[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, MARCH 9, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-7
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
51-505 WASHINGTON : 2023
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 DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina ERIC SWALWELL, California
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana TED LIEU, California
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon J. LUIS CORREA, California
BEN CLINE, Virginia MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
LANCE GOODEN, Texas JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey LUCY McBATH, Georgia
TROY NEHLS, Texas MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
BARRY MOORE, Alabama VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
KEVIN KILEY, California DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming CORI BUSH, Missouri
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas GLENN IVEY, Maryland
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
CHRIS STEWART, Utah STEPHEN LYNCH, Massachusetts
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York LINDA SANCHEZ, California
MATT GAETZ, Florida DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana GERALD CONNOLLY, Virginia
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota JOHN GARAMENDI, California
W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida COLIN ALLRED, Texas
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
KAT CAMMACK, Florida DAN GOLDMAN, New York
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming
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, March 9, 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........................................ 2
WITNESSES
Mr. Michael Shellenberger, Journalist, Co-founder, Public, a
Substack publication
Oral Testimony................................................. 7
Prepared Testimony............................................. 10
Mr. Matthew Taibbi, Independent Journalist
Oral Testimony................................................. 78
Prepared Testimony............................................. 80
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 128
Materials submitted from the Honorable Stephen Lynch, the Select
Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government
from the State of Massachusetts, for the record
An indictment in the U.S. v. The Internet Research Agency,
U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia
The Executive Summary to Volume 1 of the Mueller Report
Materials submitted from the Honorable John Garamendi, a Member
of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal
Government from the State of California
A report entitled, ``Trade-offs between reducing
misinformation and politically-balanced enforcement on
social media,'' Working paper, Mohsen Mosleh et al.
An article entitled, ``False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim
that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,''
Center for Business and Human Rights, New York University
Tweets from Ye (Kanye West), submitted by the Honorable Colin
Allred, a Member of the Select Subcommittee on the
Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of Texas
A report entitled, ``The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry
Report,'' by the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence, in coordination with the Committee on Oversight
and Reform and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, December 2019,
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
An email from Clark Humphrey, Executive Office of the Presidency,
White House Office, January 23, 2021, submitted by the
Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Select Subcommittee on the
Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of Ohio
A tweet, submitted by the Honorable Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a
Member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the
Federal Government from the State of Florida
Materials submitted by the Honorable Stacey Plaskett, Ranking
Member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the
Federal Government from the Virgin Islands
A letter to Mark Zuckerberg from Chad Wolf, the Acting
Secretary of Homeland Security, June 25, 2020,
An article entitled, ``Trade-offs between reducing
misinformation and politically-balanced enforcement on
social media,'' Working paper, Mohsen Mosleh et al.,
A letter from David Salvo and Rachael Dean Wilson, Managing
Director, Alliance for Securing Democracy, March 10, 2023
APPENDIX
Statement submitted by the Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Member
of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal
Government from the State of Virginia
HEARING ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
----------
Thursday, March 9, 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 10:09 a.m., in
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Jordan
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Jordan, Issa, Massie, Stewart,
Stefanik, Johnson, Gaetz, Armstrong, Cammack, Hageman,
Plaskett, Lynch, Sanchez, 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.
I would ask the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Bishop,
to lead the Committee and those present for the hearing in the
Pledge of Allegiance.
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. Welcome, everyone, to the second hearing of
the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal
Government. The Chair now recognizes himself for an opening
statement.
In the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election, FBI
Special Agent Elvis Chan, in his deposition in Missouri v.
Biden, said that he repeatedly, repeatedly informed Twitter and
other social media platforms of the likelihood of a hack-and-
leak operation in the run-up to that Presidential election. He
did it even though there was no evidence. In fact, he said in
his deposition, that we hadn't seen anything, no intrusions, no
hack. That he repeatedly told him something was coming.
Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety at Twitter testified
that he had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of
the National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security,
the FBI, and other folks regarding election security. During
these weekly meetings, Federal law enforcement agencies
communicated that they expected a hack-and-leak operation. The
expectations of the hack and leak operation were discussed
throughout 2020. He was told they would occur at a period
shortly before the 2020 Presidential election, likely in
October. Finally, he said: ``I also learned in these meetings
that there were rumors that a hack and leak operation would
involve Hunter Biden.''
So, what's the government telling? A hack and leak
operation were coming. How often did the government tell him
this? Repeatedly for a year. When did the government say it was
going to happen? October 2020. Who did the government say it
would involve? Hunter Biden.
Now think about it. The government had no evidence of any
intrusions, no evidence of hack and leak, yet for a year they
tell Twitter that a hack and leak is coming, it's coming in
October, and it will involve Hunter Biden. No evidence. The FBI
knows what is going to happen, when it's going to happen, and
who it's going to involve. Now, that's amazing. That is amazing
to me.
