Speaking with Charlie Kirk on Tuesday House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan spoke on the latest revelations from the Facebook Files about the government’s efforts to censor speech on the platform.
"In the big picture, the government was coercing, pressuring big tech to censor speech, and the folks at Facebook knew it, one of the executives even said that this is encroaching on the boundaries of free expression," said Jordan.
"But they did it because they wanted to keep a cozy relationship with the Biden administration."
Jordan said that one of the requests from the administration was for Facebook to change its algorithm to promote more New York Times stories and suppress stories from conservative outlets like the Daily Wire.
"The government trying to tell a private company, change your algorithm so that we can get the news that the state, that the government approves of, not news that may be contradicting or criticizing the positions of the Biden administration is an unbelievable attack on the First Amendment."
Speaking on how the committee got the internal documents from Facebook, Jordan noted that they wanted the same type of information that Twitter had provided under Elon Musk’s ownership, but Facebook was refusing to hand it over.
"Finally we said, 'okay, if you’re not going to turn it over, we’re going to hold you in contempt.' And them shazam, they decided to give us the documents."
Referencing the most recent release regarding FBI special agent Elvis Chan, Jordan said that Chan "may have not been completely straightforward" during a deposition in October of 2022, claiming that the FBI did not communicate with Facebook about the Hunter Biden laptop story except for once on the day the story broke.
"It turned out he had another communication the next day, and in that communication, he talks about the fact that he was up to speed on the FBI investigation, and they had no evidence, this is key, no evidence that the Biden laptop story was a Russia information operation."
Kirk asked how willing of a participant Facebook was in these efforts, noting that "based on everything I’ve seen and public reports, Facebook was almost forced by the federal government to do this, and/or threatened."
Jordan said that many Facebook employees lean to the left and were probably "willing to go along with it," but "there was certainly this pressure campaign put on them."
Chan, Jordan said, had spoken about weekly meetings that the FBI had with big tech companies where "they were told to be on the lookout for a hack and leak operation in October that would likely involve Hunter Biden, so they prepped them for what’s coming."
"And it’s like, how does the FBI know this was going to happen? Well, of course they knew because they had the laptop for a year prior to that. So they prepped them all along. Then when it becomes public, they know it’s not Russian information operation, they know it’s not a Russian operation, but when they’re asked directly by Twitter and by Facebook, the FBI says no comment."
"That is how — you talk about impacting an election — that’s certainly it."
Jordan said the "sunshine" that’s come out of this is that "someone who believes in the First Amendment" now owns Twitter, and the IRS announced that they would no longer be sending agents to American’s doors unannounced.
"I think the only reason they made that change is because what we uncovered with them knocking on Matt Taibbi’s door at the very moment he was testifying in front of our committee about this whole censorship operation."
Jordan said the committee was also working with Senator Rand Paul on legislation that would create consequences for those found to be censoring American speech.
