to “connect … about the work you’re doing to combat vaccine hesitancy, but also to crack down on vaccine misinformation.”

Flaherty asked the site about Covid misinformation trends and offered to have White House-endorsed Covid experts work with YouTube to create content.

Google noted after meeting with Flaherty that he was “particularly engrossed in our decision-making around borderline content,” meaning content that doesn’t violate community guidelines but goes against the grain.