Maybe--I mean maybe they get the time right. We're kind of
used to October surprises every four years. So, maybe they get
the time right, but they got the time, they got the method, and
they got the person. That's amazing. It's almost like these
guys were clairvoyant. How did they know? How did they know?
Maybe it's because they had the laptop, and they had it for
a year. They had the laptop, they knew it wasn't hacked, but
that's not what they told Twitter. They didn't tell Twitter
that information. Twitter believed, frankly, everything they
said. In those weekly meetings, the FBI had built a cozy
relationship with this tech company and others as well, we
believe. Emails between the FBI and Twitter began with the
greetings. Hey, Twitter folks. Emails that asked Twitter to
take down accounts and limit visibility of tweets.
FBI handed out security clearances to folks at Twitter.
They communicated with Twitter on this secret teleporter app
where messages disappear after certain lengths of time. Of
course, they paid Twitter $3.4 million.
In addition, on August 6, 2020, the FBI briefed Senators
Grassley and Johnson. According to the Senators' testimony last
month in front of this Committee, the briefing was bogus and
done, so someone could go leak that the briefing had happened
and undermine the Senators' investigation.
In September 2020, government-funded think tank gets
involved. They do a tabletop exercise. The participants include
The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other mainstream
media outlets. Facebook is there. Mr. Roth of Twitter is there.
The organizer was the former CEO of NPR and the former head of
news at Twitter. Mock exercises hosted by the Aspen Institute.
The Aspen Institute, which by the way, in 2020, their budget
was $9.3 million; $5 million from the State Department; $4
million from USAID. Almost all their budget. Guess the title.
Guess the title of this exercise. The Aspen Digital Hack and
Dump Working Group. Guess who the subject was? Guess who the
subject was? Hunter Biden. That's amazing.
On October 14, 2020, the New York Post runs a story on the
Biden laptop, and Twitter takes it down, even though it was
accurate, and even though it didn't violate Twitter's rules
of--Twitter's rules. Other social media companies do the same.
Mainstream press work to downplay and discredit the story.
Finally, as if on cue, five days later on October 19, 51
former intel officials signed a letter with the now famous
sentence: ``The Biden laptop story has all the classic earmarks
of a Russian information operation.'' Something that was
absolutely false.
Our government built a cozy relationship with Big Tech;
they primed him for a hack-and-leak operation; they funded the
think tank which further primed Big Tech and big media; they
leaked information to undermine the good work of two United
States Senators; and then 51 former intel officials closed the
deal with their letter.
Mr. Shellenberger pointed out in his reporting: ``The
information op was run on us, run on We the People.'' If that's
not the weaponization of government, I don't know what is. I
really--I'll get to this in a second--but I want to thank our
witnesses for being here today. I'll get to this after we allow
the Ranking Member her opening statement. I'll yield to the
Ranking Member for an opening statement.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Before my opening statement, Mr.
Chair, as a point of order, it's been my understanding that one
of the witnesses has, within the last half an hour, released
additional information that the Republicans may, and you as the
majority, may have been able to review and have information
about--and if that information is, in fact, going to be used at
this hearing, I just want the point of order to be recognized
that the Democrats have not been able to review or see any of
that information. Will you be using any of the information that
has recently been released by--excuse me, will you be using any
of that information?
Chair Jordan. We'll be using whatever information that our
staff has put together for us to use at this hearing.
Ms. Plaskett. You have had that information before this
hearing began before today?
Chair Jordan. We use all information that is given to our
staff, and we will use it to make sure we educate the American
people on the weaponization--
Ms. Plaskett. Information that you have not shared with us?
Chair Jordan. Oh, we think it was posted online with--
Ms. Plaskett. Within a half--just this half an hour, the
last 20 minutes. It's not information you want to get to us?
Chair Jordan. Well, do you want us to get you copy of it,
because we can make a copy for you?
Ms. Plaskett. I think we can go online and find a copy. We
can look on our Twitter account and see it. I just want the
point of order that you have not shared any of that with us. I
understand that--
Chair Jordan. Well.
Ms. Plaskett. --you may have been looking at this long
before today's hearing.
Chair Jordan. We obtained it the same timeframe that was
posted online.
Ms. Plaskett. Excuse me, before we continue, is one of your
colleagues trying to speak to me? Or I think this was a
conversation between you and me.
Mr. Issa. I was speaking to a parliamentarian, if you don't
mind.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time--
Ms. Plaskett. Oh, OK. OK. All right. Well--
Chair Jordan. I recognize you for an opening statement.
Ms. Plaskett. I had a point of order, which I was asking
you to address.
Chair Jordan. I answered your question.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Great. Now, I will get begin my point--my
opening statement. Three weeks ago, House Oversight had this
hearing with actual Twitter executives who had actual firsthand
knowledge about what happened in 2020. That didn't go so well
for the House Republicans because real evidence showed that
there wasn't coordination between Twitter and the Federal
Government as they liked the American people to believe, and
that all the so-called Twitter files really showed was a
discussion on content moderation, and that we only got a
fraction of the discussion.
