House Judiciary Committee Requests Interviews with Former Twitter and DHS Officials

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) holds a hearing on oversight of the Federal Trade Commission in Washington on July 13, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Former Twitter and former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials received letters from the House Judiciary Committee requesting transcribed interviews.

The Twitter Trust and Safety Head Yoel Roth and Yoel Roth and former DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs were sent letters on Aug. 18 from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) requesting the interviews for the committee’s censorship investigations.

The letters are the latest part of an ongoing investigation by Mr. Jordan’s committee to discover whether the government worked with private companies, specifically in the technology field, to censor content such as the New York Post’s reporting about first son Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The committee has sent letters to a number of agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to solicit testimony about alleged censorship.

From the Letters

In the letter (pdf) to Mr. Roth, the committee stated that members believe the recipient is “uniquely positioned to aid the Committee’s oversight, as you served as Twitter’s Head of Trust & Safety until 2022.

“The Committee’s investigation, along with other public reporting, and publicized discovery in an ongoing federal court case, Missouri v. Biden, have exposed how 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. As has been well-documented, during your tenure as Head of Trust & Safety, you met with various federal agencies on numerous occasions regarding issues that are relevant to the Committee’s investigation.”

In the letter (pdf) sent to Mr. Krebs, the committee stated that they hoped to ascertain “to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.

“We believe that you are uniquely positioned to aid the Committee’s oversight, as you served as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which, under your leadership, participated in efforts to unconstitutionally monitor and censor Americans’ speech on social media platforms.”

In their previous letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray (pdf) and Attorney General Merrick Garland (pdf) dated Aug. 17, the committee chairman requested documentation regarding their investigation. The lawmaker asked the departments to hand over the internal communications and documents relating to moderation, removal, or suppression of content on social media platforms, giving a Sept. 18 deadline.

“Numerous documents that have been made publicly available reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online directly and by proxy,” the letters read. “It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which DOJ officials have coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech. The scope of the Committee’s investigation includes understanding the extent and nature of DOJ’s involvement in this censorship.”

Other Judiciary Committee Investigations

Mr. Jordan’s committee has engaged in a number of investigations into the DOJ and other law enforcement agencies, including questioning special counsel John Durham on his report on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation arising from the 2016 presidential campaign.

In June of this year, the committee chairman questioned whether Americans’ constitutional liberties were being violated by the government via depriving whistleblowers of their pay and positions.

“Seven years of attacking Trump is scary enough, but what’s more frightening is any one of us could be next. In fact, it’s already started. Parents at school board meetings are terrorists; pro-life Catholics are extremists, and even journalists aren’t safe,” Jordan warned in his opening statement to the committee during the June 21 hearing to question Durham.

The committee is also probing the FBI’s probable “retaliation” surveillance of Republican staffers. A July 13 letter to Mr. Wray questioned whether the FBI acted in retaliation when it spied on two Republican staffers while lawmakers were investigating the bureau for possible misconduct regarding the now disproven Trump–Russia collusion narrative.