House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Friday the top officials at three government agencies for documents related to allegations that the federal government “coerced and colluded with” companies to censor free speech.
Jordan directed the subpoenas, reviewed by Breitbart News, to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, and the Global Engagement Center’s (GEC) James Rubin.
The officials work within the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and State, respectively.
Three cover letters attached to the subpoenas all had similar language pointing to the Twitter Files and media reports as evidence that the federal government has “pressured and colluded with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor certain viewpoints on social and other media in ways that undermine First Amendment principles.”
Read copies of the letters here, here, and here.
“Numerous documents made publicly available reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online directly and by proxy,” Jordan wrote. “It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which [CDC, CISA, and GEC] coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies in order to censor speech.”
The chairman referenced letters he sent to Walensky, Easterly, and Rubin last month seeking relevant documents and communications, stating that compliance from the three officials has thus far been “inadequate.”
The three agencies were the subjects of a free speech lawsuit, filed last year by two Republican attorneys general against the Biden administration, that argued the government, including the CDC, CISA, and GEC, violated the First Amendment through coordinating with big tech companies to censor free speech.
The CDC, as the attorneys general laid out, communicated with Twitter, Facebook, and other entities to moderate content on the platforms related to COVID-19, which worked to quash dissenting viewpoints and concerns about the disease.
CISA, they said, had been the “‘nerve center’ of federal censorship efforts” and had served as a “switchboard” for big tech companies by “routing disinformation concerns” to them for censorship, particularly on election integrity-related matters.
In terms of the GEC, which Twitter CEO Elon Musk calls “the worst offender in US government censorship,” the Twitter Files revealed extensive coordination between the agency and Twitter that served to dismiss a substantial amount of COVID-19-related speech as a product of Russian disinformation campaigns.
They are a threat to our democracy
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2023
The subpoenas require the officials at the three agencies to return the requested documents and communications to the committee by May 22.
Write to Ashley Oliver at aoliver@breitbart.com. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.