[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                  HEARING ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE
                           FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

   SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION
                               __________

                      THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2023
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-54
                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
                  [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]         


               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov

                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                    
54-237                    WASHINGTON : 2024                  


                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             JERROLD NADLER, New York, Ranking 
KEN BUCK, Colorado                       Member
MATT GAETZ, Florida                  ZOE LOFGREN, California
MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana              SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
TOM McCLINTOCK, California           HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin                   Georgia
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ADAM SCHIFF, California
CHIP ROY, Texas                      ERIC SWALWELL, California
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           TED LIEU, California
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana             PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin          J. LUIS CORREA, California
CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon                  MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        LUCY McBATH, Georgia
LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey            VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
TROY NEHLS, Texas                    DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 CORI BUSH, Missouri
KEVIN KILEY, California              GLENN IVEY, Maryland
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             BECCA BALINT, Vermont
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas
LAUREL LEE, Florida
WESLEY HUNT, Texas
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina

                                 ------                                

            SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE
                           FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             STACEY PLASKETT, Virgin Islands, 
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky                  Ranking Member
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York          STEPHEN LYNCH, Massachusetts
MATT GAETZ, Florida                  LINDA SANCHEZ, California
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida           GERRY CONNOLLY, Virginia
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           JOHN GARAMENDI, California
KAT CAMMACK, Florida                 COLIN ALLRED, Texas
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
Vacant                               DAN GOLDMAN, New York
Vacant                                 

               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
              CAROLINE NABITY, Chief Counsel for Oversight
          AMY RUTKIN, Minority Staff Director & Chief of Staff
           CHRISTINA CALCE, Minority Chief Oversight Counsel
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                      Thursday, November 30, 2023

                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

The Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Select Subcommittee on the 
  Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of Ohio.     1
The Honorable Stacey Plaskett, Ranking Member of the Select 
  Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government 
  from the Virgin Islands........................................     3

                               WITNESSES

Michael Shellenberger, Twitter Files Journalist, Author, 
  Environmentalist
  Oral Testimony.................................................     6
  Prepared Testimony.............................................     9
Matt Taibbi, Twitter Files Journalist, Author
  Oral Testimony.................................................    98
  Prepared Testimony.............................................   100
Rupa Subramanya, Canada-Based Journalist, The Free Press
  Oral Testimony.................................................   102
  Prepared Testimony.............................................   105
Olivia Troye, Former Homeland Security & Counterterrorism 
  Advisor, Office of Vice President Pence
  Oral Testimony.................................................   111
  Prepared Testimony.............................................   113

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

All materials submitted for the record by the Select Subcommittee 
  on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are listed below   151

Letter to the Linda Yaccarino, Chief Executive Officer, and Elon 
  Musk, Owner, Chief Technology Officer, X, Inc., Nov. 21, 2023, 
  from multiple Members of Congress, submitted by the Honorable 
  Dan Goldman, a Member of the Select Subcommittee on the 
  Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of New 
  York, for the record
An article entitled, ``CTIL Files #1: US And UK Military 
  Contractors Created Sweeping Plan For Global Censorship In 
  2018, New Documents Show,'' Nov. 28, 2023, submitted by the 
  Honorable Thomas Massie, a Member of the Select Subcommittee on 
  the Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of 
  Kentucky, for the record
An article entitled, ``FBI and DHS Directors Mislead Congress 
  About Censorship,'' Nov. 2, 2023, SubStack, submitted by the 
  Honorable W. Gregory Steube, a Member of the Select 
  Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government 
  from the State of Florida, for the record
An article entitled, ``U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocks 
  order in Missouri social media lawsuit,'' Oct. 20, 2023, 
  Missouri Independent, submitted by the Honorable Sylvia Garcia, 
  a Member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the 
  Federal Government from the State of Texas, for the record

 
                  HEARING ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE
                           FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

                              ----------                              


                      Thursday, November 30, 2023

                        House of Representatives

   Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in 
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Hon. Jim Jordan 
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Jordan, Issa, Massie, Stefanik, 
Armstrong, Steube, Bishop, Cammack, Hageman, Plaskett, Lynch, 
Wasserman Schultz, Connolly, Garamendi, Allred, Garcia, and 
Goldman.
    Chair Jordan. The Subcommittee will come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a 
recess at any time.
    We welcome everyone to today's ``Hearing on The 
Weaponization of the Federal Government.''
    We welcome our witnesses, and we'll introduce you here in a 
second and swear you in.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky to 
lead us all in the pledge. So, if you'll all stand.
    All. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States 
of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one 
Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for 
all.
    Chair Jordan. We appreciate the enthusiasm.
    We will now begin today's hearing with opening statements. 
We'll start with the Chair.
    One of the most egregious forms of the weaponization that 
this Subcommittee has worked to expose is the coercion of 
social media companies by the Federal Government.
    We wouldn't know anything that we know today, we wouldn't 
have learned and had the reports we've had without the work of 
Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and other 
journalists who wrote the Twitter Files and first exposed these 
efforts.
    Their important work was first made possible because of 
Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and his commitment to free 
speech.
    The path for getting this information out has not been 
easy. Finding the truth never is. Instead, we were obstructed 
at almost every turn. Many of the people who sought to help us 
expose the ``censorship industrial complex,'' as Mr. Taibbi and 
Mr. Shellen-berger have, I think appropriately labeled it, have 
been targeted.
    On December 10, 2022, after the first Twitter Files came 
out, Mr. Musk tweeted, quote, that ``Twitter is both a social 
media company and a crime scene.''
    Three days later, the Federal Trade Commission sent Elon 
Musk a letter demanding to know the identity of the Twitter 
Files' authors and inundated the company with harassing 
requests for information--literally three days after. Naming 
four journalists by name.
    While Twitter put this information out voluntarily, the 
other platforms were not as forthcoming. Instead, we had to 
subpoena them in February of this year, fought with them for 
months, had to threaten contempt, before getting substantive 
information about government's efforts to censor the American 
people.
    When we first had Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger testify 
back in March, an IRS agent showed up at Matt Taibbi's door.
    I mean, think about this. I have told this story numerous 
times, and there's not one person I've told this story to, not 
one group I've spoken to where I say, while they are 
testifying, while Mr. Taibbi is testifying in front of the 
Committee about the weaponization of government, the IRS was 
actually, at that very moment, knocking on his door, there's 
not one person who thinks that was just chance, that just 
happened to be all a coincidence. Not one person believes--
everyone understands that to be the intimidation from our 
Federal Government.
    Now, the good news is, this led to a sweeping investigation 
of the IRS's home visits. The best news is, the IRS has said 
they will no longer be making unannounced visits to American 
citizens' homes.
    It's interesting, the Commissioner actually said, ``We are 
doing this for the security of our agents.'' Baloney. They're 
doing it because we caught them, and we made an issue of it and 
the American people understand that this is wrong.
    This Subcommittee's work has also included putting out 
reports showing how CISA went from a cybersecurity agency into 
the disinformation police and how the FBI coordinated with a 
compromised Ukrainian intelligence agency--that actually 
happened--to censor Americans.
    We were also able to expose how the other platforms were 
pressured to change their behavior--documents we obtained from 
Facebook--so that the company felt threatened by the White 
House directly and changed its behavior for fear of 
retribution.
    Just this morning, we released information showing the same 
thing happened with YouTube.
    While we have more information forthcoming, it's impossible 
to get a full accounting of the government's censorship efforts 
when the government actors involved will not participate with 
our constitutional duty to do oversight.
    That's why, today, we are serving subpoenas to former White 
House employees Rob Flaherty and Andy Slavitt, who have so far 
refused to sit for interviews despite being directly implicated 
in emails between the White House and tech companies. I think 
we may have brought this out in the previous hearing with some 
of our witnesses today.
    Never forget, the third day of the Biden Administration--I 
think it was maybe 36 hours into it--Andy Slavitt sends an 
email from the White House to Twitter saying, ``Take down this 
tweet ASAP.'' Of course, the irony was the tweet was about--the 
tweet was from this administration's Democrat primary opponent, 
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. There was nothing in the tweet that was 
false. Yet, the White House, day three of the Biden 
Administration is trying to take that down.
    So, we have since subpoenaed those two individuals and hope 
that we will have them in front of our Committee real soon.
    I want to thank our witnesses for appearing before us today 
and helping us to continue our work in exposing government 
censorship, in exposing what two of our witnesses have called, 
as I said earlier, the ``censorship industrial complex''--this 
marriage of big government, big tech, and, as we found out with 
some of our work, big academia involved in attacking American 
citizens' First Amendment liberties.
    We appreciate all of you for being here. We will introduce 
you here in a few minutes, but I now yield to the Ranking 
Member for an opening statement.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    First, may I ask unanimous consent that the gentlewoman 
from Pennsylvania, Ms. Dean, a Member of the Full Committee, be 
permitted to sit on the dais?
    Chair Jordan. Yes.
    Ms. Plaskett. She's not going to ask any questions.
    Chair Jordan. Without objection.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you very much.
    Good day to everyone.
    Every day, the American people share with Members of 
Congress, social media, friends, family, and anyone who will 
listen that they live largely in fear for their future. When I 
scroll through my social media feeds, I see people worried they 
don't have job opportunities or job security the generation 
before them had; worried they don't have time, resources, or 
support to take care of sick parents or disabled relatives; 
worried they won't be able to afford to buy a home to call 
their own; worried they will not be able to see their kids send 
their children to college or simply provide for their children 
the way they were provided for.
    I see Americans are concerned; I see parents concerned that 
schools are becoming unsafe for their children. I see Americans 
are concerned that rights are being taken away, Americans 
concerned that their vote might be discounted or may not even 
be able to cast a vote.
    In the discussion of the weaponization of the Federal 
Government, the majority has acknowledged the fact--in this 
discussion of the weaponization of government--I'm sorry--one 
of the things that I've requested that we look into is the IRS 
audits of working-class people and people of color, which are 
far, far at a higher rate than millionaires and billionaires, 
or a discussion in a hearing of actions by the former President 
Donald Trump and what he has said he will do to weaponize our 
government if reelected.
    However, we're not having a hearing about those topics. 
We're not having discussions. Congress is not engaged in making 
any headway on those things that Americans are most concerned 
with.
    Today, we're having a hearing with witnesses on the 
Republican side, two of whom we've already heard from. In fact, 
this is the second hearing where Republicans have brought out 
repeat witnesses--the second hearing in a row.
    In preparation for the 2024 Presidential election, 
Republicans on this Committee want to entrench their theory of 
social media censorship--their unfounded accusation that social 
media companies are colluding with the government to censor 
conservative voices.
    There's no evidence of this collusion. In fact, this 
Committee has heard closed-door testimony from 29 witnesses who 
have said on the record--government as well as social media 
individuals--that the alleged collusion and supposed censorship 
claimed by the Committee Republicans has not taken place.
    Republicans won't release that testimony, and they are not 
being honest with the American people, because, as they ramp up 
their own misinformation campaign before the 2024 election, 
they need free rein to elevate hate, to engage in voter 
suppression online, in addition to their normal in-person 
voter-suppression tactics.
    This hearing suits political purposes. Republicans are 
holding the same hearing all over again for one simple reason: 
They want to distract from the actual threat of the 
weaponization of government on the American people--that is, 
Donald Trump.
    In the past few months, Trump has said that he would 
reinstate the Muslim travel ban. In fact, his exact words were,

        When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even 
        bigger than before and stronger than before.

He has vowed to use the Department of Justice to investigate 
his political enemies. He has said that those who oppose him 
should be executed for treason. He has called his political 
opponents ``cockroaches,'' ``vermin,'' said that immigrants are 
``poisoning'' American society. He has promised to use the 
Insurrection Act to mobilize the military against any 
protesters who speak out against him if he wins reelection.
    Those do not resonate as plans of a democratic leader. They 
sound like dictators. They promise to be one who will silence 
his enemies and hold onto power at any cost.
    As the first branch of government, it is our job to be a 
check on that kind of undemocratic, unstable rhetoric in this 
Republic. Donald Trump's statements are outrageous, and this 
Committee and every Member that serves on it should be outraged 
by them. Every American should be outraged at this Committee by 
not having hearings on that.
    Many want to shield a man who, as many experts have 
identified, is spouting rhetoric cribbed from Nazi regime, 
calling his enemies ``cockroaches'' and ``vermin,'' saying that 
those who oppose him are ``poisoning the blood'' of America, 
and even calling for the execution of people who simply speak 
out against him.
    For four years, this man implemented loyalty tests, called 
for violence against his opponents, pardoned his friends, tried 
to illegally keep people out of the country because of their 
religious beliefs. He shoved children in cages, tried to 
illegally deploy the United States military to put down 
peaceful Black Lives Matter protests and systematically 
dismantle the civil-rights protections afforded to all 
Americans.
    If he comes back, that will just be the start. That is why 
he has very clearly said what he would do over and over.
    Beyond loyalty tests, he plans to purge the government of 
all career officials and national security advisors who 
question him. He plans to indict anyone who runs against him. 
He plans to silence protesters with the use of military force. 
He plans to make this country his, not the American people's.
    These plans will not just impact those who work in 
government; his plans are going to undermine the safety of 
every American when he appoints national security officials 
because they are loyal to him, not because they understand 
national security. They're going to impact people in areas that 
need support if he feels that they didn't vote against him. 
These plans are going to hurt men and women bravely serving in 
our military and law enforcement, who are going to be forced to 
choose between carrying out fundamentally illegal, 
unconstitutional orders and losing their job.
    Today, we have Ms. Troye before us as a witness, who has 
bravely spoken out to tell the world how Trump's White House 
had a culture of fear, how he had dictator-like tweets and 
statements, how he incited his followers to violence, and how 
he orchestrated detailed plans to spin his conspiracies into 
action by his followers.
    She can say this with authority because she was there. She 
is a Republican who was in the Trump Administration. When she 
says he means what he says or that he will do everything in his 
power to make his dangerous promises come true, she speaks from 
experience.
    To use the words of the former United States Poet Laureate 
Dr. Maya Angelou, ``when people show you who they are, believe 
them the first time.''
    Ms. Troye, I want to apologize in advance for any attacks 
made against you today, which I'm sure will come, or 
afterwards. I want to thank you for your bravery, coming 
forward and testifying today and speaking truth at all times, 
to be worried more about America than you are about winning.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    Without objection, all other opening statements will be 
included in the record.
    Chair Jordan. We will now introduce today's witnesses.
    Mr. Matt Taibbi is a journalist and author. He is one of 
the authors of the Twitter Files. He previously worked for 
Rolling Stone. He also has written several books about American 
politics and culture. He won the Izzy Award for Independent 
Journalism in 2020 and the Dao Prize from the National 
Journalism Center for his work on the Twitter Files.
    Appreciate you being here today, Mr. Taibbi.
    Michael Shellenberger is also a journalist, author, and one 
of the authors of the Twitter Files. He has co-founded several 
nonprofits, including the Breakthrough Institute, Environmental 
Progress, and the California Peace Coalition. His work often 
focuses on crime and drug policy, homelessness, and the 
climate. Mr. Shellenberger has also won the Dao Prize and was 
named a ``Hero of the Environment'' by Time Magazine in 2008.
    We welcome Mr. Shellenberger as well.
    Ms. Rupa Subramanya--pretty close, I think--Ms. Subramanya 
is a journalist for The Free Press. She is based in Canada and 
has lived or worked in India, the Middle East, Europe, and 
Asia. His work has previously appeared in The Wall Street 
Journal and Foreign Policy, and she has been cited in the 
Financial Times and The New York Times.
    We welcome you as well.
    Ms. Olivia Troye, who the Ranking Member just mentioned and 
talked about, is a former national security official, having 
served at the Department of Homeland Security, in the 
intelligence community, and at the Department of Defense. She 
served as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to 
Vice President Mike Pence.
    We welcome you as well.
    We will now begin by swearing you in. Would you all please 
stand and raise your right hand?
    Do you swear or affirm, under penalty of perjury, that the 
testimony you're about to give is true and correct, to the best 
of your knowledge, information, and beliefs, so help you God?
    Let the record show that each of the witnesses has answered 
in the affirmative.
    You can be seated. Thank you.
    Please know that your written testimony will be entered 
into the record in its entirety. Accordingly, we ask that you 
summarize your testimony in five minutes, give or take. We'll 
be a little lenient, of course.
    The microphone in front of you has a clock and a series of 
lights, and you know how this works--red, green, and yellow. 
When it gets to yellow, start winding it down. When it gets to 
red, then you've got a a little extra time and then we'll stop. 
We'll be lenient with that.
    Let's start with Mr. Shellenberger, and let's--well--yes, 
let's start with Mr. Shellenberger, and we'll work right down 
the line.
    So, Mr. Shellenberger, you're recognized for five minutes.

               STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER

    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you very much.
    Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, and Members of the 
Subcommittee, thank you for inviting my testimony.
    Nine months ago, I testified and provided evidence to the 
Subcommittee about the existence of a censorship industrial 
complex--a network of government agencies, including the 
Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, and 
big tech media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary 
Americans and elected officials alike for holding disfavored 
views.
    I regret to inform the Subcommittee today that the scope, 
power, and law-breaking of the censorship industrial complex 
are even worse than we had realized back in March.
    Two days ago, my colleagues and I published the first batch 
of internal files from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, 
which show U.S. and U.K. military contractors working in 2019-
2020 to both censor and turn sophisticated psychological 
operations and disinformation tactics developed abroad against 
the American
people.
    Many insist that all that we identified in the Twitter 
Files, the Facebook Files, and the CTI files were legal 
activities by social media platforms to take down content that 
violated the terms of service. Facebook; X, formerly Twitter; 
and other big tech companies are privately owned, people point 
out, and free to censor content, and government officials are 
free to point out wrong information, they argue.
    The First Amendment prohibits the government from abridging 
freedom of speech. The Supreme Court has ruled that the 
government may not induce, encourage, or promote private 
persons to accomplish what is constitutionally forbidden to 
accomplish. There is now a large body of evidence proving that 
the government did precisely that.
    What's more, the whistleblower who delivered the CTIL files 
to us says that its leader, a quote, ``former British 
intelligence analyst was,'' quote, ``in the room'' at the Obama 
White House in 2017, when she received the instructions to 
create a counter-disinfor-mation project to, quote, ``stop a 
repeat of 2016.''
    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity 
and Information Security Agency, CISA, has been the center of 
gravity for much of the censorship, with the National Science 
Foundation financing the development of censorship and 
disinformation tools and other Federal Government agencies 
playing a supportive role.
    Emails from CISA's NGO and social media partners show that 
CISA created the Election Integrity Partnership, EIP, in 2020, 
which involved the Stanford Internet Observatory and other U.S. 
Government contractors.
    EIP and its successor, the Virality Project, urged Twitter, 
Facebook, and other platforms to censor social media posts by 
ordinary citizens and elected officials alike. EIP reported 
that they had a 75-percent response rate from the platforms and 
that 35 percent of the URLs that they reported were either 
removed, labeled, throttled, or soft-blocked.
    In 2020, the Department of Homeland Security's CISA 
violated the First Amendment and interfered in the election, 
while, in 2021, CISA and the White House violated the First 
Amendment and undermined America's response to the COVID 
pandemic by demanding that Facebook and Twitter censor content 
that Facebook itself said was, quote, ``often true,'' including 
about vaccine side effects.
    All of this is profoundly un-American. One's commitment to 
free speech means nothing if it does not extend to your 
political enemies.
    In his essential new book, ``Liar in a Crowded Theater,'' 
Jeff Kosseff, a law professor at the United States Naval 
Academy, shows that the widespread view that the government can 
censor false speech and/or speech that, quote, ``causes harm'' 
is mostly wrong. The Supreme Court has allowed very few 
constraints on speech. For example, the test of incitement to 
violence remains its immediacy.
    I encourage Congress to defund and dismantle the government 
organizations involved in censorship. That includes phasing out 
all funding for the National Science Foundation's Track F, 
Trust and Authenticity in Communication Systems, and its Secure 
and Trustworthy Cyberspace track. I would also encourage 
Congress to abolish CISA in DHS.
    Short of taking those steps, I would encourage significant 
guardrails and oversight to prevent such censorship from 
happening again.
    In particular, it's very easy to see the line in CISA. They 
say they're covering physical security, cybersecurity, but they 
added a third one, cognitive security, which is basically 
attempting to control the information environment and how 
people think about the world, including the stories that they 
tell.
    Finally, I would encourage Congress to consider making 
Section 230 liability protections contingent upon social media 
platforms, known in the law as ``interactive computer 
services,'' to allow adult users to moderate our own legal 
content through filters that we choose and whose algorithms are 
transparent to all of us.
    I would encourage Congress to prohibit government officials 
from asking the platforms to remove content, which the Supreme 
Court may or may not rule unconstitutional next year when it 
decides on the Missouri v. Biden case.
    Should the court somehow decide that the government 
requests for censorship were Constitutional, then I would urge 
Congress to require such requests be reported publicly, 
instantaneously, so that such censorship demands occur in plain 
sight.
    Thank you very much for hearing my testimony.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Shellenberger follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Shellenberger.
    Mr. Taibbi, you're recognized for five minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF MATT TAIBBI

    Mr. Taibbi. Thank you very much.
    Chair Jordan. Make sure you've got the mike on there.
    Mr. Taibbi. Thank you, Chair Jordan--
    Chair Jordan. Hit the mike there, if you could. Just hit 
the button there. There we go.
    Mr. Taibbi. All right. Sorry about that.
    Thank you, Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, and 
Members of the Committee, for giving us the opportunity to 
speak today.
    Exactly one year ago today, I had my first look at the 
documents that came to be known as the Twitter Files. We've 
learned a lot since then.
    When Michael and I testified before the good people of this 
Committee in March, we both talked about how this isn't a 
partisan issue at all. Despite the fact that it's been 
repeatedly described as a right-wing conspiracy theory or a 
right-wing fantasy, we found evidence of suppression of 
movements on both sides, including leftist movements like the 
Yellow Vests, parties like the Green Party, organizations like 
Consortium Magazine.
    Just this week, Michael and I reported on the group that he 
talked about, the CTI League. In those documents, we found 
evidence of monitoring groups like the Democratic Socialists of 
America, hashtags ``#healthcareforall.''
    The nature of censorship programs is that they tend to 
expand in all directions, and these programs already have.
    As someone who voted for Democrats his whole life and who 
got his ideas about speech issues from people like Senator 
Frank Church, Paul Wellstone, and Dennis Kucinich, I believe 
also that there's a less obvious but more important reason that 
people across the spectrum should care about this issue. The 
former Executive Director of the ACLU, Ira Glasser, once 
explained to a group of students why he didn't support hate-
speech codes on campuses. The problem, he said, ``wasn't the 
speech.'' The problem was, quote, ``who gets to decide what's 
hateful,'' who gets to decide what to ban, because, quote, 
``most of the time, it ain't you.''
    The story that came out in the Twitter Files and for which 
more evidence surfaced in both the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit 
and this Committee's Facebook Files releases and in the CTI 
League documents--they all speak directly to Ira Glasser's 
concerns.
    There's been a dramatic shift in attitudes about speech in 
this country, and many politicians now clearly believe the bulk 
of Americans can't be trusted to digest information on their 
own. This mindset imagines that if we see one clip from RT, 
we'll stop being patriots; that once exposed to hate speech, 
we'll become bigots ourselves automatically; that if we read 
even one Donald Trump tweet, we'll become insurrectionists.
    Having come to this conclusion, the government agencies 
like the DHS and the FBI and the quasi-private agencies who do 
anti-disinformation work have taken on themselves the 
paternalistic responsibility to sort out for us what is and is 
not safe. While they see great danger in allowing others to 
read controversial material, it's taken for granted that they 
themselves will be immune to the dangers of speech.
    This leads to the one inescapable question about these new 
anti-disinformation programs that is never discussed but needs 
to be: Who does this work?
    Stanford's Election Integrity Project helpfully made a 
graphic showing the, quote, ``external stakeholders'' involved 
in their content-review operation. It showed four columns: 
Government, civil society, platforms, and media.
    There's one group that's conspicuously absent from that 
list: People, ordinary people.
    Whether America continues the informal sub rosa censorship 
system we've seen in the Twitter Files or the Facebook Files or 
whether it formally adopts something like Europe's draconian 
new Digital Services Act, it's already abundantly clear who 
won't be involved in this kind of work. There will be no 
dockworkers doing content flagging, no poor people from inner-
city neighborhoods, no single moms pulling multiple waitressing 
jobs, no immigrant store owners, or Uber drivers.
    These programs will always feature a tiny, rarified sliver 
of affluent, professional-class Americans censoring a huge and 
ever-expanding pool of everyone else.
    Take away the highfalutin talk about countering hate and 
reducing harm, and anti-disinformation is just a bluntly 
elitist gatekeeping exercise. If you prefer to think in 
progressive terms, it's class war.
    If one small demographic over here has broad control over 
the whole speech landscape and a great big one over there has 
no control whatsoever, it follows that one of those groups will 
end up with more political power than the other. Which one is 
the winner? To paraphrase Ira Glasser, it probably ain't yours.
    It isn't just one side or the other that will lose if these 
programs are allowed to continue; it's pretty much everyone, 
which is why these programs must be defunded before it's too 
late.
    Thank you very much.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Taibbi follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Taibbi. Well done.
    Ms. Subramanya, you are recognized now for five minutes.

                  STATEMENT OF RUPA SUBRAMANYA

    Ms. Subramanya. Thank you, Chair Jordan. I'm pleased to be 
able to join you today to testify to the importance of free 
expression.
    I'd like all of you to think of me as a time traveler from 
the not-too-distant future coming back to the present to offer 
you a glimpse of what could lie ahead for America.
    I live in a time, in which, in the name of fairness, you 
can't share the stories you write from a news publication on 
social media.
    I live in a time in which, in the name of the common good, 
you can be kicked out of your bank and online payment system 
simply for expressing the wrong political views.
    I live in a time in which, in the name of social justice, 
you can commit a serious crime but get a more lenient sentence 
if you happen to be the right skin color.
    I live in a time in which, in the name of safety, you can 
be arrested for exercising your right to peaceful protest if 
you happen to be protesting the wrong thing.
    Of course, I'm not a real time traveler; I just live in 
Canada.
    Americans, and perhaps those in this chamber, surely think 
Canadians are too nice, we're too polite to embrace this sort 
of proto-authoritarianism. It's more accurate to say that our 
niceness made us susceptible to the new authoritarianism 
undermining the foundations of our liberal democracy.
    If it sounds like I'm overstating things, allow me to share 
three stories that illustrate this creeping authoritarianism.
    First, a few months ago, I reported a story from my 
publication, The Free Press, about a high school principal in 
Toronto who had been humiliated in front of his colleagues by a 
DEI consultant. The principal's crime, besides being White and 
male, was that he objected to the consultant's assertion that 
Canada is a less-just society than America. The humiliation he 
experienced ultimately led him to commit suicide.
    I wanted to share that story on Facebook. When I tried to, 
I was barred from posting it. I received a message that stated, 
``In response to Canadian Government legislation, news content 
can't be shared.''
    I was confused. Then I remembered the recently adopted 
Online News Act. The law forces social media companies to pay 
online media companies to link to their content. Facebook, 
instead of paying for that content, barred its users from 
posting it.
    Government officials insist that this is only a matter of 
fairness, a way of making sure that media companies are 
compensated for the news they report. Really, this new law 
props up legacy media dinosaurs like the Canadian Broadcasting 
Corporation, Bell Media, and other companies, which are 
subsidized by the Federal Government and all which can be 
counted on to echo Justin Trudeau's world view and toe the 
party line.
    Not being able to post was annoying, but it wasn't the end 
of the world for me. I don't depend on Facebook for my income. 
The same cannot be said of Christopher Curtis, which brings me 
to my second story.
    Chris is a 38-year-old renegade journalist entrepreneur in 
Montreal who runs a digital newsletter called The Rover. He 
calls himself ``woke.'' You might think that he's exactly the 
kind of journalist the Trudeau government would elevate. He's 
on the political left. He publishes stories about the plight of 
the homeless and police brutality.
    The problem is that, unlike government-funded news 
companies, independent media companies are truly independent, 
which means they report stories that don't comport with 
whatever the government wants them to report.
    For example, in September 2020, The Rover reported a story 
on Federal mistreatment of Mohawk Indians. This month, it 
published a story about migrant workers who had been abused and 
trafficked with the unwitting help of the Federal Government.
    Under this new law, The Rover can't build its audience. 
Unable to post content on Facebook or Instagram, the newsletter 
can't reach new subscribers. It cannot grow its subscriber 
base.
    This is a slow death, says Chris. For now, he's unsure how 
he's going to support his partner and their three-year-old 
daughter. He's thinking of going back into construction.
    Which takes me to my third story. Danny Bulford, now 41, 
used to be an officer in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the 
equivalent of the FBI. For years, he was a sniper in the Prime 
Minister's protective detail. Then, in 2021, Danny quit because 
he didn't want to get his COVID vaccination.
    In early 2022, truckers descended on Ottawa to protest new 
COVID vaccine requirements. Danny joined them. The government 
declared a State of Emergency. Danny, like many demonstrators, 
was arrested and later released without charge.
    Then, something chilling happened. On February 17, 2022, 
Danny logs into his bank accounts, starting with his checking 
and savings accounts at the CIBC, but instead of seeing his 
balance--he had about $160,000 in there--the only thing he saw 
was a dash.
    Then, he logs onto Scotia Bank to see about an additional 
checking account. Once again, there was no sign of any money in 
his account.
    Finally, he logs into the Royal Bank of Canada, which 
handles his Mastercard account, and he was told he had no 
access to any credit.
    Danny's wife was also unable to access any of these 
accounts. Suddenly, they were worrying about how to cover their 
next mortgage payments and how to feed their three kids.
    That is what it means to be debanked. Debanking has been 
one of the Trudeau government's weapons of choice. Since 2018, 
it has frozen the accounts of more than 800 Canadians who did 
things they didn't approve of, including those of 280 who took 
part in the truckers' protest, which the government regarded as 
illegitimate.
    Soon after, Danny moved his money out of the big banks and 
into local credit unions, hoping it would be safer there. Danny 
told me,

        The worst part of this is not believing in the country I've 
        spent my career serving. It's this feeling that we're being 
        watched, torn apart, made to feel like the much hated other in 
        our own country.

