The Biden administration pressured Facebook to censor posts about COVID-19, and one White House official was “outraged” when a post was not taken down, according to documents published by Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.
Jordan published documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee on Thursday. One email reportedly showed a Facebook employee telling CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg that the company was “facing continued pressure” from the Biden White House to remove content questioning the COVID-19 vaccine.
In April 2021, a Facebook employee circulated an email for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, writing: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House” to remove posts. pic.twitter.com/iDRV3Kk2oO
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
Another email showed Facebook’s president for global affairs, Nick Clegg, telling his team that a senior adviser to President Joe Biden was “outraged” that Facebook didn’t delete a meme about COVID, according to the documents.
In another April 2021 email, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president for global affairs, informed his team at Facebook that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor to President Biden, was “outraged . . . that [Facebook] did not remove” a particular post. pic.twitter.com/5muflAQjcx
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
What did the Biden White House want removed?
A meme.
That’s right, even memes weren’t spared from the Biden White House’s censorship efforts. pic.twitter.com/6BhDxTHsUi
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) July 27, 2023
Clegg allegedly told Slavitt that removing the post “would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US,” but the Biden adviser countered that the post should be taken down because it inhibited “confidence in Covid vaccines.” (RELATED: Facebook Suppressed Tucker Carlson Video That Did Not Violate Content Policy After White House Demanded It, Judge Says)
Facebook’s VP of public policy, Brian Rice, then said in an email that the exchange with Slavitt was “very much like a crossroads for us with the [Biden] White House in these early days,” per the documents.
A Facebook employee consequently emailed, “given what is at stake here, it would also be a good idea if we could regroup and take stock of where we are in our relations with the [White House], and our internal methods too,” according to the documents.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki about the White House’s efforts to take down posts in 2021.
“Is there any concern that the things you are trying to block or have taken down turn out to be accurate?” Doocy asked.
“We don’t take anything down, we don’t block anything,” Psaki responded. “Facebook and any private sector company makes decisions about what information should be on their platform.”
President Joe Biden also denounced so-called misinformation in July of 2021, accusing vaccine skeptics of “killing people.”
The White House and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, did not immediately respond to inquiries from the Daily Caller.