So, now we're back again, no surprise. What else have they
got to talk about? Not what's interested in the American people
are interested, not what taxpayer dollars have brought us here
to Washington to do. The Republicans have brought in two of
Elon Musk's public scribes to release cherry-picked out-of-
context emails and screen shots designed to promote his chosen
narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative that is now being
parroted by the Republicans because the Republicans think that
these witnesses will tell a story that's going to help them out
politically.
On Tuesday, the majority released an 18-page report
claiming to show that the FTC is, quote, ``harassing Twitter.''
Oh my, poor Twitter, including by seeking information about its
interactions with individuals before us today. How did the
report reach this conclusion? By showing two--one, two, single
paragraphs from a single demand letter, even though the report
itself makes clear that there were numerous demand letters with
numerous requests, none of which we've been able to see that
are more demand letters and more requests of Twitter. In other
words, the conclusions are based on a fraction of information
out of context, cherry-picked, surprise, just like the Twitter
files.
The majority conveniently forgot to share with the public
that in May 2022, well before Musk acquired Twitter, the FTC
had already fined the company 150 million for failing to
safeguard data, users' data, users, the American people, other
individuals. It's 150 million users, Twitter had not safeguard
them.
Twitter entered into this consent agreement that required
it to make regular reports to the FTC, and their previous
consent decree between Twitter and the FTC was entered into in
2011.
Elon Musk might not like this requirement, but Twitter had
issues with FTC long before Musk bought the company, and
there's nothing political about that. We've asked for the full
set of documents that Musk must have shared with the
Republicans on the Committee, but we can draw some logical
conclusions from what we have been given.
You know what the Republican report actually shows? Two
conclusions: First, the FTC has extraordinarily serious
concerns about Twitter's handling of consumers' data, and that
there's something going on between congressional Republicans
and Elon Musk.
Mr. Chair, Americans can see through this. Musk is helping
you out politically, and you're going out of your way to
promote and protect him and to praise him for his work. This
isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called
journalists before us now. There are many legitimate questions
about where Musk got the financing to buy Twitter.
We know for a fact that foreign countries like Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and possibly even Russia and China are investors
presently in Twitter. Do these countries now have access to
private Twitter user data? What agreements has Elon Musk
reached with them?
[Slide.]
We know how Elon Musk funded the purchase, because it's
public. Let's look at a slide here. Here's what it shows. Musk
got $500 million in financing from Binance. That's in highlight
for you. A crypto exchange platform run by a Chinese
billionaire. That billionaire has described his funding as a
small contribution to the cause. I don't know what that cause
is.
Musk got $1 billion from Larry Ellison, whose super packs
spent millions on Republican candidates last cycle, including
election deniers. Musk got $375 million, highlighted here, from
Qatar, which has recently been questioned about his lobbying
practices. Musk got $700 million from Vy Capital, a secretive
investment fund based in Dubai. Very interesting, as you can
see down below, the nephew of the Saudi King is Twitter's
second largest investor at a much larger amount.
The Chair wants us to think that Elon Musk is the victim.
The Chair wants us to believe that the Republicans are
concerned with the Federal Government unfairly going after
Twitter, and Twitter unfairly taking down conservative posts.
Just like we did several weeks ago, we're going to show that's
not what the evidence shows.
I want to underscore the very real threat posed by Twitter
files and by the witnesses in front of us today. Here is Yoel
Roth describing the harassment he and other former Twitter
employees have faced because of the irresponsible way in which
the witnesses in front of us and others have released this
cherry-picked, out-of-context data.
[Video shown.]
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I'm not exaggerating
when I say that you have called before you two witnesses who
pose a direct threat to people who oppose them. It's funny when
people have to go through that.
Chair Jordan. Crazy is what you're saying?
Ms. Plaskett. Exactly. This is unacceptable. I'm ready for
it. I don't know if a lot of other people are. Just as it was
unacceptable for Kevin McCarthy to provide 41,000 hours of
sensitive security footage to a biased talking head in an
effort to rewrite what happened on January 6th. This is a new
Republican playbook, apparently--
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Chair.
Ms. Plaskett. --risking Americans' safety--
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Chair.
Ms. Plaskett. --and security to score political points.
Chair Jordan. Hang on. Hang on.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. The gentlelady's words should be
struck. We do not accuse witnesses of threatening others. That
is out of line and outside the rules of this Committee.
Ms. Plaskett. I'm not striking down that, and I can have an
opinion about we can do.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. You don't get to determine what's
struck down.
You don't get to determine what's struck down.
Chair Jordan. Well, you do get an opening statement, and
it's about over.
Ms. Plaskett. So, let me finish. We know this is because of
the first hearing the Chair claimed that big government and Big
Tech colluded to shape and mold the narrative and suppress
information and censor Americans. This is a false narrative.