    Canada was once a bastion of free expression, but now not 
so much. Consider that at the same time the government and its 
corporate allies are curbing the free expression of truckers 
and journalists, the government is defending the rights of pro-
Palestinian demonstrators, many of whom traffic in what can 
only be called anti-Semitism.
    Think about that. Vaccine skepticism, not OK. Peddling 
medieval blood-libel legends about Jews, OK.
    I'm all for protecting free speech. I am from the free 
press. I just want that protection applied fairly.
    I also want to be clear; these are just a handful of 
hundreds of stories I could've picked. What is happening in 
Canada is a gradual suffocation of free expression. It is 
draped in a cloak of niceness, inclusivity, and justice, but it 
is regressive, authoritarian, and illiberal.
    I came here today not simply to warn you about what lies 
ahead, but to plead with you to do something about it. Now is 
not the time to be polite. Now is the time to defend loudly the 
liberties and rights that have given us the greatest freedoms 
in human history.
    Across the world right now, governments, in the name of the 
good, are considering or adopting measures like we have in 
Canada. Look at Dublin. They're about to enact a draconian 
hate-crime bill that poses a dire threat to free speech. In 
Paris, President Emmanuel Macron has called for censoring 
online speech. This is to say nothing of Russia, China, and 
Iran.
    America is so exceptional--indispensable, really. Please do 
not succumb to the same illiberalism, authoritarianism. Please 
keep fighting for what you know is right. Canada is watching. 
The world is watching.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Subramanya follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Well said. Thank you. Very well said.
    Ms. Troye, you're recognized for five minutes, and we'll 
give you a little extra if you need it.

                   STATEMENT OF OLIVIA TROYE

    Ms. Troye. Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, and 
Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
testify today.
    The threat of the weaponization of the Federal Government 
is a serious topic that requires sober analysis. Unfortunately, 
what we see here today and what we have seen from this 
Committee over the past year is instead a politically motivated 
fantasy detached from reality.
    Members of this Committee and their witnesses make grand 
and vague accusations about government censorship, but those 
foggy allegations are refuted by the facts--that private social 
media companies moderating content on their own private 
platforms is not government censorship. It is those private 
companies exercising their own First Amendment rights to rid 
their platforms of misinformation.
    In my experience as a national security official, the 
Federal Government strictly adhered to the First Amendment by 
advising and assisting social media platforms in combating 
misinformation while the ultimate decision about what action, 
if any, to take rested solely with the platforms themselves.
    I know what real weaponization of the Federal Government 
looks like because I've seen it with my own eyes. I worked in 
the Trump White House, where I served as Homeland Security and 
Counterterrorism Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence.
    On numerous occasions, I witnessed President Trump and his 
allies attempt to use the powers of the Presidency to further 
his private political agenda at the expense of the American 
people.
    Trump Administration officials attempted to manipulate 
intelligence assessments to support its ban on nationals from 
Muslim countries entering the United States.
    They delayed natural-disaster aid to blue States who had 
not supported President Trump's election.
    In the early days of the pandemic, they resisted sending 
Federal assistance to New York, as thousands of innocent 
Americans suffered.
    Instead of continuing to spread conspiracy theories about 
government censorship, this Committee should instead focus on 
the very real and very dangerous threat posed by the leading 
Republican candidate openly threatening to use every lever of 
Presidential power against his political opponents if he 
returns to the White House.
    Former President Trump has promised, quote, ``retribution'' 
against those who have wronged and betrayed him and his 
political movement. He has pledged to, quote, ``root out the 
radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of 
our country.'' Trump has called the press ``the enemy of the 
people'' and has vowed to, quote, ``come down hard'' on MSNBC 
and ``make them pay,'' quote, ``for its critical coverage of 
him.'' He has promised to, quote, ``arrest'' his political 
opponents, saying he would ``have no choice.'' ``Lock them 
up.'' He has said that his own Chair of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff committed treason and that, quote, ``in times gone by, 
the punishment would have been death.'' Most ominously, he has 
called for ``the termination of all rules, regulations, and 
articles, even those found in the Constitution.'' His words.
    As a lifelong Republican, I have dedicated my entire career 
to protecting Americans from terrorist attacks regardless of 
their partisan affiliation. Former President Trump's menacing 
promise to wield the powers of government as a weapon against 
his political adversaries poses a grave threat to the rule of 
law in the United States of America.
    The American people deserve that their Representatives in 
Congress see that threat and speak to it honestly instead of 
the political theater we see here today.
    I welcome the Committee's questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Troye follows:]

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    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Ms. Troye.
    We will now go to five-minute questions from the Members.
    We will start with the gentleman from California, Mr. Issa. 
You're recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you.
    I want to note the appearance of President Trump by the 
Ranking Member and by one witness. Today is not about President 
Trump. The actions that occurred during his administration are 
available for everyone to look at. Our witnesses today are 
asking, and answering effectively, questions about the effects 
of suppression of free speech.
    As a father of a Canadian daughter-in-law, I want to thank 
you for making people understand that this well-liked, nice 
country to our North can also make the kinds of mistakes that 
we seem to be making.
    So, one of the questions that I have is--two of you have 
been here before, and I think it's important to ask: You 
mentioned some of the current activities as you continue to 
monitor it and you, particularly, mentioned the protest and the 
activities related to Israel's attempt to get back its 
hostages.
    Can you elaborate on some of the specifics that you think 
you see here in the way of either suppression or amplification? 
Is there any evidence that we're continuing to see, if you 
will, a bias that social media doesn't have a problem reporting 
one side, but does have a problem reporting the other side?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Um--
    Mr. Issa. I know it's a tough question.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes. We've certainly, I think we've all 
seen calls to Matt's point that this is not a partisan issue, 
that we should all--that the test of your commitment to free 
speech is that you would like to see the speech that you really 
despise protected and that you would defend it.
    I think we've seen calls for censoring pro-Palestine, pro-
Hamas speech and have been disturbed by that, and Rupa has 
described that. We've also seen calls for censorship of the 
other side. We've seen misinformation spread on all sides.
    So, I think that what you're hearing from us is a general 
call that everybody needs to just calm down and remember that 
this country's greatness is really founded on that protection 
for that kind of--that protection of speech that we all might 
consider to be hateful.
    I always remind people that one of the most--some of the 
most important court decisions by the Supreme Court were 
protecting the speech of neo-Nazis in the Brandenburg decision 
and the decision in Skokie.
    If we can tolerate neo-Nazis marching through neighborhoods 
of Holocaust survivors, certainly I think we're capable of 
tolerating people defending violent attacks.
    Mr. Issa. That brings us to a question. As we bring you 
back here and some new witnesses, do we have a challenge in 
America, that we're constantly looking at what should be 
censored rather than how do we get more free speech so that the 
counter-opinions are heard as loudly as those who yell and are 
heard the first time?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, first, thank you for the question. I 
think it's important to remember that the First Amendment not 
only guarantees people the right to speak and voice their 
opinions, but it also guarantees the right of all of us to hear 
those opinions, that's a crucial element of the promise--
    Mr. Issa. So, that goes to a followup. If that's the case, 
your suggestion about an instantaneous and transparent 
unveiling of any and all reduction, throttling, et cetera--
let's assume for a moment it's technically possible, quickly. 
It's certainly possible, but let's just say it was technically 
possible quickly.
    We're a legislative body. Do you believe it's appropriate 
for us, in a transparency act, to mandate that this happen so 
that we no longer have the kind of things that happened to the 
Chair, where he simply was systematically throttled, so that he 
wasn't censored; he simply wasn't heard very loudly? If we had 
that, do you believe that it would've changed the outcome? 
Should Congress look at mandating it?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I can say something about that.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, sure.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I strongly support transparency. If 
you require, for example, that government officials or people 
supported by the government, such as this EIP or VP group--and, 
by the way, just to give you some quotes--
    Mr. Issa. You mean what the Ranking Member described as 
legitimate suggestions and it was independent?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Right.
    Mr. Issa. Isn't that always the defense, though, is that we 
didn't make the decision and the other guy didn't make the 
decision, it just happened?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Right.
    Mr. Issa. I'm down to just a few seconds, and I do want to 
thank our Canadian for pointing out that we are but one step 
away from defunding, here in the United States, bank accounts.
    This administration has returned, so you understand, in the 
United States, to making sure that people selling products or 
involved in activities that they don't want to fail to have 
access. That is another form of censorship that I'm sorry it's 
gone so far in Canada, but trust me, it's underway in this 
country.
    Mr. Chair, I thank you.
    I thank both of you. Sorry to cut you off.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Virginia is recognized.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Ms. Troye, I want to thank you for your powerful statement 
and for your courage.
    I understand why my friend from California wants to tell us 
that this hearing isn't about Donald Trump. Because that's too 
difficult a topic--
    Mr. Issa. Gerry, as my friend, I did want to--
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chair--
    Mr. Issa. --thank you for bringing--
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chair--
    Chair Jordan. Hold on. The time--
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chair, it's my time. I reclaim my time.
    Chair Jordan. The time belongs to the gentleman from 
Virginia.
    Mr. Connolly. Imagine it's October 2020, and someone tells 
you that President Donald Trump is going to use violence and 
chaos directed at the Congress and the Vice President of the 
United States to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 
Presidential election.
    For many, that would've been hard to believe. I'm sure my 
friends on the other side would've said, ``There they go again. 
Critics of Trump will just claim anything.''
    Everyone here saw what happened on January 6th. We now 
have, in fact, a Federal indictment charging him with that very 
matter.
    This month, we learned that Donald Trump's shadow 
administration at Project 2025 is planning Executive Orders 
that would invoke the Insurrection Act and allow him to send 
military out to patrol American streets.
    Ms. Troye, some of my colleagues across the aisle have 
suggested that Trump's quotes about using military in our 
cities and the rumored plans to invoke the Insurrection Act are 
simply bluster designed to galvanize his base.
    Would you dismiss Trump's plans to deploy the military 
against American citizens as bluster?
    Ms. Troye. Thank you for the question.
    Absolutely not, having worked in the Trump Administration 
when President Trump at the time repeatedly raised the 
Insurrection Act as a potential to be used on protesters, even 
safe protesters, repeatedly.
    I can tell you that there were some serious heated 
discussions with members of his own Cabinet--the Secretary of 
Defense, the Chair of the Joint Staff--heads of law 
enforcement, who expressed significant concern about the things 
being discussed to be used against our own American citizens.
    That is something that should be taken very, very 
seriously.
    Mr. Connolly. On June 1, 20- --on June 1, Americans watched 
as the National Guard participated in a violent crackdown near 
the White House.
    That's what you're referring to, is that not right?
    Ms. Troye. Correct.
    Mr. Connolly. There was a heated debate. The President was 
the one asking that Federal troops, military, U.S. military, be 
called, up to 10,000 troops, to quell peaceful protests in 
Washington, DC.
    Is that accurate?
    Ms. Troye. That is correct. I was there that day.
    Mr. Connolly. That was the President arguing to use the 
military?
    Ms. Troye. That is correct.
    Mr. Connolly. Presumably, General Milley, at the time, 
resisted those calls. Is that correct?
    Ms. Troye. That is correct, and so did Secretary Esper.
    Mr. Connolly. That might have something to do with 
President Trump referring to the Chair of the Joint Chiefs, 
General Milley, his Chair, as a traitor and invoking the fact 
that, in the old days, the price to be paid for convicted 
