John Solomon – House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer alleged Wednesday that Big Tech giants are “under the control of people who are hostile to the fundamental American principles of free speech” and who have colluded with federal agencies to censor stories embarrassing to President Joe Biden and his family.
“We owe it to the American people to provide answers about this collusion to censor information about Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s business schemes,” Comer said in a statement prepared to be delivered at a committee hearing on censorship in America where executives from Twitter were set to be questioned. Just the News obtained excerpts of Comer’s opening statement.
Comer said his investigators had substantiated that there was “coordination between the federal government and Big Tech to restrict protected speech and interfere in the democratic process” that began even before Twitter famously censored New York Post stories in October 2020 about the contents of Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop.
“In the months leading up to the laptop story, the FBI advised senior Twitter executives to question the validity of any Hunter Biden story,” he said. “We also know that one of the witnesses before us today participated in an Aspen Institute exercise in September 2020 on a potential ‘hack and dump’ operation relating to Hunter Biden. Other Big Tech companies and reporters attended as well.
“This exercise prepared them for their future collusion to suppress and delegitimize information contained in Hunter Biden’s laptop about the Biden family’s business schemes.”
Such censorship in the midst of a presidential election might in earlier generations have been unthinkable. But Comer said it was made possible by troubling biases in the leadership of Big Tech companies.
“Many social media platforms are under the control of people who are hostile to the fundamental American principles of free speech and expression protected in the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “We’ve witnessed Big Tech autocrats wield their unchecked power to suppress the speech of Americans to promote their preferred political opinions. Twitter was once one of these platforms — until Elon Musk purchased the company a few months ago …
“In the past, Twitter’s employees made censorship decisions on the fly, often not following the company’s own publicly stated policies. It worked hand-in-hand with the FBI to monitor the protected speech of Americans — receiving millions of dollars to do so.”
Comer said it was troubling that Twitter was “a private company the federal government used to accomplish what it constitutionally cannot: limit the free exercise of speech.”
SF Source Just the News Feb 2023