We're engaging in false narratives here, and we are going to
tell the truth. I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back. I would just
point out the consent decree was in our report. We offered your
staff also the opportunity to review the FTC letters. You have
not come over to review those letters. Third, the idea that I
believe both of these individuals who are getting ready to
testify, I believe they're both Democrats. The idea that
journalists who happened to be Democrats.
Ms. Plaskett. Did you not get that offer at 8 o'clock last
night?
Chair Jordan. Your time was--
Ms. Plaskett. Well, neither of us are in time.
Chair Jordan. I don't think they're here to help us
politically. I think they're here to tell us the truth. Oh, by
the way, the first FTC letter to Twitter after the first set of
Twitter files, the very first question was, ``Who are the
journalists you're talking to?'' Who you guys don't care. You
don't care. You don't want any of the 11 people to see--you
don't want the American people to see what is happened? The
full video, transparent--you don't want that, and you don't
want two journalists who have been named personally by the
Biden Administration, FTC, in a letter?
Ms. Plaskett. The Biden Administration is not the FTC.
Chair Jordan. You're saying they're here to help us.
They're here to tell their story. Frankly, I think they're
brave individuals for being willing to come after they've been
named in a letter from the Biden FTC.
Ms. Plaskett. Is this your question time now?
Chair Jordan. No, I'm responding to your ridiculous
statements you made in your opening statement.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Well, let's get on with it.
Chair Jordan. Oh, now, you we want to get on with it--
Ms. Plaskett. I can say--
Chair Jordan. --so you can say all the things you want.
Ms. Plaskett. I've given my opening statement as well as
you had an opening statement. You said what you needed to say
in your opening statement, and I as the Ranking Member have
used my time.
Chair Jordan. Without objection, all other opening
statements will be included in the record. We will introduce
today's witness.
Matt Taibbi, he's a journalist and author. He's one of the
authors of the Twitter files. He previously worked for Rolling
Stone, that right-wing publication, Rolling Stone, where so
many Republicans work at. He has also written several books
about American politics and culture. Of course, as I pointed
out, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday on the
front page was named by the FTC.
Michael Shellenberger is also a journalist, author, and one
of the authors of the Twitter files. He's also co-founded
several nonprofits, including Breakthrough Institute,
Environmental Progress, and the California Peace Coalition,
another right-wing Republican organization, I'm sure. His work
often focuses on crime and drug policy, homelessness, and the
climate. We welcome our witnesses and thank them for appearing
today.
We will begin by swearing you in. Will you please stand and
raise your right hand.
Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that
testimony you are about to give is truth and correct to the
best of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you
God?
Let the record show both witnesses have answered in the
affirmative. Thank you, and be seated, please.
Chair Jordan. We will now start with Mr. Taibbi. You guys,
I think, understand--you want to go, Mr. Shellenberger? We can
go with Mr. Shellenberger. We'll start with Mr. Shellenberger.
You understand how it works. You get five minutes. Make sure
you hit the microphone so we can all hear. When it gets to
yellow, it means just like you would expect time to start
winding up. When it gets to red, it's time to stop. We'll be a
little bit lenient on the time.
Mr. Shellenberger, you are recognized for your opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
Mr. Shellenberger. Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett,
Members of the Committee, thank you very much for inviting my
testimony.
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower
warned of, quote, ``The acquisition of unwarranted influence by
the military industrial complex.'' Eisenhower feared that the
size and power of the complex, or cluster of government
contractors in the Defense Department would, quote, ``Endanger
our liberties or democratic processes.''
How did he mean that? Through, quote, ``domination of the
Nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations,
and the power of money,'' he feared public policy would become
the captive of a scientific technological elite. Eisenhower's
fears were well-founded.
Today American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the
growth and power of a censorship industrial complex run by
America's scientific and technological elite which endangers
our liberties and democracy.
I'm grateful for this opportunity to offer this testimony
and sound the alarm over the shocking and disturbing emergence
of State-sponsored censorship in the United States of America.
The Twitter files, State attorneys general lawsuits, and
investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing
network of government agencies, academic institutions, and
nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring
American citizens, often without their knowledge on a range of
issues.
I do not know how much of the censorship is coordinated
beyond what we have been able to document, and I will not
speculate. I recognize that the law allows Facebook, Twitter,
and other private companies to moderate content on their
platforms. I support the right of government to communicate
with the public, including to dispute inaccurate information.
Government officials have been caught repeatedly pushing
social media platforms to censor disfavored users and content.
Often, these acts of censorship threaten the legal protection
social media companies need to exist, Section 230.
If government officials are directing or facilitating such
censorship, this one law professor, it raises serious First
Amendment questions. It is axiomatic that the government cannot
do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly.