treason is death.
    Is that correct?
    Ms. Troye. That is correct. Chair Milley was just doing his 
job and military service.
    Mr. Connolly. Do you believe that the deployment of 10,000 
troops at that time would've been consistent with the mission 
of the American military, suppressing peaceful demonstrations 
by fellow Americans in the Nation's capital?
    Ms. Troye. President Trump was told repeatedly that this 
would not be an appropriate use of the military resources. He 
was also told that his efforts to resituate law enforcement and 
use law enforcement agencies that were not appropriate for 
crowd control were also incorrect uses of what our law 
enforcement and these entities are traditionally used for.
    Mr. Connolly. In your testimony, you cited violent 
language, increasingly incendiary language being invoked by 
President Trump about his so-called enemies.
    One of the words he used was ``vermin.'' What does that 
echo in your mind? Anyone else come to mind historically who 
referred to enemies of the State as ``vermin''?
    Ms. Troye. Yes. The horrible Hitler.
    Mr. Connolly. Goebbels.
    Thank you. Thank you so much for your courage. Thank you 
for being here. I hope the American people take heed from your 
strong words today about the threat that's looming.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Massie. I thank the Chair.
    Ms. Troye, you stated in your opening statement that this 
Committee was indulging in fantasy detached from reality, that 
Members of this Committee and their witnesses make grand and 
vague accusations about government censorship, and that we are 
spreading conspiracy theories about government censorship.
    Would one of those conspiracy theories be that government-
funded agencies were flagging and trying to censor official 
congressional accounts on social media? Are you denying that 
this occurred?
    Ms. Troye. I would have no knowledge of that. I'm not aware 
of that happening.
    Mr. Massie. Well, we're going to make you aware of that 
right now.
    Mr. Shellenberger, can you speak to this tweet? I saw that 
you flagged this in one of your recent articles on Substack. 
Can you tell us why this tweet brought attention in your 
article?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, because that was one of the tweets 
that the Virality Project at Stanford Internet Observatory had 
flagged to Twitter as misinformation and that--I believe it was 
labeled or censored in some other way.
    Mr. Massie. So, it was--the Stanford Virality Project, that 
is funded by the government, is it not?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, it is.
    Mr. Massie. So their purpose, ostensibly, is to stop 
misinformation, malinformation, and to flag things they say 
that might be against the terms of service of the social media 
companies. Is that correct?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, that's right.
    Mr. Massie. Ms. Troye, is there any reason you think that 
this should've been flagged for removal?
    Ms. Troye. It depends on whether you're spreading 
inaccurate information.
    Mr. Massie. Well, it references a study from Israel--
    Ms. Troye. You seem to do that often.
    Mr. Massie. --a published study from Israel, and the tweet 
just restates the title of the study.
    Does it trouble you that--
    Ms. Troye. It's up to the social media companies to review 
their policies. It's an internal choice.
    Mr. Massie. Yes. Are you going to sit here and maintain 
that it's a conspiracy theory that this occurred? We have the 
documents. Mr. Shellenberger has the documents that show that 
this occurred.
    Ms. Troye. Well, then it was flagged for a reason.
    Mr. Massie. What's the reason? Is there ever a good reason 
to censor a Member of Congress?
    This is my official account. This is not a personal 
account. This is not a campaign account. This is my 
communication with my constituents.
    By the way, I bring this up not to claim that Members of 
Congress have more right to free speech than the general 
public. In fact, I don't even think the press or the media has 
more rights to the First Amendment than the general public. The 
general public has the same rights that we have.
    I bring this up to show (1) that your testimony is false, 
but (2) if they can do this to a Member of Congress's official 
account, they can do it to anybody.
    Chair Jordan. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Massie. Now, I want to move on to the origins of these 
programs.
    Mr. Shellenberger, can you tell us about the Cyber Threat 
Intelligence League? Was this just a group of vigilantes, 
concerned citizens, or was it in any way connected to the 
government? What did they endeavor to do?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, this was--so, first, it's a pretty 
ludicrous founding, which was that this is a group of--it was 
Israeli--so-called former Israeli intelligence, former British 
intelligence also working at Microsoft, and others, who 
basically said, ``we're going to volunteer our services.'' 
These are some of the world's greatest, so-called, 
cybersecurity professionals volunteering their services to 
multibillion-dollar hospital and healthcare organizations, 
whose own IT organizations spend millions of dollars a year on 
cybersecurity, supposedly volunteering this. This was the 
premise of the whole thing.
    Then, it created this third part that I mentioned. They had 
physical security, cybersecurity; they added cognitive 
security. The people that did that were two U.K. and U.S. 
military contractors.
    This was one of the most sophisticated disinformation 
operations that I've ever seen. I've been involved in 
progressive causes for over 30 years. I've never seen anything 
so organized, anything that was so focused on a particular goal 
and that had so many people that came from military and 
intelligence organizations. It gave me the creeps, just reading 
about it.
    Mr. Massie. In the documents, is it true that they used 
their agency seals--FBI, CISA--when they were communicating 
with each other?
    Mr. Shellenberger. That's right. The whistleblower provided 
screenshots of Slack conversations that included officials from 
DHS, Facebook, and the CTI League.
    Mr. Massie. So, it would be hard for somebody to claim that 
these folks weren't agents of the government or acting in 
coordination with the government or using things that they 
learned in their government--were some of them still employed 
by the U.S. Government when they were undertaking this?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes. Pablo Breuer was working for the 
U.S. Navy at the time. The others were--many of the others were 
claiming to be volunteering their time even while working their 
day jobs for the government.
    Mr. Massie. I thank you, Mr. Chair, and I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Massachusetts is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Chair, there's a term in behavioral science called the 
``weaponization of incompetence'' that is--it refers to ``the 
tactic of employing deliberate or feigned ineptitude or 
stupidity in order to avoid an unwanted task or 
responsibility.'' I dare say, that is what the Republican 
leadership is involved in in this Committee.
    This is--the last hearing--even though this Subcommittee 
was launched with great fanfare, we have not had a hearing in 
this Subcommittee, this select Subcommittee, since July. Since 
July.
    Not only has so much time passed, but at today's hearing we 
bring back the same two witnesses that we heard back in July. 
Actually, Mr. Shellenberger mentioned nine months ago that he 
had been here.
    So, I'm just cognizant of the fact that this is an 
investigation of the Federal Government, right? The Federal 
Government. That's who we're supposed to be investigating. We 
have 4.3 million Federal employees, we have two million 
retirees, all of whom would be available to come here and 
testify about their experience for these allegations of 
weaponization of the Federal Government. Yet, we bring back the 
same two witnesses we had many months ago and we bring back, by 
her own description, a time traveler from Canada.
    I love Canada, by the way. If this was a hearing on the 
Canadian Government, I would have Canadians lined up out in the 
hallway ready to testify.
    The only witness here with actual experience in the Federal 
Government and could testify to that is Ms. Troye. I'm very 
thankful for her testimony.
    I'm old enough to remember Republicans who knew what they 
were doing. I miss them. I miss them.
    I'm old enough to remember a Republican President who stood 
up--stood up--to Russian dictators, not sucked up to Russian 
dictators; American Presidents, Republicans, who told Mr. 
Gorbachev, ``Take down this wall,'' stood up for democracy, 
defended our democratic allies in Europe, didn't look for 
excuses, that, ``Well, the money's not in the budget, so we 
can't defend Europe.'' That's what I see here today.
    Ms. Troye, the effect of incompetence in government at 
extreme levels, is that not, itself, a threat to national 
security?
    Ms. Troye. Yes, it absolutely is.
    Mr. Lynch. So, in our government, we recently spent 22 days 
without a Speaker of the House due to infighting. We went 
through multiple candidates. It was like an episode of one of 
those reality shows. We got another candidate and another 
candidate.
    The only reason the recent Speaker got elected is because 
he had the distinct quality that no one really knew him, and so 
he was chosen as our next Speaker.
    The litmus test was whether or not the next Speaker was 
subservient enough and adherent enough to the former President, 
who runs the Republican Party out of Mar-a-Lago.
    Mr. Lynch. That's not all. In June, the House Republican 
leadership brought us to the verge of a catastrophic default on 
our national debt, one that leading economists warned would be 
a first in American history and undermine the full faith and 
credit of the U.S. Government and lead to a global economic 
meltdown.
    So, now we are facing a war in Europe, a war in the Middle 
East. We're facing a looming shutdown again of the U.S. 
Government, and we're dealing with the weaponization of the 
deep State, which seems pretty shallow at this point, with the 
parcity of witnesses that the Republican majority has produced.
    I hope at some point we get back to the business that 
America sent us here to do. This is not it. This is crazy 
conspiracy theory that we're pursuing here, and we ought to get 
back to the business that America demands us by virtue of our 
oath of office.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New York, Ms. 
Stefanik, for five minutes.
    Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    It has been almost 1 year since the first bombshell Twitter 
Files. Looking back now--and my questions are for Mr. Taibbi 
and Mr. Shellenberger--what was the most alarming thing that 
you came across during your review of internal Twitter 
documents? I have a number of followup questions, so keep it 
short.
    Mr. Taibbi. Sure. Thank you for the question. I think the 
most alarming thing that we saw was the regular stream--
organized stream of communication between the FBI, the 
Department of Homeland Security, and the largest tech companies 
in the country. They had an organized system for flagging 
content, not occasionally but in enormous numbers, involving 
spreadsheets of accounts that ran to the hundreds and 
thousands. This was shocking to us.
    To the Congressman's point, this isn't crazy conspiracy 
theory. We've already had four Federal judges rule that they 
believe this activity violates the First Amendment. This is 
quite serious.
    We didn't know whether it was against the law, but we 
certainly thought it was shocking enough to be in the public 
interest, and that for me was the most serious.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes. For me, it was seeing the so-called 
former FBI officials within Twitter and working with--and other 
groups, including this Aspen Institute, participating in an 
effort to so-called pre-bunk the Hunter Biden laptop before it 
was ever published in the New York Post, and then to get it 
censored by Twitter in violation of Twitter's own terms of 
service, whose internal staff had concluded that the New York 
Post tweet had not violated their terms of service and they 
censored it anyway.
    Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Shellenberger, I want to ask you further, 
that revolving door between the FBI and Twitter, and I also 
want to ask about those third-party, essentially, government 
proxies. You referenced the Aspen Institute. Can you delve 
deeper into both of those questions, both of those topics?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Sure. As the former General Counsel of 
the FBI, Jim Baker, and the former Deputy Director of the FBI 
had both taken jobs at Twitter, there were so many FBI people 
at Twitter that they had their own internal group and their own 
little crib sheet to describe the difference between the terms 
that they use at the FBI versus at Twitter.
    Mr. Taibbi. CIA had it as well.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, CIA as well had their own little 
internal group. I'm sorry, what was the second question?
    Ms. Stefanik. The third-party proxies with the Aspen--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Oh, yes. Within the Aspen Institute--
this was the weirdest thing--we discovered that Aspen Institute 
had created a workshop, that it was attended by basically all 
of the major media, including--as well as all the major social 
media platforms, to basically pre-bunk in advance the Hunter 
Biden laptop, even though it had not been--there was no 
evidence that it existed, outside of the fact that the FBI knew 
that they had it because they got it in December 2019.
    So, to have the Aspen Institute trying to persuade people 
not to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story in August-September 
2020, was quite chilling and disturbing to see.
    Ms. Stefanik. These content moderators at social media 
platforms like Twitter wield an enormous amount of power in 
terms of determining not only what Americans can say but also 
what Americans can see.
    Do you believe, Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger, that it's 
appropriate for unelected bureaucrats or these tech companies 
to collude to influence what Americans can say or read?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not. I wanted to stress again 
that all this was happening secretively with the blessing of 
the Department of Homeland Security, with them sending things 
to--this is from the EIP at Stanford to Twitter and Facebook, 
saying,

