Freshman Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) on March 30 accused President Joe Biden’s administration of running “the largest censorship operation in recent American history” by its dealings with social media platforms.
“The Biden administration has led the largest speech censorship operation in recent American history,” Schmitt said in testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
“Since taking office, President Biden and his team have labored to suppress viewpoints with which they disagree. And in so doing, they have infringed upon the individual freedoms of millions of Americans.”
After taking control of Twitter, billionaire Elon Musk released several files, dubbed the Twitter files, which proved past collusion between the federal government and Big Tech.
As the former attorney general of Missouri, Schmitt led the effort in Missouri v. Biden, which sought to demonstrate that top officials in the federal government colluded with Big Tech social media companies to violate Americans’ First Amendment rights.
During discovery for the case, which Schmitt called “the most important free speech lawsuit of this generation,” Schmitt and his colleagues—Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and D. John Sauer, former Missouri deputy attorney general for special litigation—discovered further evidence of collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech.
‘Censorship on a Scale Never Before Seen’
Speaking to the panel about Missouri v. Biden, he said the administration had engaged in “censorship of truthful information on a scale never before seen.”“Discovery obtained by Missouri and Louisiana demonstrated that the Biden administration’s coordination with social media companies and collusion with nongovernmental organizations to censor speech was far more pervasive and destructive than ever known,” Schmitt said.
Findings in the case proved that Biden sought to suppress stories that later turned out to be true, including the Hunter Biden laptop story, the COVID-19 lab leak theory, and the efficacy of masks.
Schmitt cited several communications from the White House to social media platforms.
“Please remove this account immediately,” one said.
“We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy—period. ... We want to know that you’re trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game with us when we ask you what is going on. This would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us,” said another.
“To recap ... we remain concerned that YouTube is ‘funneling’ people into hesitance and intensifying people’s hesitancy. ... We want to be sure that you have a handle on vaccine hesitancy generally and are working toward making the problem better. This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH, so we’d like to continue a good-faith dialogue about what is going on under the hood here.”
Another said, “Would you mind looking at this video and helping us with next steps to put a label or remove it?”
In his testimony, Schmitt said, “The social media companies are not innocent actors; they collude with the federal government to censor posts and block truthful information, and they advance censorship at the federal government’s direction, through rigged ‘fact-checking’ ruses, and under pressure from radical external and internal forces.”
Schmitt said that to enforce his demands, Biden has often threatened social media companies with legal action for noncompliance.
“On multiple occasions, Biden and his team have threatened to punish social media companies that did not sufficiently censor Biden’s political opposition by revoking Section 230,” Schmitt said.
Section 230 is a controversial section of the Internet Communications Decency Act of 1996, a 30-year-old bill crafted long before social media’s advent. The section provides social media platforms and forums protection from legal liability for the content posted on their site by users.
Republicans have called for a carve-out of the section on the basis of political bias against conservatives. In contrast, Democrats have called for a carve-out on the basis of social media platforms not doing enough to combat “misinformation.”