Moreover, we know that the U.S. Government has funded
organizations that pressure advisors to boycott news media
organizations and social media platforms that refuse to censor
and/or spread disinformation, including alleged conspiracy
theories.
The Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of
Washington, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research
Lab, and Graphika have all inadequately disclosed ties to the
Department of Defense, the CIA, and other intelligence
agencies. They work with multiple U.S. Government agencies to
institutionalize censorship research and advocacy within dozens
of other universities and think thanks.
It is important to understand how these groups function.
They are not publicly engaging with their opponents in an open
exchange of ideas. They aren't asking for national debate over
the limits of the First Amendment. Rather, they are creating
blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling,
and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify,
and even ban the people on those lists.
The Censorship Industrial Complex combines established
methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the
U.S. military during the Global War on Terror, with highly
sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial
intelligence. The complex's leaders are driven by the fear that
the internet and social media platforms empower populist,
alternative, and fringe personalities and views, which they
regard as destabilizing. Federal Government officials,
agencies, and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS
recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and deplatforming
ordinary Americans and disfavored public figures.
Importantly, the bar for bringing in military-grade
government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has
moved from, quote, ``countering terrorism'' to, quote,
``countering extremism'' to countering simple misinformation,
otherwise known as being wrong on the internet. The government
no longer needs a predicate of calling you a terrorist or an
extremist to deploy government resources to counter your
political activity. The only predicated it needs is simply the
assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is
wrong.
These efforts extend to influencing and even directing
conventional news media organizations. Since 1971, when The
Washington Post and The New York Times elected to publish
classified Pentagon papers about the war in Vietnam,
journalists have understood that we have a professional
obligation to report on leaked documents whose contents are in
the public interest. Yet, in 2020, the Aspen Institute and
Stanford's Cyber Policy Center urged journalists to, quote,
``Break the Pentagon Papers principle,'' and not cover leaked
information to prevent the spread of disinformation.
Government-funded censors frequently invoke the prevention
of real-world harm to justify their demands for censorship. The
censors define harm far more expansively than the Supreme Court
does.
Increasingly, the censors say their goal is to restrict
information that delegitimizes governmental, industrial, and
news media organizations. That mandate is so sweeping that it
could easily censor criticism from any part of the status quo
from elected officials, to institutions, to laws.
Congress should immediately cutoff funding to the censors
and investigate their activities. It should mandate instant
reporting of all conversations between social media executives,
government employees, and government contractors concerning
content moderation. Finally, Congress should limit the broad
permission given to social media platforms to censor,
deplatform, and spread propaganda. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Shellenberger follows:]
GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman for his opening
statement.
Mr. Taibbi, you are now recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Taibbi. Chair Jordan.
Chair Jordan. Hit that, Mr. Taibbi.
STATEMENT OF MATTHEW TAIBBI
Mr. Taibbi. Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, Members
of the Select Committee, thank you for having me today. My name
is Matt Taibbi. I've been a reporter for 30 years and a staunch
advocate of the First Amendment. Much of that time was spent at
Rolling Stone Magazine.
Ranking Member Plaskett, I'm not a so-called journalist. I
have won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for
independent journalism, and I've written 10 books, including
four The New York Times bestsellers. I'm now the editor of the
online magazine Racket on the independent platform, Substack.
I'm here today because of a series of events that began
late last year when I received a note from a source online. It
read: ``Are you interested in doing a deep dive into what
censorship and manipulation was going on at Twitter?''
A week later, the first of what became known as the Twitter
files reports came out. To say these attracted intense public
interest would be an understatement. My computer looked like a
Vegas slot machine as just the first tweet about the blockage
of the Hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million
impressions and 30 million engagements.
It wasn't until a week after the first report, after
Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and other researchers joined
the search of the files that we started to grasp the
significance of this story.
The original promise of the internet was that it might
democratize the exchange of information globally. A free
internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information
flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of
government everywhere.
What we found in the files was a sweeping effort to reverse
that promise and use machine learning and other tools to turn
the internet into an instrument of censorship and social
control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be
playing a lead role.
We saw the first hint of information communications between
Twitter executives before the 2020 election, when we read
things like, ``flagged by DHS,'' or, ``please see attached
report from FBI for potential misinformation.'' This would be
attached to an Excel spreadsheet with a long list of names,
whose accounts were often suspended shortly after.
Again, Ranking Member Plaskett, I would note that the
evidence of Twitter-government relationship includes lists of
tens of thousands of names on both the left and right. The
people affected include Trump supporters, but also left-leaning
sites like Consortium and Truth Out, the leftist South American
Channel Telesur, the Yellow Vest Movement. That, in fact, is a
key point of the Twitter files; that is neither a left nor
right issue.
Following the trail of communications between Twitter and
the Federal Government across tens of thousands of emails led
to a series of revelations.
Mr. Chair, we summarized and submitted them to the
Committee in the form of a new Twitter files spread which was
also released to the public this morning.