        We repeat our recommendations that this account be suspended. 
        We recommend labelling all instances of this article. We 
        recommend that you flag as false.

This and all these demands being made secretly without any 
public review.
    My view is that we don't--the government doesn't decide who 
can speak in the town square. Why should the government be 
deciding who can speak on social media platforms? We, the 
people, should decide our own content as adults, legal content. 
It should not be decided by either government or big tech.
    Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger, do you 
believe that this censorship is a form of election 
interference?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely it is. There's no question in 
my mind.
    Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Taibbi?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think it certainly can be. In the latest 
story that we did on the CTI League, we saw the 
overpartisanship of the people involved in this operation. That 
was actually the reason the whistleblower came forward. The 
people involved used to sit--one of--the quote was, ``they 
assumed anyone who was smart thought the way they did.''
    They talked about the potential election of Donald Trump 
being an end-of-the-world event. They talked about the 
wackadoodles who actually watch FOX News. Even as someone who 
doesn't vote for Republicans, it was shocking to me to see 
this. This was a consistent theme of not just the CTI League, 
but most of the censorship organizations that we looked at, 
they all tend to drift in one direction.
    Ms. Stefanik. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Florida.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    All of us here today have heard the stories of the depth of 
human depravity from the Hamas attacks resulting in unthinkable 
brutality, including the mass murder of innocent Jews and 
civilians on October 7th. Witnessing such barbarities steals 
part of your humanity, and it demonstrates how hatred can drive 
humans to do unspeakable things to one another. Nowhere, is 
hatred more evident than on social media.
    Since the October 7th attack, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim 
hate speech has exploded online. In just 1 month after the 
attack, the hashtag ``Hitler was right'' appeared in over 
46,000 posts. The rhetoric isn't limited to hate speech and 
death threats. Jewish conspiracy theories and disinformation 
continually find a safe harbor on social media platforms. Even 
the racist and anti-Semitic Great Replacement Theory was 
recently amplified on Twitter/X by none other than its owner, 
Elon Musk, and the right-wing darling, Tucker Carlson.
    Terrorists use the platforms to terrorize target 
populations, and Hamas even used the personal accounts of 
hostages and victims to live stream their brutality to incite 
further violence.
    Mr. Taibbi, yes or no, should social media companies allow 
rape and murder to be live-streamed by terrorists on their 
platforms to create fear and incite violence.
    Mr. Taibbi. I believe that would violate their terms of 
service, would it not?
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. So, your answer is no, they should 
not be allowed to do that?
    Mr. Taibbi. Live stream rape and murder?
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Right.
    Mr. Taibbi. No. I think that would count as speech that 
would be prohibited under their terms of service.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Good. You do have absolutist 
policies, but--
    Mr. Taibbi. I do not have absolutist--I do not have--
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Please don't interrupt me. You have 
absolutist--I've asked you a question. You answered it.
    You do have absolutist policies. At least they have some 
limits, but I think a Homeland Security official--
    Mr. Taibbi. With respect, Congresswoman, all journalists 
operate under limits.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Excuse me. Reclaiming my time.
    If a Homeland Security official echoed your opinion, you 
would call it censorship, but I'm glad that at least you 
acknowledge that rape and murder should not be allowed on 
social media platforms.
    Ms. Troye, I have the same question. Yes or no, should 
social media companies take down brutal images of rape and 
murder live-streamed by Hamas or similar groups like ISIS?
    Ms. Subramanya. I agree with--
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. No. Ms. Troye.
    Ms. Subramanya. Oh.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Ms. Troye.
    Ms. Subramanya. Ms. Troye? You were looking at me. Sorry.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Sorry.
    Ms. Troye. Yes, I believe they should follow their internal 
policies and they should absolutely not leave content up like 
that. I can tell you, as someone who worked on the Christchurch 
shooting where that terrorist live-streamed the attack, which 
was horrifying, horrific, we did have conversations. We had 
official meetings with social media as an international 
community to discuss terrorists' use of the internet and this 
violent rhetoric on there and what it would lead to potential--
more potential violence. These conversations were done in 
conjunction with social media companies, and it was up to them 
on their policies to make their decision on whether that met 
the threshold.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. That's exactly the point. Can you 
talk about, during your time at the Trump White House, did you 
experience situations where information shared on social media 
presented a national security concern?
    Ms. Troye. Yes, there were multiple times. I will also 
reference what happened at the El Paso Walmart shooting where 
there was reference to the Great Replacement. That manifesto 
was posted on social media. That social media platform did not 
cooperate, they did not remove it, and I want to remind people 
that my aunt was in that Walmart when that shooting happened.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Shifting gears, I want to ask about 
actual weaponization of the Federal Government, not the bogus 
red herrings that my Republican colleagues want to chase today, 
as you referenced in your opening statement.
    In your time on Trump's National Security Council, how were 
NSC staffers treated if they pushed back on so-called deep 
State narratives?
    Ms. Troye. Well, a lot of the time they were fired.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Given what you saw on Trump's fresh 
threats to literally weaponize the government to attack his 
critics, what would a potential second term look like?
    Ms. Troye. I think that you would see many experts across 
U.S. Government and the intelligence community purged. There is 
currently a plan, Project 2025, it talks about exactly that. I 
think that you would see a lot of the expertise be replaced by 
loyalists, and as a result of that, you would see a lot of 
damage to programs across the U.S.Government that I want to 
remind people that all Americans utilize and need.
    There would be loyalists in charge of disaster relief aid, 
like I've mentioned, who would be making those decisions.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you.
    So, making sure that we have social media companies that 
are able to communicate with the Federal Government, to ensure 
that we protect people's lives and national security interests 
is critical.
    Mr. Chair, we know social media companies fail to 
adequately moderate content, and this consistent failure 
spreads hate and deadly information. Hate online jumps off the 
screen and results in real-world acts of violence. Instead of 
focusing on real-world dangers, Republicans pillory public 
officials and academics who call out the companies who profit 
from the harm that they help cause. Then, somehow they twist it 
into a narrative where conservatives are the victims, even as 
Trump revives Nixon's enemies list right in front of our eyes. 
It's time for Republicans to stop gaslighting Americans.
    I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Goldman. Mr. Chair, I have a unanimous consent motion.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman is recognized.
    Mr. Goldman. I'd ask unanimous consent to introduce a 
November 21, 2023, letter to Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, and 
Elon Musk, owner of X, that was signed by 25 Members of 
Congress, expressing grave concern surrounding X's failure to 
abide by its own policies governing the promotion of 
misinformation and hateful, violent, and terroristic propaganda 
videos and for using those videos for profit.
    Chair Jordan. OK. Without objection.
    Mr. Massie. Mr. Chair, I have a unanimous consent request.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman from Kentucky is recognized.
    Mr. Massie. I ask unanimous consent to submit for the 
record an article entitled, ``CTIL files #1: U.S. and U.K. 
Military Contractors Created Sweeping Plan for Global 
Censorship in 2018, New Documents Show,'' by Michael 
Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag, and Matt Taibbi, November 28, 
2023.
    Chair Jordan. Yes. Without objection.
    Chair Jordan. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from 
Florida for five minutes.
    Mr. Steube. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    It's just absolutely fascinating to me how the folks on the 
left side of this dais are calling these things conspiracy 
theories when just through the Missouri v. Biden case, there is 
a treasure trove of actual evidence in a court proceeding, 
witness testimony, factual evidence, that shows that all this 
has been happening under the Biden Administration and that 
there is true censorship from this White House into the 
American people.
    Mr. Shellenberger, I want to start with you. On November 2, 
2023, you posted an article on your Substack, entitled, ``FBI 
and DHS Directors Mislead Congress About Censorship.''
    In the post, you detail Senator Paul's recent questioning 
of DHS Secretary Mayorkas and FBI Director Wray regarding their 
respective departments' censorship activities. Notably, 
Secretary Mayorkas and Director Wray both testified that their 
agency personnel complied with the law and did not violate 
First Amendment rights by targeting Constitutionally protected 
speech on social media platforms.
    Given what we have learned in recent months from the 
Missouri v. Biden case and your investigative reporting shining 
the light on the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, is it fair 
to say that Secretary Mayorkas and Director Wray lied to 
Congress when they told Senator Paul that their agency 
personnel did not target Constitutionally protected speech?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, it's fair to say that they misled 
Congress. I can't be sure of their intention, but they're wrong 
that those agencies weren't involved in demanding censorship by 
the social media platforms.
    Mr. Steube. Just briefly, how were they involved in 
censoring speech? I don't want to read your whole article, 
just--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Sure. FBI agents were directly flagging 
content to Twitter, saying, this appears to violate your terms 
of service, what about this, what about that. Same thing with 
DHS staff. Then, of course, DHS created the Election Integrity 
Partnership, which then became The Virality Project, which was 
in the process of demanding mass censorship of Americans.
    Mr. Steube. Based on them reaching out, a lot of these 
social media companies then acted on that, like the Hunter 
Biden laptop, all these different activities, correct?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, absolutely. You have to remember, 
the context is that this was at a time when the social media 
companies were being threatened to lose their ability to 
operate, which is the Section 230.
    One of the most dramatic instances which is in the Facebook 
Files is where the White House is demanding that Facebook 
censor content that they think could lead to people becoming 
hesitant to take the vaccine. Facebook responded and said that 
they were removing often true content of vaccine side effects.
    Mr. Steube. Your piece also notes that Director Wray 
acknowledged that the FBI has been forced to alter its 
coordination with social media companies to comply with the 
injunction issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 
Missouri v. Biden.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Right.
    Mr. Steube. Would you agree that this is an acknowledgment 
that the FBI's prior censorship conduct does, in fact, violate 
the First Amendment rights of Americans?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely.
    Mr. Steube. Mr. Chair, I'd ask unanimous consent to enter 
into the record Mr. Shellenberger's Substack post from November 
2, 2023.
    Chair Jordan. Without objection
    Mr. Steube. Unless Congress acts, will there be any 
consequences for these government officials who have actively 
supported censorship of certain viewpoints on social media?
    Mr. Shellenberger. We all hope that the Supreme Court rules 
against these kinds of activities consistent with its past 
precedence that the government cannot appoint somebody else to 
violate the law, which is what was going on here. I don't think 
we can rely on the Supreme Court. I do think Congress should 
establish, through Section 230 reform, the requirement that we, 
the people, are allowed to moderate our own content by choosing 
our own filters, and that it should not be up to the big tech 
platforms. If you don't want to have a Section 230, then you 
can just be a publisher like Matt and I are or The New York 
Times is.
    Mr. Steube. Well, and I've worked on Section 230 
legislation, the Chair is working on that, and I think that's 
something that absolutely has to happen this Congress so that 
people get their freedom and their First Amendment rights back.
    It's clear to me that Congress must act and hold these 
government officials accountable. The censorship industrial 
complex, as you put it, and Mr. Taibbi has dubbed it, is an 
existential threat to our First Amendment freedoms. Unless we 
come together to impose transparency and accountability 
measures to prevent the government from engaging in such 
behavior, this activity will unfortunately continue.
    I'm proud to be a cosponsor of the Chair Jordan's Free 
Speech Protection Act that he sponsored in partnership with 
Senator Paul. This legislation is needed to ensure that 
government officials face significant consequences for engaging 
in the censorship and suppression of speech protected by our 
Constitution.
    Further, we must enact transparency measures so that 
officials cannot hide behind public-private partnerships to 
skirt around their legal obligations. Sadly, we cannot trust 
many Federal officials to adhere to their oath they took to 
uphold and defend the Constitution, and it's up to Congress to 
ensure our First Amendment rights are protected.
    In the remaining time I have, Mr. Taibbi, if you could just 
comment on what you weren't able to respond to from Ms. 
Wasserman Schultz.
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, first, just for the record, I've said on 
many occasions that I'm not a free speech absolutist. In fact, 
no journalist is or can be. We all operate under very serious 
restrictions involving libel, defamation, and incitement. We 
have to navigate each one of those rules every time we publish 
anything, and we always look fondly on that process because we 
believe those rules protect us.
    So, we're not free speech absolutists. We're just not in 
favor of government censorship. That's the issue here. There's 
a profound difference between litigating something like libel 
or defamation and having an unelected, unaccountable, unseen 
committee remove your content without any due process. That's 
what we're talking about.
    Mr. Steube. I yield back. Thank you for being here.
    Chair Jordan. The time of the gentleman is expired. The 
gentleman yields back.
    The gentlelady from Texas is recognized.
    Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all the 
witnesses for being here.
    Ms. Troye, I just want to start with saying 
congratulations. I know today is your anniversary. What a way 
to kick off your tenth-year anniversary.
    Let me just say that, as a fellow Texan, I certainly 
recognize, respect, and admire the courage that you have shown 
in appearing here today and also making other statements and 
speaking up about some of the issues that we will talk about 
today.
    Before coming to Congress, many, many years ago, I was a 
judge in Houston, in Texas. I oversaw courtrooms as the 
presiding judge. So, I understand well the need for privacy to 
make the justice system work.
    Everyone here has heard of witness protection. We know the 
bad guys want to scare and intimidate the opposition. You've 
talked about a bad guy today, and I think you said that in one 
interview that I saw you did, that former President Trump 
would-- ``never saw a line he wouldn't cross.'' You also said 
that he was about bullying, ``retribution, attacking, 
humiliating, badgering any opposition.''
    So, we all understand the importance of safeguarding 
sensitive information, and that's why I'm appalled at the 
number of people that are being doxed. For those who don't know 
what doxed means, it simply means that someone takes sensitive, 
personal, identifying information from court cases or private 
documents and they blast it out to the world without the 
person's permission.
    This harmful practice often targets people who are 
outspoken politically, and the information is being published 
by political opponents, like biased news outlets with slanted 
views or individual bad actors hiding safely behind their own 
anonymous keyboards.
    Ms. Troye, have you ever been targeted by trolls on the 
internet? If so, are you willing to share how that experience 
has impacted you and your family?
    Ms. Troye. Yes. I am the subject of trolling consistently, 
and it has been intimidating at times. At times my family has 
had to leave our home, and it has been stressful and unnerving. 
I am very much in touch with law enforcement locally at times 
when these incidents have happened.
    I have personally actually been doxed by a member of 
President Trump's Cabinet, an acting Member of his Cabinet, 
when he filed a lawsuit against me, and instead of redacting my 
home address, he published it and Breitbart circulated it. It 
was circulated on social media.
    Fortunately, I was actually not living at that address at 
the time, but I will tell you that I felt very deeply for the 
family, the innocent family that was, where I had to send law 
enforcement to their home and warn them that there could be 
potential danger to their family because my address had been 
put out there thinking that is where I lived.
    Ms. Garcia. So, is there other personal information or 
sensitive information about you that has been put out there 
about you, your husband, or any member of your family?
    Ms. Troye. Certainly, information about my family has been 
published, information about, believe it or not, my pets. I am 
a dog lover. I love Ringo and Stevie. They're my two Woodles. I 
love them more than anything. They're like our kids. My husband 
knows this. Certainly, the pictures of them at times have been 
returned to me with their heads beheaded. I don't know how you 
can actually do that to just an innocent animal.
    These are the kinds of things that I know myself and other 
colleagues have been on the receiving end of.
    Ms. Garcia. So, you've been targeted mostly online, this 
bullying harassment, or have you also been harassed or--
    Ms. Troye. We've had people--yes.
    Ms. Garcia. --anything in your home or when you're 
shopping?
    Ms. Troye. I've certainly had harassment in public. I've 
certainly had people troll and case our house. We have a lot of 
security. I will tell you that I have turned on social media 
monitoring for this hearing because I know how this goes when 
scenarios like this happen, and I know it's happened to others 
who have testified in situations. I know that it happened to 
colleagues of mine during the first Trump impeachment on 
Ukraine. I lived that firsthand internally in the White House. 
I know what they were subjected to.
    Ms. Garcia. So, this has a chilling effect on free speech 
and, more importantly, it makes people hesitate to speak up and 
come and testify and tell us what they know and what they 
witnessed?
    Ms. Troye. I can guarantee you; I've had so many 
conversations with people in national security, former members 
of Trump's own Cabinet, who do not want to speak out publicly 
even though they have the same concerns that I do. I think that 
there would be plenty of people in government service who could 
sit here and refute some of the claims and attacks against 
them, but it comes at great personal cost. It comes at great 
cost to your finances. It comes at great cost of the safety of 
your families.
    We've seen Republicans, Republican Members of Congress that 
I had deep respect for, not run for office again because they 
wanted to protect their families given what we've seen and the 
trends that have happened. That was a great disappointment to 
someone like me who looked up to these people.
    Ms. Garcia. Right. All just become targets and face 
retribution and attacks on social media, so I understand it. I 
know for me even, we did a weaponization hearing in the 
morning, and by the end of the day, I had a death threat. I, in 
fact, talked about it with Federal courts in New Mexico 
yesterday. So, it happens. You don't have free speech. The 
attacks are there. So, thank you for coming.
    Mr. Chair, I think my--is my time up? Yes, it is? I would 
like to enter this--
    Chair Jordan. You'd like to keep going?
    Ms. Garcia. No, I'd like to enter for the record--
    Chair Jordan. We would all like to do that.
    Ms. Garcia. No, I would like to ask unanimous consent to 
enter into the record an article, ``U.S. Supreme Court 
temporarily blocks order in Missouri social media lawsuit.''
    Chair Jordan. Sure Without objection.
    Ms. Garcia. Ask for unanimous--thank you.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    Ms. Subramanya, I would argue it's already here. You said 
in your statement you want to give us a glimpse of what lies 
ahead. I think it's already here. In the course of our 
investigation in this Committee, on January 15, 2021, the FBI 
sent to Bank of America, tell us all your customers' purchases 
in the Washington, DC, area for a specific date, customers 
transacting debit card or credit card Washington, DC, purchases 
on specific dates in this town. Anyone. Whether you're here for 
the rally, whether you're here for any kind of protest--if 
you're just in visiting your mom.
    They further said, and they capitalize ``ANY''--any 
historic purchase going back 6 months for any weapons or 
weapons-related vendor purchases. That is frightening stuff. 
Because you gave the example, a Danny Bulford, you gave the 
example. I think it's already here.
    Ms. Subramanya. Absolutely. In fact, I'm working on issues 
related to that here in the U.S. There are people who have been 
debanked in America. They generally tend to be on the 
conservative side. I've interviewed pastors, missionaries, who 
do good work overseas. They've been debanked for--with no 
explanation. The reasons are very vague, that your risk profile 
doesn't match what we can--what we're comfortable with.
    So, these are people who've been debanked for doing good 
work, and they generally tend to be on one side of the 
political spectrum.
    Chair Jordan. By the way, I think in your testimony you 
said this guy, Mr. Bulford, was former Royal Canadian Mounted 
Police, was not charged with anything, wasn't being held, was 
released, and that's when the debanking took place. Is that 
accurate?
    Ms. Subramanya. Yes, roughly. They were all happening 
around the same time.
    Chair Jordan. He wasn't charged with anything--
    Ms. Subramanya. No, nothing.
    Chair Jordan. --and he couldn't get access to his account?
    Ms. Subramanya. So, the Trudeau government invoked the 
Emergencies Act. It's only been invoked twice during the two 
World Wars. One of the outcomes of the Emergency Act was to go 
after people who were peacefully protesting against the COVID-
19 vaccine requirements. If you donated to the cause, you found 
yourself debanked. This is what ended up happening with 280 
people.
    Chair Jordan. Mr. Taibbi, is there a realignment happening? 
I look at today's panel. The Democrats invited an individual 
who worked in a Republican Administration, and Republicans 
invite two former Democrats, award-winning journalists. One was 
the hero of the environment as recognized by Time Magazine. The 
other one worked for Rolling Stone. We invite a foreigner to 
come tell us, hey, don't let this stuff happen here. If America 
goes this way, the whole world's in even bigger trouble.
    It seems to me there's a realignment happening. I think 
I've invited more Democrat witnesses to testify in front of 
this Committee than the Democrats have, because the focus is on 
the First Amendment. I don't care whether you're Republican, 
Democrat, Independent, Conservative, or Progressive. What I 
care about is the ability to speak and to speak in a political 
fashion and not have the government come after you for doing 
so.
    So, I think there is a total realignment happening in the 
culture and in politics and, frankly, I think that's a darn 
good thing--not what they're doing, but the realignment.
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, yes, I definitely agree with you that 
there's a realignment going on. Until very recently, I think 
free speech and free speech culture was uncontroversially 
embraced really by both parties during the entire early period 
of the war on terror. Those issues strongly animated most 
Democrats that I knew. Most of my friends were in opposition to 
laws like the PATRIOT Act--or at least concerned about the 
potential for overreach there.
    Most people understood, for instance, the work of the ACLU 
in defending cases like the Skokie march. To the point about 
hate speech that was brought up before, I think it's important 
to point out that the reason that they defended those marchers 
is not because they liked hate speech or they liked Nazis.
    Chair Jordan. Right.
    Mr. Taibbi. It's because the American tradition understands 
that the moment you grant a government official the right to 
prohibit one kind of speech, you're going to have a whole 
series of people--
    Chair Jordan. Yes.
    Mr. Taibbi. --those people are all civil rights activists. 
They were afraid that the next thing that would happen would be 
Southern officials banning NAACP marches.
    That used to be sort of universally understood in America, 
and for some reason, in the last decade or so, there's been a 
complete change in how we look at those issues.
    Chair Jordan. Yes. I just want to do one last thing in the 
remaining few seconds that I have left. Let's put this on the 
screen, because I think this is interesting too. It tells you 
how upside-down things have become.
    We have testifying in front of us today Ms. Subramanya, who 
is from Canada, telling us, look, get ready because we've seen 
what's happened in our country, and we don't want it happening 
here.
    This is a recap of a phone call from one of the executives 
at Facebook with folks from the White House. The person 
recapping this just happens to be the former U.K. minister and 
member of Parliament, Nick Clegg, and he says this:

        I countered that removing the content like the White House 
        wanted them to do would represent a significant incursion in 
        traditional boundaries of free expression in the United States.

    So, we have a Canadian warning us. We got a member of 
Parliament warning--I think it's interesting, the irony here, 
that someone from Great Britain telling us about what our 
rights are. We had a little skirmish way back in 1776 about 
this very kind of thing.
    This is how upside down it has gotten. Three--I don't know 
Ms. Subramanya's politics, but two former Democrats, three 
journalists, and they invite a Republican. It just tells you 
what is going on, but I think, again, underscoring how 
important this is. It's not crazy, it's not bogus, it's not 
unfounded, as the Democrats have said, and the Fifth Circuit 
has certainly said it's not those three things.
    I'm over my time, but I'll now yield to Mr. Allred. The 
gentleman from Texas is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Allred. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield my time to the 
Ranking Member, Ms. Plaskett.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you to my colleague for yielding the 
time.
    Just first let's get correct, Ms. Troye is the first 
Republican that we have called as a witness. Unfortunately, we 
get one and you get three. That's the unfortunate part of being 
in the minority. So, you probably have invited more Democrats 
than we have, but she's the first Republican.
    I would remind you, Mr. Chair, if you didn't know, that the 
gentleman on the wall over there, Lamar Smith, the good man 
from Texas, was my first boss here when I was a staffer on the 
Hill. I also worked for Rob Portman when he was a Member of the 
House, and worked in the Bush administration.
    I've stayed where I am. People ask me, why are you a 
Democrat, I thought you were registered Republican. I was. I 
looked around and the Republican Party had moved and shifted to 
the right, and I was exactly still where I was, and so realized 
that I could not be a part of that party anymore.
    In asking some of these questions, one of the things that 
you brought up, Ms. Troye, that I thought was very interesting, 
is the discussion of these loyalty tests. We have heard the 
President say that he's going to do this again.
    I bring this up because the loyalty test is about his use 
of the Federal Government to exact revenge on individuals. 
Trump has said that he is going to weaponize his next 
administration, but to do that, he must have individuals who 
will do what he asks them to do outside of their duties in 
whichever specific position that is.
    I know that in the last administration, we've learned that 
the President was obsessed with loyalty from his staff. We all 
want loyalty. We all want people who are going to give us their 
loyalty. Some of us think of loyalty in a different way. I 
think of loyalty from my staff as telling me when I'm messing 
up, telling me when something is wrong, because they don't want 
me to do the wrong thing. That is loyalty.
    President Trump has a different sense of loyalty. His aide, 
Johnny McEntee, even conducted loyalty tests, including one-on-
one interviews with political appointees across different 
agencies.
    Of course, I had been an appointee in a Republican 
administration, democratic administrations. They have 
interviews with you to see where your ideology is, but it is 
not necessarily to see if you are going to give blind 
allegiance to the President.
    In this one it says that these interviews were to root out 
threats of leaks and other potential subversive acts.
    If he wins again, Trump has pledged to overhaul agencies 
and expand this loyalty test to not just political appointees, 
but nonpolitical career employees who have spent decades 
building their knowledge and expertise and possess invaluable 
experience that brings continuity to our government across 
different administrations.
    I know when I worked at the Department of Justice, it was 
important in each one of the divisions to have one person who 
was a career person to sit in all the discussions to ensure 
that there's continuity of government. They're vital public 
servants.
    This notion of throwing our systems and career officials, 
like national security officials, out the window based on 
political ideology should be troubling to us all.
    Ms. Troye, are you familiar with the loyalty test, and can 
you explain their purpose within the Trump Administration?
    Ms. Troye. I am. I'm very familiar with the loyalty test. 
It certainly was being enacted toward the end of the Trump 
Administration, where they were staffing people who, I would 
say, did not have the credentials traditionally into very 
senior roles in the National Security Council.
    For example, in the directorate of resilience, which I 
mentioned in my opening remarks where I said that it could 
impact disaster relief aid, I want to be very clear about that 
on how dangerous it is, because this person was potentially 
going to be in charge that had no background in it, did not 
understand how the interagency works on this, did not 
understand FEMA, did not understand HUD, did not understand 
what it takes to push this through the process.
    I will say that should loyalists be placed in positions 
like this going forward, the loyalty test being that you will 
not abide by the rule of law, that you will bend the rules, you 
will not follow the regulations and procedures, I think that we 
are heading down a further dark path that will affect all of 
us, doesn't matter, Democrats or Republicans.
    I know that in the Trump Administration, for example, there 
was a Fire Management Assistance Grant for California during 
the horrific 2018 wildfire season where Trump did not want to 
issue the aid. In fact, I believe he told Brock Long, who was 
the head of FEMA at the time, ``Don't give them a dime, because 
they were a blue State.'' I can tell you that it was only until 
Donald Trump was shown that Orange County voted in his favor 
majority that he finally released that aid.
    That should not play a role in how we respond to American 
citizens when they are in need, especially in things like 
disaster.
    So, when I look at Florida and I see Ron DeSantis, who is 
an opponent to Trump, I think about those people in Florida, 
primarily Republicans, who are always in the path of hurricanes 
at times, and I think about what it's going to look like for 
them when aid is not received should Trump get back into 
office.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes the gentleman--if any of you need 
a break, just let us know. I should've mentioned that earlier. 
Just let us know, and we'll be happy to do that.
    The gentleman from North Carolina is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Bishop. There is a very odd oppositional dynamic in 
this hearing which is striking. Ms. Troye, I want to get it by 
asking you this. You said something along the lines that the 
belief that there has been social media censorship against 
conservatives is sort of a figment of conservatives' 
imagination. Ms. Wasserman Schultz summarized it as a red 
herring--bogus red herring.
    You're aware of the Missouri v. Biden district court 
decision that recited evidence that the White House, the FBI, 
CISA, all engaged in working through the social media companies 
to conduct censorship. It was preliminarily enjoined. You're 
aware that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has reviewed 
that, found that the findings of the District Court were well 
supported by evidence, and modified and substantially affirmed 
the preliminary injunction against the government entered by--
are you aware of all that? Does it affect your view that all 
this is a figment of imagination?
    Ms. Troye. I am aware of the decision. I also want to 
clarify, I have not actually--never said that this is a 
conspiracy. You've not heard that comment from me.
    Mr. Bishop. So, do you believe there is censorship going on 
by means of the Federal Government on social media platforms--
or has been?
    Ms. Troye. I can only speak about my experience, and I will 
say that I've sat in a lot of these interagency meetings with 
social media companies. Ultimately, it was their decision. I 
will say that when content was removed, it was ultimately up to 
them. We followed the process.
    Mr. Bishop. Yes, but see, that's what the court has said is 
the problem, is that the agencies have engaged in this 
subterfuge where they say, well, we want you to make the 
decision. They're all over them to the point that their 
constant involvement makes it government involvement. That's 
the threat.
    Mr. Shellenberger, let me turn to you, because I was 
thinking about where we are. Twitter Files revealed these 
connections, right, direct connections between Elvis Chan of 
the FBI and social media companies, of CISA and the social 
media companies. Then your further reporting and yours, Mr. 
Taibbi, revealed the next layer, which is what you call the 
censorship industrial complex, the connection between CISA 
funding these adjacent agencies--people at Stanford, people at 
University of Washington--and so they could offload this exact 
subterfuge and they could pre-bunk stuff and stop whole 
narratives from taking hold.
    Now, your CTI League shows yet another dynamic in two ways, 
it seems. You've got this guy--we ought to get his name out 
there for folks--Pablo Breuer, you said, a commander with the 
Special Operations Command, I believe, and he's involved in 
this CTI League. They got Israeli, you mentioned British 
intelligence, and you say in part of your report, the authors--
talking about one of the reports--advocated for police, 
military, and intelligence involvement in censorship across 
Five Eyes nations and even suggested that INTERPOL should be 
involved.
    Why is that significant, Mr. Shellenberger?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Because--
    Mr. Bishop. If it's not blindingly obvious and do it as 
quickly as you can because I've got one other thing I really 
want to get to, if we can.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Well, because we don't want the police 
and the military to decide what we can say and read, and that's 
what makes our country amazing, is that our Founding Fathers, 
they said--it's the First Amendment, ``speech comes before 
government,'' right. It's not--in Europe, the king would decide 
whether you could say things. We didn't want it that way. We 
said we wanted to decide.
    Mr. Bishop. Here's what it tells me that's chilling--and, 
Ms. Subramanya, I'm reminded of your presence here as a 
Canadian. So, if they can't do it directly from the FBI, then 
they get institutions, academic--pseudo-academic institutions 
involved. If they find that's going to be blunted because we 
can go take their funding away because it's U.S. agency 
funding, then they get the Five Eyes involved.
    If they can't stop it here in the United States, they can 
go get the European Union or the other governments to say--or 
Canada, to deem this stuff to be threatening. That's what--and 
the dynamic deepens and deepens.
    This is a big deal. Here we are, every person on the 
minority side has talked about Donald Trump. I would think, Ms. 
Troye and others, that if you're concerned--if you're genuinely 
concerned about Donald Trump as a threat, what we're talking 
about today should be all the more threatening to you because 
we're talking about setting precedents and diminishing the 
ability of Americans to express themselves.
    So, Ms. Subramanya, back to you. Republicans have been 
involved in this, by the way. The former Chair of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee, Mac Thornberry, helped to repeal the 
Smith-Mundt Act. Nikki Haley said the other day that we ought 
not be allowed to have anonymous Twitter accounts.
    What do you make of this dynamic that I describe in that 
and what you're seeing in this hearing, that the party that has 
established--frankly, the Liberals established fundamental 
principles of free speech through the war in court. They've 
been continued consistently by the Supreme Court, but now 
they're under threat, but the other side just wants to talk 
about Donald Trump. What is going on?
    Ms. Subramanya. Oh, boy. So, look, I can't speak to what's 
happening here in America in terms of the internal political 
situation here. What I can point to is the fact that I come 
from a country where free expression, the right to express 
oneself freely has been under threat. It happened in a very 
short period of time. It just happened under 10 years. It's 
happening all over the world now.
    It's happening in Ireland. Ireland is about to pass 
legislation which is among the most--it's one of the most 
draconian hate speech laws in the world. They're trying to 
stamp out hate.
    How does one stamp out hate? It's part of the human 
condition. This is extremely worrying. The government cannot 
define hate, but yet they have this legislation. It can even 
come down to a situation where you could have a meme on your 
phone and the Irish police would have the authority to come and 
arrest you even if you haven't shared that meme.
    This is where we're going. We're going--it's straight out 
of Minority Report where the precogs determine that you're 
about to be hateful and they come and arrest you. This is 
happening in a Western, liberal democracy. So, we have to look 
at the warning signs. We have to look at what's happening in 
Canada. We have to look at what's happening in Ireland, France, 
and the EU.
    You're absolutely right, governments will find ways to go 
about censoring people. We know that's happening under the 
Biden Administration where they got media companies like 
Facebook and Twitter to deplatform content on their sites, 
which the administration didn't like. Since it comes from a 
private platform, it doesn't violate the First Amendment at 
first glance, but if it was under duress from the Federal 
Government, then there are grounds to--
    Mr. Bishop. Yes. Thank you, ma'am.
    Ms. Subramanya. --believe that it violates the spirit of 
the First Amendment.
    Mr. Bishop. My time is long expired. Mr. Chair, I yield.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    It's all frightening, but the name, Cyber Threat 
Intelligence League, it sounds like it's out of a Marvel comic. 
Like they give it this name, but it's like it's frightening 
what's going on.
    The gentleman from California is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Summaria?
    Ms. Subramanya. Subramanya.
    Mr. Garamendi. Subramanya. Thank you. You just happened to 
provide the opening for my comments.
    Indeed, we need to be very, very aware of the potential use 
of government to weapon--the weaponization of government 
against individuals, against free speech, against those who 
would oppose the government.
    Your concern is a very real concern, and America has a need 
to be concerned, because we have a former President and a 
gentleman who wants to be President again, who is in the 
process of articulating and laying out his agenda for a new 
term as President. Donald Trump has been very, very clear how 
he intends to use the government to really achieve the things 
that you are fearful of happening. It's very clear what he 
intends to do. He has said so publicly in his political 
rallies.
    Just a couple of weeks ago, he reposted on Truth Social, 
his network, calling for the New York Attorney General and a 
Supreme Court judge to be placed under citizen's arrest. These 
two individuals, you'll remember, are the prosecutor and the 
judge in his civil fraud case in New York. Clearly, would use 
his power as President to attack the judicial system in 
America.
    He has since gone on to attack both, again on social media, 
and threatens to indict any opponent he faces and take them out 
if he wins in 2024.
    Indeed, we do have reasons to be concerned about the future 
should this man become President.
    I think one of my colleagues on the majority side indicated 
that we should look to the four-years when Trump was President, 
to what he did then as President, and many of the things that 
the witnesses are concerned about did, in fact, take place 
during his Presidency.
    One example of a larger pattern of Mr. Trump's rhetoric, he 
has repeatedly and egregiously used his position of power to 
spread conspiracy theories, fan the flames of discord with 
inflammatory rhetoric and make threats of political 
prosecution.
    Words have power, particularly when they're used by someone 
who's so prominent in our news.
    Certainly, all of you, including all of us, are concerned 
about the right to free speech. I would be very interested to 
see what legislation comes forward as a result of these 
hearings where we are basically repeating what we heard nine 
months ago.
    So, what is the legislation that would address this? Mr. 
Shellen-berger, you presented four different ideas. I'm not 
going to ask you to repeat those. They're in the record, and 
I'm curious to see if the majority will take them up or just, 
again, to flog this horse one more time.
    We've seen the real consequences of Mr. Trump's behavior. 
We saw it after he repeatedly attacked the FBI for what he 
thought were their transgressions. So, what happened to career 
FBI agents? They are threatened, seriously threatened, in their 
homes, death threats.
    Of course, January 6th is well known, and we won't go into 
that in great detail.
    So, Ms. Troye, from your experience in the White House, has 
Donald Trump used his rhetoric as a weapon, weaponization of 
government?
    Ms. Troye. Absolutely. Some of the examples that I provided 
are examples of how the government was used against the people 
under Donald Trump.
    Honestly, when I heard your opening statement, I felt like 
you were describing what I had lived for four years working in 
the U.S.Government, of the fears that I saw that were coming to 
fruition, almost word for word to be honest, and I was thinking 
about it in what the future does hold should Trump come back 
into office because that is sort of the government that he 
wanted.
    It was to use the government to his favor, to attack his 
political enemies, and to silence any dissent when he fired 
heads of intelligence agencies just for telling the truth about 
potential foreign adversaries or things that were happening 
with our election or merely just for taking a stand on things 
that he wanted to do in foreign policy that would've put us 
into very dangerous predicaments.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you very much.
    My time having expired, I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Florida.
    Ms. Cammack. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    For the life of me, I cannot find anywhere in the public 
notices, in our meeting memos, in our congressional hearing 
documents, any mention of where this is a hearing about 
President Trump. It escapes me. I know that we have a literacy 
crisis in this country, and I am shocked that it has made its 
way to the Halls of Congress. I think we should do something 
about that.
    Anyways, I speak for all Americans, I believe, when I say 
that it really shouldn't matter who's in office. It really 
shouldn't matter who is in the White House because, regardless, 
we should all be concerned about our Constitutional rights. We 
should all be here protecting our Constitutional rights.
    So, I would encourage my Democratic colleagues that maybe 
they should, I don't know, focus on the evidence that has been 
presented here, because it impacts all Americans, not just 
Republicans but Democrats too.
    So, I think that we could actually do something to address 
the weaponization of government in a bipartisan fashion, 
because it has tremendous impacts on our everyday life.
    So, I'm going to just jump right into it. Ms. Troye, I 
appreciate you being here. My colleague, Mr. Bishop, touched on 
this, but I want to just make sure that I am exceptionally 
clear.
    You said that, quote, ``the government is not taking social 
media posts down.'' This is from your opening statement. You 
said that the censorship of American people is, quote, ``the 
result of the social media companies exercising their First 
Amendment rights.''
    You were part of Vice President Pence's team, were you not?
    Ms. Troye. Yes, that is correct.
    Ms. Cammack. So, as someone who is familiar with White 
House officials, you can confirm that the Deputy Assistant to 
the President and Director of Digital Strategy, Rob Flaherty, 
and the White House Senior Advisor, Andrew Slavitt, are indeed 
government officials and not social media executives, correct?
    Ms. Troye. Yes. When they were serving in the White House, 
they are government officials.
    Ms. Cammack. OK. So, on February 6, 2021, at 9:45 p.m.--I 
just love when we have timestamps and all this in writing. It 
helps tremendously--when Mr. Flaherty emailed Twitter 
executives demanding the immediate removal of accounts linked 
to Biden's adult daughter, he stated,

        Please remove this account immediately.