We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies
developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests
from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the
HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA.
For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were
perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same thing,
including Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership, Newsguard,
the Global Disin-
formation Index, and many others, many taxpayer-funded.
A focus of this fast-growing network, as Mike noted, is
making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations,
or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or
malinformation. That last term is just a euphemism for true but
inconvenient. Undeniably, the making of such lists is a form of
digital McCarthyism.
Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter
for deamplification or deplatforming, but to firms like PayPal,
digital advertisers like Xandr, and crowdfunding sites like
GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law-
abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul
of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, and algorithmic judge.
As someone who grew up a traditional ACLU liberal, this
mechanism for punishment and deprivation without due process is
horrifying.
Another troubling aspect is the role of the press, which
should be the people's last line of defense in such cases.
Instead of investigating these groups, journalists
partnered with them. If Twitter declined to remove an account
right away, government agencies and NGO's would call reporters
for The New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, who
in turn would call Twitter demanding to know why action had not
yet been taken.
Effectively, news media became an arm of a State-sponsored,
thought-policing system.
I'm running out of time, so I'll just sum up and say, it's
just not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is, however,
possible becoming technologically possible to instantly define
and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is
what we're looking at. This is a grave threat to people of all
political persuasions.
The First Amendment and American population accustomed to
the right to speak is the best defense left against Censorship
Industrial Complex. If the latter can knock over our first and
most important constitutional guarantee, these groups will have
no series opponent left anywhere.
If there's anything that Twitter files show, it's that
we're in danger of losing this most precious right, without
which all democratic rights are impossible.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear, and I'd be happy
to answer any questions from the Committee.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Taibbi follows:]
GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chair Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Taibbi. We appreciate both of
your opening statements. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman
from Louisiana, Mr. Johnson, for five minutes of questions.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Gentlemen, thank you both for
being here. It is not surprising that the minority is already
attacking you in its opening statement. We apologize to both of
you. You shouldn't be treated that way.
Some of the defenders of Big Tech and the Biden
Administration, as we know, have worked very hard to cast
doubts on legitimacy of your reporting. Some have gone so far
to State it's irrelevant if Twitter was suppressing speech in
coordination with the Federal Government.
This morning, we saw a stunning display of their attack of
your character. We shouldn't be surprised. This is what the
defenders of big government corruption do. This is the
playbook. They destroy the messenger. We just saw it here on
live television, and everybody can see it for themselves, and
the whistleblowers, of course, as well.
Look, that is what we know. What you've documented
carefully in the Twitter files are a couple of key facts. You
will hear--the people will hear a lot of things today, but this
is what we need to know. The Federal Government from Democratic
Members of Congress, to intelligence agencies, including the
FBI, used Twitter and other social media companies to censor
American's speech. If the alarm bells are not going off, then
you're not paying attention.
Over the past three years, documents show, they prove what
you guys have uncovered here. There's communication between
Twitter and the FBI. It was constant. It was persuasive.
Twitter was basically an FBI subsidiary before Elon Musk took
it over. the Twitter files revealed that by 2020, Twitter was
engaged in open information sharing with the intelligence
community. Now we know there were many intelligence agencies
apparently involved in this. The FBI pressured Twitter to act
on election-related tweets, leading up to the 2022 election. Of
course, it did it in 2020. Twitter dutifully censored content
as a result.
Twitter executives restricted accounts, they censored
speech, they conflicted with the left's narrative. Twitter has
used its internal tools to control and manipulate--considered--
speech considered misinformation. Who was determining that? It
was the government bureaucrats.
Documents show that Twitter used visibility filtering to
restrict certain accounts and posts and removed people from the
platform altogether. the Twitter files should be a matter of
bipartisan concern for every Member of Congress and every
American citizen, because it is a bedrock principle of our
constitutional system that the government does not get to
decide what speech is acceptable or true.
Under the First Amendment, Americans have a right to speak
freely regardless of whether their speech upsets the preferred
narrative. In fact, that's when it needs the most vigorous
protection. Everybody on the left used to believe in that, or
at least they purported to. Government and media fact checkers
frequently get things wrong.
The American people can't and shouldn't rely on so-called
experts to be the arbiters of truth, disinformation boards, and
the like. It doesn't what political party you're in, government
should not suppress important debates and public discourse.
Gentlemen, let me start with Mr. Taibbi. You have a long
award-winning journalist career. You've just highlighted
decades of experience reporting on some of the most complex and
important issues of our time. Where do you rate your reporting
on the Twitter files among your whole body of work throughout
your career? How serious is this?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, first, Mr. Congressman, thank you for the
question. I would say I spent 10 years covering the aftermath
of the 2008 financial crisis. That was, obviously, a very
serious issue. This Twitter files story and what we're looking
at now and what we're investigating now, I don't think there's
any comparison. This is by far the most serious thing that I've
ever looked at, and it's certainly the mostly grave story that
I have ever work on personally.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. I want to ask you both the same
question, and that is, first, has anyone from the Federal
Government contacted you, during the course of this
investigation or since you've reported on Twitter files? Now
two, who do you think is the most egregious Federal Government
agencies involved in this censorship exercise? Let's start with
Mr. Shellenberger.
Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Congressman. I have not been
contacted by anybody in the Biden Administration relating to
this topic. I would like to echo what Matt just said. This is--
I've never worked on an issue where so frequently while doing
it I just had chills go up my spine because of what I was
seeing happening. I never thought in my own country that
freedom of speech would be threatened in this way, and it's
just frightening when you get into it.
The most recent--our most recent discoveries--I mean, you
understand the processes that we first raised a bunch of
concerns around the way Twitter, pre-Elon Musk was censoring
people and creating blacklists. Very quickly, we discovered
that we had FBI agents basically--and other government
officials demanding that Twitter take certain actions. We now
know that the Department of Homeland Services which has had--
what's that?
Mr. Taibbi. Security?
Mr. Shellenberger. Security. Sorry. Department of Homeland
Security had tried to create a disinformation board. That went
away after public backlash. We now realize that they have this
other enterprise, and they have been building out basically
mechanisms to proliferate a Censorship Industrial Complex
around the country to censor on a whole range of issues. So,
you've seen this censorship industry go from, ``Well, we're
just fighting ISIS,'' to ``Well, we're just fighting Russian
disinformation bots,'' to, ``Well, now we need to fight
domestic misinformation,'' which was just saying we need to
fight against people who are saying things we disagree with
online. That's all that means. I mean, it's not a slippery
slope. It's an immediate leap into a terrifying mechanism that
I--we only see in totalitarian societies of attempting to gain
control over what the social media platforms are allowing. So,
yes, for me it's just--it starts at DHS, but we basically see
almost every government agency involved in this.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. It's frightening. I'm out of
time. I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch,
is recognized.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do need to correct the
record. So, there's been the suggestion here that the FBI and
other government agencies pressured employees at Twitter to
validate these theories of foreign influence. When we had Mr.
Roth, who was the--Yoel Roth, who is the former global head of
trust and safety at Twitter, so we asked Twitter if there was
pressure applied. Mr. Roth said, ``No, I would not agree with
that.'' The FBI--this is his quote,
The FBI was quite care`ful and quite consistent to request
review of the accounts, but not to cross the line into
advocating for Twitter to take any particular action.
So, that's what Twitter says about the actions of the FBI vis-
a-vis Twitter.
Mr. Taibbi, in 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller
unequivocally found that the Internet Research Agency, owned by
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the same oligarch who runs the Wagner Group,
carried out an extensive social media disinformation campaign
to help then-candidate Donald Trump and to hurt Hillary
Clinton. He also found that the Russian intelligence interfered
with the 2016 election via a hack-and-release campaign,
damaging to the Clinton campaign. These particular findings
came on the heels of the unanimous assessment, on the part of
United States' 18 intelligence agencies that Russian President
Putin, quote, ``ordered an influenced campaign in 2016 aimed at
the Presidential election,'' closed quote.
They also followed the release of a bipartisan, Senate
Intelligence Committee report, finding that Russia and Vladimir
Putin engaged in, and I quote, ``aggressive, multifaceted
effort to influence the U.S. Presidential election.''
So, Mr. Taibbi, do you believe that the Russians and their
oligarch-controlled Internet Research Agency interfered in the
2016 election via this social media disinformation campaign? Do
you believe that?
Mr. Taibbi. Mr. Congressman, my disagreement with the
issue--
Mr. Lynch. Well, I think this is basically a yes-or-no
question. Either you think so or you don't. I don't have a lot
of time, so--
Mr. Taibbi. OK. Well, then I'm going to answer not in the
sense that you're putting it.
Mr. Lynch. OK.
Mr. Taibbi. I think all countries engaging in offensive
information operations, the question is scale.
Mr. Lynch. Do you believe that the Russians are engaging in
hacking? Reclaiming my time. That's how it works on now. I'll
ask the questions, and you try to provide an answer if you can.
Voice. You have to allow him to answer.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The gentleman is out of question and
should not be interrupting a Member asking a question on our
side, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Lynch. Reclaiming my time from everyone. Do you believe
that Russia engaged in a hack-and-release claim damaging to the
Clinton campaign back in 2016? Again--
Mr. Taibbi. I don't know, and I would say it's irrelevant.
Mr. Lynch. Let me ask Mr. Shellenberger. These are pretty
easy questions. It's just whether you believe it or not.
Mr. Shellenberger, the same question, do you believe that
the Russian oligarch-controlled internet research agency
interfered in the 2016 election?
Mr. Shellenberger. I think that they tried to.
Mr. Lynch. OK. Fair enough.