He also stated, quote,

        I have tried to use your form three times. It won't work. I 
        think this is ridiculous that I need to upload my ID to prove 
        that I am an authorized representative of the President.

Two minutes later, at 9:47 p.m., Twitter executives responded, 
saying,

        Thanks for sending this over, we'll escalate for further review 
        here.

He shot back,

        I cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved 
        immediately.

Those accounts were then suspended and taken down.
    Now, fast-forward about a month, Mr. Slavitt, Biden's White 
House Senior Advisor, said in writing,

        You know, it would be nice to establish trust with Twitter 
        executives. Internally, we have been considering what our 
        options are on what to do about noncompliance.

    Is that a threat? Would you consider that a threat from 
Biden White House officials to social media company executives 
to censor Americans' First Amendment rights?
    Ms. Troye. I think you would have to ask that question of 
them. I can't speak for what was intended by that message.
    Ms. Cammack. If you were in that position, what would you 
do?
    Ms. Troye. Well, actually, I can tell you because I've had 
conversations with social media companies during the Trump 
Administration while on Mike Pence's office where I did call a 
social media company, and we did say, ``Could you please take 
these photos down, if possible, because a U.S. missionary was 
killed brutally in Cameroon,''--
    Ms. Cammack. Yes.
    Ms. Troye. --Charles Wesco from Indiana, whose brother 
serves as a Republican in the Indiana State legislature, it was 
his brother who was killed brutally. The Ambassador from 
Cameroon, U.S. Ambassador, did weigh in and say,

        Can we take these down while they circulate to notify the next 
        of kin before they see these horrific images of their father 
        brutally murdered in a crossfire between two different opposing 
        groups in Cameroon?

    Ms. Cammack. Absolutely. Ms. Troye, that is heartbreaking 
and--wait, hold on. I've got to reclaim my time here. So, Ms. 
Troye, what I'm saying is--
    Ms. Troye. Can I finish my answer?
    Ms. Cammack. No, ma'am. I presented you with a parody 
account that the White House had to take down--a parody. That 
is a very different situation than graphic photos of a tragedy. 
Would you agree?
    Ms. Troye. I am speaking about--
    Ms. Cammack. That's a simple yes or no.
    Ms. Troye. --a situation where a White House--
    Ms. Cammack. Ms. Troye, if you cannot distinguish between a 
parody account and memes and jokes versus graphic photos, 
that's a problem.
    Ms. Troye. I can't speak to what they were referencing. I 
don't know--
    Ms. Cammack. I just laid it out for you, but I'll reclaim 
my time.
    I'm going to switch to you, Mr. Shellenberger and Mr. 
Taibbi. Thank you guys for appearing here before. In very short 
order, I have to go appear before the CDC Director, Dr. Cohen.
    Please talk about the treasure trove of evidence that you 
have found with regards to the CDC silencing world-renowned 
epidemiologists, such as Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and the impact 
that this has had on public health and the health of various 
Americans around the country because of the work of the CDC and 
FDA silencing these voices.
    Chair Jordan. The time of the gentlewoman is expired, but 
the witnesses can respond and answer the question.
    Ms. Cammack. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Just very briefly, during a crisis, you 
need free speech so you can respond--you can have these issues, 
you can debate them. What we saw was both Harvard 
epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff and Stanford epidemiologist Jay 
Bhattacharya were both censored. Dr. Bhattacharya was put on 
the Trends Blacklist.
    The things that they were advocating were mainstream 
epidemiology, and their voices were stifled. We now have seen 
the consequences of it, most particularly this horrendous 
learning loss among children that could've been avoided if we 
had adopted what Dr. Bhattacharya was recommending.
    Chair Jordan. Mr. Taibbi, go ahead.
    Mr. Taibbi. Just quickly if I could, the Trends Blacklist 
image that we saw with Dr. Bhattacharya, that was one of the 
very first things that we found in the Twitter Files, and it 
was an early example of what we came to understand as 
malinformation. It's the idea of something that's not untrue or 
it is true but is believed to produce an undesirable political 
result. This is extremely dangerous.
    Dr. Bhattacharya had a legitimate scientific opinion. He 
turned out to be correct. His study was later ratified by the 
WHO and--but it was considered to be against the policies of 
the current government, and so he became one of the most 
suppressed people in the country during 2020-2021, which is 
exactly what the First Amendment was designed to prevent.
    Ms. Cammack. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. I would just point out before recognizing Mr. 
Goldman that we will take you up on what you said, Ms. Troye. 
Ms. Cammack asked you a question about Mr. Slavitt and Mr. 
Flaherty, and you said we should ask them, and we're going to.
    That's why we sent them a subpoena this morning. We want 
them to come in and answer these questions about why the White 
House was attempting to censor Americans' speech.
    With that, I recognize the gentleman from New York for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    My colleagues and friends from North Carolina and Florida 
are asking why we are talking about Donald Trump. The answer is 
because this Subcommittee is called the Subcommittee on the 
Weaponization of the Federal Government. Because of that, we 
actually--the only evidence that we have here in front of us 
today about the Weaponization of the Federal Government is from 
Ms. Troye, who has outlined in detail--and I'm sure she has 
more detail--how Donald Trump weaponized the Federal Government 
against his enemies and for his own political interests and how 
he intends to do it again.
    So, if we really want to talk about the weaponization of 
the Federal Government, we should talk about it, and that's 
Donald Trump. That's not this grand, crazy conspiracy of how 
the administration has utilized the social media companies, 
against whom the First Amendment does not apply to suppress 
speech.
    This is actually the second hearing, I guess our quarterly 
hearing now, on the Twitter Files, with the same witnesses that 
we had.
    In the first hearing, I asked Chair Jordan if he could 
identify any evidence of the government under the Biden 
Administration actually censoring anyone through the social 
media companies. He pointed out to me an email on January 22nd 
from Clarke Humphrey to flag a tweet that was from Robert F. 
Kennedy, Jr., as evidence.
    Mr. Goldman. The problem was--and the Chair did not 
acknowledge the tweet was never taken down. How can you have 
censorship if the tweet was not taken down?
    Since March 9th, that hearing, this Committee has had 29 
witnesses--
    Chair Jordan. Would the gentleman yield?
    Mr. Goldman. I will not only just because I have a bunch. 
You're the Chair, so I'm sure you'll respond after me.
    The 29 witnesses have testified and every single one 
testified that the government never coerced, pressured, or 
threatened any social media company to remove any content.
    Mr. Taibbi, I introduced a letter that I led to X--let's 
call it ``X'' now; that way, we can know the difference between 
when Elon Musk took it over and before, when it was Twitter--
from November 21st.
    Have you read this?
    Mr. Taibbi. No.
    Mr. Goldman. Well, do you think it would be problematic if 
X leaves up terrorist violence and propaganda, in violation of 
the terms of service?
    Mr. Taibbi. Terrorist violence or terrorist propaganda?
    Mr. Goldman. If it violates their terms of service, is it 
problematic?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, it depends on what the content is, but 
they're a private company. They can do what they want with the 
content.
    Mr. Goldman. A-ha. They're a private company, and they can 
do what they want with the content.
    Do you think it's problematic that X would profit off of 
the terrorist violence, propaganda, and content on their social 
media platform?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, first, just to go back to the--
    Mr. Goldman. No, no. Just answer the question. I don't have 
time. Do you think it's a problem if they profit off of it?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, if the company makes money doing what it 
does, I don't necessarily see a problem with that.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. Interesting.
    So, let me just move on, because you said the biggest 
concern--
    Mr. Taibbi. The difference--
    Mr. Goldman. Sir--
    Mr. Taibbi. The difference between--
    Mr. Goldman. I'm sorry. You said the biggest concern that 
you had from the Twitter Files was the systematic flags for 
social media companies.
    Now, that Stanford EIP that you're talking about, I'm sure 
you are aware, has documented that the social media platforms 
to whom they flagged potentially problematic tweets took action 
on only 35 percent of them, and only 13 percent of them were 
removed.
    Mr. Shellenberger, you said the biggest problem--and let me 
just ask you, Mr. Taibbi, real briefly: You would agree that 
these flags, the systematic flags that you saw, were flags for 
a violation of the terms of service of the social media 
company; is that right?
    Mr. Taibbi. Sometimes. Sometimes, in the case of the 
instances like Congressman Massie, they were actually true 
information.
    Mr. Goldman. Well, that may be the case, but the flag was 
for a violation of the terms of service.
    Mr. Taibbi. It's for their interpretation of a violation--
    Mr. Goldman. Then the social media company has to determine 
whether or not it is actually a violation of their terms of 
service. In 87 percent of those flags, they were not removed.
    Mr. Shellenberger, I have a brief time. You said that the 
censorship--the biggest problem you have is the censorship that 
you talk about as election interference.
    Do you agree that Russia used social media, including 
Twitter, to interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you.
    Now, briefly, if I may, Mr. Chair, just have the extra time 
that my colleagues have had--you've talked about the Hunter 
Biden laptop and how the FBI knew it existed.
    You are aware, of course, that the laptop, so to speak, was 
actually--that was published in the New York Post was actually 
a hard drive that the New York Post admitted here was not 
authenticated as real. It was not the laptop the FBI had. 
You're aware of that, right?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It was the same contents.
    Mr. Goldman. How do you know?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Because it was the same--
    Mr. Goldman. You would have to--
    Mr. Shellenberger. --everyone has verified it's the same 
contents.
    Mr. Goldman. --authenticate it to know it was the same 
contents. You have no idea.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Are you suggesting that it's a 
conspiracy--
    Mr. Goldman. You know hard drives can be manipulated.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Are you suggesting the New York Post 
participated in a conspiracy to construct the contents of the 
Hunter Biden laptop?
    Mr. Goldman. No, sir. The problem is that hard drives can 
be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia--
    Mr. Shellenberger. What's the evidence that this happened?
    Mr. Goldman. Well, there is actual evidence of it, but the 
point is, it's not the same thing.
    Mr. Shellenberger. There's no evidence of--so, you're 
engaging in a conspiracy theory.
    Mr. Goldman. I'm glad you agree with me, Mr. Shellenberger, 
that transparency is the most important thing.
    My last question for you is, do you think it would be 
transparent if Hunter Biden came to this Congress and testified 
in a public hearing, and more transparent than if he testified 
privately?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It's literally, I've never thought about 
that. I have no idea.
    Mr. Goldman. You don't know?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I've literally never thought about that.
    Chair Jordan. The time--
    Mr. Goldman. Is public testimony more transparent than 
private testimony?
    Mr. Shellenberger. This is random now we're here. Are you 
familiar with the First Amendment?
    Mr. Goldman. Mr. Chair, I yield back.
    Mr. Shellenberger. It says the Congress shall take no 
action to abridge freedom of speech.
    Chair Jordan. Yes.
    Mr. Shellenberger. That's what you just described.
    Chair Jordan. Mr. Shellenberger, is 13 percent censorship 
still censorship?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely.
    Chair Jordan. The other 87 percent is what we call the 
chilling effect that the courts have long recognized that they 
engaged in. That is the problem.
    Mr. Shellenberger. There's a broad--by the way, part of the 
operation, Congressman Goldman--
    Chair Jordan. Holy cow.
    Mr. Shellenberger. --part of the operation was to change 
the terms of service. So, you see them constantly trying to 
change the terms of service.
    You see them--it was 35 percent of the URLs that were--this 
is according to EIP--were labeled, removed, or soft-blocked. 
That's all forms of censorship. Censorship is not just removal.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady from--
    Mr. Goldman. Sixty-five percent were not. So, how can the 
government be so coercive that they were--
    Mr. Shellenberger. So, does the First Amendment say--
    Mr. Armstrong. That's about par for the course on 
government efficiency.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Does the First Amendment say the 
government can censor 35 percent?
    Chair Jordan. The time of the gentleman has expired.
    Mr. Goldman. They're not censoring. They're flagging.
    Chai Jordan. The chair recognizes--
    Mr. Goldman. The social media companies--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Under coercion.
    [Cross-talk.]
    Mr. Taibbi. Thirty-five percent of the First Amendment?
    Chair Jordan. The Chair recognizes--
    Mr. Goldman. It's not the First Amendment. It's the terms 
of service, as you said.
    Chair Jordan. Oh, my gosh.
    Mr. Goldman. They are flagging it for the social media 
companies to make their own decisions. That is not the First 
Amendment. That is the terms of service.
    Chair Jordan. You've just seen the--
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, Congressman, you're an attorney. You know 
that four Federal judges have already ruled that--
    Mr. Goldman. I know that it's on appeal in front of the 
Supreme Court right now.
    Mr. Taibbi. OK.
    Chair Jordan. That debate was very constructive.
    Ms. Hageman. Whew. That was fun.
    Chair Jordan. I think that got to the heart of the issue. 
That's the problem, right there.
    The gentlelady from Wyoming is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Hageman. Thank you.
    When you were here in March, I commented that sunshine is 
the best disinfectant and that this place needs to be 
fumigated. We've been working hard to do that over the last 
seven months, but it hasn't been easy, and our work continues.
    Mr. Shellenberger, when you last testified before our 
Subcommittee, you responded to a question from Chair Jordan 
when he asked about the Hunter Biden laptop story. I'm going to 
quote what you said, quote,

        Now, maybe the FBI agents were going to Mark Zuckerberg at 
        Facebook and to Twitter executives and were warning about a 
        hack-and-leak potentially involving Hunter Biden. Maybe those 
        guys didn't have anything to do with the guys that had the 
        laptop. We just don't know.

    Well, you know what? Now, we do know. We know after 
interviewing Laura Dehmlow, who at the time of the Hunter Biden 
laptop story was on the Foreign Influence Task Force. We have 
learned from her that she and others on that task force did, in 
fact, know about the laptop before the New York Post story 
broke, and they knew it was his.
    In other words, the work done in the year since the release 
of the Twitter Files has continued to expose the extent of the 
censorship industrial complex. These discoveries show the 
importance of your testimony and the oversight work that has 
been done by this Committee.
    What do you think this shows in terms of the complexity and 
scope of the censorship industrial complex?
    What I mean by that is, even with the trove of information 
that you released over a year ago, or approximately a year ago, 
we're still filling in the gaps to understand the extent of 
what the Federal Government has engaged interms of violating 
the First Amendment.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I think what it--one of the most 
important things that it shows is that this censorship is in 
service of disinformation.
    It wasn't that they prevented the New York Post from 
publishing. It wasn't even that they did--the tweet eventually 
did come back on Twitter; it was eventually allowed. The 
disinformation that was planted, that myself and all my family 
and friends believed, was that there was something fraudulent 
about the Hunter Biden laptop, which we now know was actually 
the Hunter Biden laptop. It's been verified now by all the 
major media and everybody else. It created the perception that 
it was misinformation by the Russians. Of course, that 
conspiracy theory continues to be peddled today.
    So, that's what it did. That's how these guys at CTIL 
thought about it. That's how all these operatives that are used 
to waging disinformation campaigns and psy-ops in foreign 
countries turned those tools against the American people.
    Ms. Hageman. That's the critical point.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Ms. Hageman. They have been turned against the American 
people.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely.
    Ms. Hageman. What do you think about the fact that the FBI 
agents warning Twitter about a hack-and-leak were the same 
agents who knew of the existence and legitimacy of that laptop? 
What do you think about those people?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It's shock--it's shock--like you said, I 
was trying to only report on what we knew at the time, but, 
obviously, when that came out, it's absolutely shocking that 
you would have the FBI sitting on this information in 2019, and 
then seeding the idea that there would be a hack-and-leak 
coming.
    It wasn't just the Aspen Institute; it was also that 
Stanford came out, and they used that as a pretext to attack 
the Pentagon Papers principle, upheld by the Supreme Court, 
that when journalists, like us, are leaked information, we can 
publish it and we're protected by the First Amendment.
    We saw Stanford Institute attacking that precedent, saying, 
journalists should no longer following the Pentagon Papers 
principle, they should no longer report on information leaked 
to them, they should not do what Matt and I and Alex just did 
with publishing these files leaked to us by a patriotic 
whistleblower who knew absolutely that this was wrong, that it 
was a violation of the First Amendment, that it was a violation 
of it in the spirit in the letter.
    That's the kind of--to see these institutions of the 
establishment argue against this great American tradition of 
journalism and the First Amendment, it's quite appalling.
    Ms. Hageman. It's shocking.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Shocking.
    Ms. Hageman. Ms. Subramanya, here in the House, we are 
exposing the U.S. Government's censorship by proxy, which uses 
social media companies, academia, and private companies to 
circumvent the First Amendment.
    At the same time, we are watching with horror as liberal 
democracies in Europe and Canada are not even trying to hide 
their efforts to censor their citizens. We know where this is 
going and without exposure and reform, we could be doomed to 
the same fate.
    In your opening statement, you discuss the impact of the 
Online News Act and the other censorship efforts seen in 
European nations and you issue a stern warning that I hope all 
Americans will take to heart.
    Could you describe the trends that you are seeing and, 
specifically, what tools or mechanisms of control these 
governments are trying to exert over free speech?
    Ms. Subramanya. Thank you for that question.
    Some of the examples are from my testimony. So, debanking 
is one obvious tool that the Canadian Government in a sense has 
pioneered, as far as Western liberal democracies are concerned. 
China has been doing that for years, but it's now come to the 
West. They went after peaceful protesters and punished them, 
weaponized the financial system, weaponized the government 
against them, to teach them a lesson, ``You can't do this ever 
again.''
    This sort of thing has a chilling effect on people's 
ability to express themselves freely. That's certainly happened 
in Canada. What's happening in Ireland, again, another country 
that I mentioned, what's happening in France, the EU directive 
on online speech--all these things are just extremely 
problematic.
    What is--I want to say something here. What is under threat 
here is a core value of Western civilization.
    Ms. Hageman. That's right.
    Ms. Subramanya. That is what is being undermined here. That 
goes back to the Enlightenment. That is what we have to fight 
for.
    The way you tackle misinformation, disinformation, all 
these things which are bandied about loosely by people who want 
to censor you--the best solution to these things is more robust 
debate. That goes back to the Enlightenment period. That's what 
I want everybody to remember.
    Ms. Hageman. Thank you.
    Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger. 
Thank you for battling for all us. Thank you for working so 
hard to protect our First Amendment rights. We really, really 
are terribly indebted to you--and you, as well, Janine (ph).
    Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    Ms. Subramanya, well said.
    The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    In 2017, as some of you may recall, one of Trump's first 
official actions as President was to issue the chaotic 
Executive Order barring any travel from seven predominantly 
Muslim countries, effectively serving as a Muslim ban.
    He continued these attacks on immigrant communities 
throughout his Presidency. He has promised to strip immigrants, 
if elected again, of their benefits and work permits, execute 
the largest deportation effort in American history, strip 
immigrant children of American citizenship even if they're born 
here, and reinstate and expand the Muslim ban.
    Ms. Troye, you were an advisor in the White House when the 
Muslim travel ban was implemented. Can you tell us, as a 
national security expert, how that--what happened when that ban 
took place? Was there advice given before the President issued 
that?
    Ms. Troye. Sure. There were numerous discussions.
    Just to clarify, during the travel ban time, I was at DHS. 
I was the lead intelligence officer on the travel ban, 
coordinating the entire community.
    There were significant discussions on intelligence 
assessments conducted. I will say that there were heated 
discussions in meetings where members of the Trump 
Administration, loyalists, who wanted to override community 
intelligence assessments to suit the countries that they wanted 
on the list. There was significant pushback. There was advice 
from career intelligence officers, senior intelligence officers 
like myself, about the threshold of these assessments.
    I will tell you that it went to the extent where there were 
senior officials googling what they considered to be 
intelligence input and sending it to me to be included in 
official community coordinated intelligence assessments and 
saying that those were facts, which was appalling to me, 
because that is not how the intelligence community--that's not 
how we operate.
    So, there were numerous situations like that where that was 
the dynamic that we faced on critical issues like this, which 
impact numerous matters of national security that I can't get 
into because they're classified. Those matters of national 
security when discussing certain countries and the impacts of 
the travel ban were serious, and they were raised.
    Ms. Plaskett. So, in the execution of that travel ban, can 
you explain to us or share with us the interagency actions in 
the immediate announcement of the travel ban? Was this 
something that had been worked through?
    Ms. Troye. No.
    Ms. Plaskett. How did that happen?
    Ms. Troye. No. We were blindsided by--when it was issued, 
especially at DHS.
    As you saw--it was horrible--there was chaos at the 
airports, which you saw. We did not have the proper time to 
figure out how we were going to implement this Executive Order. 
There was no coordination of how we would carry those things 
out, especially in the aftermath of it. I remember CBP agents 
sitting at airports and TSA--like, everyone was mass confusion 
about what was happening.
    The leadership of the Department was not consulted or given 
a heads-up.
    That is kind of how that played out at the beginning.
    Ms. Plaskett. This is from a newly elected President who 
did not understand the levers of power that he had on coming 
into office. I can only imagine in the next administration, 
should he be elected, what he would do, understanding an 
individual who has a long history of racist controversies, who 
has xenophobia in his usage of what he has done.
    A 1991 book by John O'Donnell, and Trump's criticism of a 
Black accountant. He says,

        Black guys counting my money, I hate it. The only kind of 
        people I want counting my money are short guys that wear 
        yarmulkes every day. I think that the guy is lazy, and it's 
        probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in Blacks. 
        It really is. I believe it's out of his control.

When questioned about it, he said, ``The stuff O'Donnell said 
about me is probably truth.''
    This is an individual who, when he was in the White House, 
denied making the comment about ``shithole countries'' that 
people should go back to, although Senators, U.S. Senators, 
present at the meeting said that it had happened.
    Ms. Troye, you signed a statement with over 130 national 
security experts that explained how Trump had routinely 
vilified immigrants in this country, which, among other things, 
makes him unfit to be the Commander in Chief.
    Many of us are offended when he demonizes individuals, 
immigrants, from a moral and personal perspective, but what 
effect does it practicably have on national security stability 
when Trump broadly demonizes immigrant groups in this country?
    Ms. Troye. Well, I am the daughter of immigrants. My mom is 
a Mexican immigrant, and I am of Mexican descent. I will say--
    Ms. Plaskett. Which the President said were rapists, right?
    Ms. Troye. Correct. I remember that.
    I will say that it leads to anti-immigrant sentiment. It 
leads to attacks on immigrants. It leads to situations like--
when they repeat the ``Great Replacement'' narratives, it leads 
to mass shootings, like the one in El Paso at the Walmart where 
my aunt was in, when the shooter talked about the Hispanic 
invasion of Texas. It leads to situations like that. It leads 
to the violence and hate that you are continuing to see and the 
divisiveness of this country.
    I will tell you that it also speaks to--another scenario 
that I remember clearly was when Trump kept calling it the 
``China virus.'' He did it on purpose. It was--the attacks on 
Asian people in this country increased during the pandemic.
    That is one thing that I know was recognized internally in 
the White House, that this rhetoric would increase attacks on 
Asian-Americans here, Asians in our country. I will tell you 
that Mike Pence took that very seriously. He did not use that 
lingo, because he knew that it would lead to these types of 
hateful acts that we're still seeing in our country today.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back.
    We have one more questioner. I don't know about Ms. 
Sanchez, but I think we have Mr. Armstrong on our side. Then 
I'll give the Ranking Member a couple minutes for some thank-
yous and closing comments. I'll just take a minute or two. Then 
we'll be done.
    So, if you can hang with us, Mr. Armstrong is recognized 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Upstairs, the CDC Director is testifying in front of an 
Oversight Committee hearing. When I get a chance to go up 
there, I'm going to ask them about the CDC buying--using 
taxpayers' data to buy location on American citizens to see if 
they comply with COVID lockdown.
    Down here, we're talking about censorship and social media. 
The reason I bring those two things up is because I think that 
the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment are what make the 
United States unique in the world. There is no other government 
on this planet that has such robust protections of both speech 
and privacy.
    They have also held up and been incredibly resilient 
throughout the course of time. The Fourth Amendment has dealt 
with listening devices and drones and telephoto lenses. The 
First Amendment--you talked about Skokie v. Illinois.
    The problem is, I don't know if they survive the digital 
age, not without Congress's help. We're going to deal with the 
Fourth Amendment and privacy and all of that.
    The First Amendment means that

        The government has no power to restrict expression because of 
        its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.

Thurgood Marshall. Pretty smart guy. The problem we run into 
with the government's current and extensive efforts to censor 
speech on social media comes down to a few essential questions: 
What is permissible speech, and who decides what's permissible 
speech?
    So, we've talked about it and we've alluded to it and we've 
written a report about it, but I want to talk just really 
briefly.
    Mr. Shellenberger, what is the Election Integrity 
Partnership? What is it?
    Mr. Shellenberger. So, the Election Integrity Partnership 
was--the idea for it came from the Department of Homeland 
Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. It 
was a collaboration of four NGO's, really led by Stanford 
Internet Observatory, to flag content and urge the social media 
platforms to censor it in one way or another, whether to take 
it down or put a label on it or throttle it.
    Mr. Armstrong. The government was involved in funding it 
and creating it?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Correct.
    Mr. Armstrong. Was it effective?
    Mr. Shellenberger. As we were discussing, it resulted in 
action on--they responded--the platforms responded to 75 
percent of the content that was being flagged by the EIP, and 
then in 35 percent of those cases they took action.
    Mr. Armstrong. Mr. Taibbi, you earlier wanted to jump in on 
this subject, and I'm going to allow you an opportunity to 
talk.
    The question is, was the government involved and engaged in 
censoring speech leading up to the 2020 election?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think so. Absolutely. Through the EIP 
and through a variety of other means.
    I think it's also worth pointing out--you brought up the 
purchasing of geolocation data. Many of the companies that do 
social media monitoring are also in the business of selling 
geolocation data to the government, so it's a very similar 
pattern.
    Even though there's been a Supreme Court ruling that says 
that you can't get geolocation data without a warrant--I 
believe it was Carpenter v. United States right?
    Mr. Armstrong. U.S. v. Carpenter. Yes.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes. It subsequently came out that multiple 
agencies were doing that anyway through middleman companies. 
This is basically the same pattern that we see with speech with 
groups like the EIP or CTIL. It's essentially a workaround, a 
legal work-around.
    Mr. Armstrong. Well, I think we're going to the--and it 
didn't quit in 2020. We're going to get to that.
    The problem is, we define ``misinformation'' and 
``disinformation'' very differently, and what I've come to 
figure out what it means from the government is ``anything 
critical of the government.''
    It's already evolved from that. I sat in Brennan's 
transcribed interview, and he just blatantly said, ``I don't 
care if it's true or not.''
    In June 2021, CISA's Countering Foreign Influence Task 
Force created a mis-, dis-, and malinformation team, the MDM 
team.
    What is malinformation, Mr. Shellenberger?
    Mr. Shellenberger. That's accurate information that could 
lead people to have the wrong conclusion. So, the main example 
of this is often true stories of vaccine side effects that 
might lead people to be hesitant about taking the vaccine.
    Mr. Armstrong. So, not only were they censoring information 
they deemed to be inaccurate, they were censoring accurate 
information. They're continuing to do it now.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Not only that, but both CTIL and the 
leaders of the Stanford Internet Observatory emphasized that 
malinformation was the main event. Stopping narratives was the 
main event; it was their main focus. The smaller stuff, the 
inaccurate tweets, that was less of a concern. They were really 
focused on the big objectives--in this case, making sure people 
took the vaccines.
    Mr. Armstrong. So, an agency funded and created by the 
government, a partnership funded and created by the 
government's number-one stated goal is to censor true 
information.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Whole narratives, whole ways of 
thinking.
    Mr. Armstrong. That should terrify everybody--Democrat, 
Republican, Independent, young, old, anybody else.
    Mr. Shellenberger. May I add--
    Mr. Armstrong. I yield back.
    Mr. Shellenberger. May I add one thing, Congressman?
    Mr. Armstrong. Sure.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Which is just that, if the Democrats are 
very, very concerned about President Trump. I would ask them, 
if they're so concerned about President Trump, would you want 
him to control the censorship apparatus? Would you want that, 
given all the things that you've said? Would you like him to be 
able to call Twitter and Facebook and all these other platforms 
and demand that they censor content? It doesn't seem consistent 
to me.
    Chair Jordan. Well said.
    The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair recognizes the Ranking Member for a closing 
comment, and then we'll close the Committee.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to thank 
the witnesses for being here.
    Chair Jordan. I, too, want to thank our witnesses.
    Ms. Troye, thank you for being here.
    Ms. Subramanya, thank you. You said just a few minutes ago 
that this is about Western civilization. I think the gentleman 
from North Dakota said it well. The First Amendment, Fourth 
Amendment are at the heart of that, and that's why we're doing 
this. So, thank you.
    Frankly, I think you're--I just met you today, but you 
strike me as almost too nice, because it's not ``debanking''; 
it's stealing, it's taking. They're taking someone's property. 
That's what they did to this guy who served in the Canadian 
Mounted Police. What they did, frankly, I hope doesn't ever 
happen in this country.
    Thank you for being here. It was very good.
    To our witnesses, Mr. Taibbi, Mr. Shellenberger, thank you 
for coming back. I think the Democrats said that this is like a 
quarterly thing. I think we should make it a quarterly thing. 
The First Amendment and Fourth Amendment are that darn 
important.
    For your work a year ago, you two guys and a few others, I 
don't know that we'd have all the information we have. So, 
someday, someone's going to write the history books and they're 
going to recognize folks like you who are willing to stand up, 
frankly, coming from the other party--because most of this 
censorship has been against conservatives and Republicans, but 
some are Democrat, and I'm against all of it. They're going to 
write--when they write the history, they're going to say, these 
two guys stepped forward, along with a few others, to bring 
this to a--to make the country aware of this.
    Then we have done, now, four reports--on CISA, on the FTC, 
on this JIRA ticketing system that the EIP and the Stanford--
all these guys are working on, and others, but it started 
there.
    So, again, thank you, and we'll have you back, if you'll 
come.
    We'll definitely have you back, too, Ms. Subramanya. You 
were great.
    So, thank you all for being here, and that concludes 
today's hearing.
    [Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

    All materials submitted for the record by Members of the 
Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal 
Government can be found at: https://docs.house.gov/Committee/
Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=116615.

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