Mr. Shellenberger, do you believe that the Russians engaged
in a hack-and-release campaign with respect to the damaging
information they released regarding the Clinton campaign?
Mr. Shellenberger. To the best of my awareness, that is
what happened, yes.
Mr. Lynch. OK. Fair enough. Thank you.
Mr. Shellenberger. That's the not the same thing as
influence.
Mr. Lynch. I understand. I understand.
Mr. Taibbi. Also, that material was true.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Lynch. I think--look, let me introduce a couple of
documents just to reinforce that. We've got--
Mr. Taibbi. That is not a legitimate predicate for
censorship.
Mr. Lynch. Reclaiming my time.
Mr. Taibbi. Sure.
Mr. Lynch. The gentleman is out of order.
So, Mr. Chair, I will ask unanimous consent to enter the
indictment in the U.S. v. The Internet Research Agency, U.S.
District Court of the District of Columbia, No. 118-32. I would
also ask to enter into the record the executive summary to
volume 1 of the Mueller Report which states: In March 2016, the
GRU began hacking--this is a Russian agency--began hacking the
email accounts of the Clinton campaign, volunteers and
employees, including campaign Chair John Podesta. GRU later
released additional materials through the organization
WikiLeaks. The Presidential campaign of Donald Trump showed
interest in WikiLeaks releases of the document and welcomed
their potential damage to candidate Clinton. So, I have
introduced these documents.
Chair Jordan. Without objection.
Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've introduced these
documents, but it's clear to me that Russia's use of social
media to interfere in the 2016 election created abundant reason
for social media platforms to be concerned--
Chair Jordan. The gentleman's time has expired. Without
objection, these documents are now entered into the record. We
now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Issa, for five
minutes.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd to continue along in a
sense the line we've been on just now. Mr. Taibbi, Mr.
Shellenberger, I'll ask both of you, is it fair to say Russia
is a bad actor who is trying to do everything they can to
undermine confidence in the U.S. Government and in our form of
democracy?
Mr. Taibbi. I think that's a fair statement.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Issa. OK. Are you familiar with the organization in
Europe, the Global Engagement Center?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Taibbi. Well, it's an American--
Mr. Issa. State Department, I'm sorry. Are you familiar
with the Global Engagement Center's use of European and other
sources--
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Issa. --to, in fact, determine where Twitter files
should or shouldn't be, if you will, taken down thousands of
names and Twitter files, correct?
Mr. Taibbi. I'm not sure that Global Engagement Center is
taking down Twitter files. I actually wasn't aware of that. I'm
sorry.
Mr. Issa. Well, Twitter and the FBI have used this
organization and their funding--let me go on to another,
another--stay on the path I was on.
You commented that the scale mattered. OK. Would you
elaborate on scale mattering in the attempt to undermine free
speech?
Mr. Taibbi. Absolutely. So, a great example of this is a
report that the Global Engagement Center sent to Twitter and to
members of the media and other platforms about what they called
the pillars of Russian disinformation. Now, part of this report
is what you would call traditional, hardcore, intelligence-
gathering where they made a reason evidence-based case that
certain sites were linked to Russian influence or linked to the
Russian Government.
In addition to that, however, they also said that sites
that, quote, ``generate their own momentum,'' and have opinions
that are in line with those accounts are part of a propaganda
ecosystem. Now, this is just another word for guilt by
association. This is the problem with the whole idea of trying
to identify which accounts are actually the Internet Research
Agency and which ones are just people who follow those accounts
or retweeted them.
Twitter initially did not find more than a handful of IRA
accounts. It wasn't until they got into an argument with Senate
Select Intelligence Committee that they came back with a
different answer.
Mr. Issa. OK. So, scale matters, but let me go through a
couple of quick questions that I think are part of the reason
that we have this Select Committee. This country has political
parties and people from the--what might call the extreme left
and extreme right. Even Congress has people that might be
considered outside the main street of Republican and Democratic
thinking. Those people speak regularly, and they have since our
founding. Is that correct?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Issa. The ACLU and journalists almost always support
their right to say what they believe, even if you disagree.
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely.
Mr. Issa. Our Constitution says we will make no law to
restrain exactly that kind of free speech.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Issa. That includes people who promote the idea that we
should redistribute all wealth in a communist-type way. As a
matter of fact, we still have a Communist Party in the United
States. Isn't that correct?
Mr. Shellenberger. It is.
Mr. Issa. So, the limit of free speech historically has
been incitement to violence or anarchy, the actual overthrow of
a government. Anything other than that is historically covered
by the First Amendment?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Issa. So, when we look at the very nature of these--the
State Department funding to affect domestic U.S. speech, was
that speech outside the legal bounds? Did it call for
insurrection or other criminal activities that would destroy
our government?
Mr. Shellenberger. No. I mean, we did not--I mean, I'm not
saying--we're not saying that didn't happen, but we're
describing people having political arguments online.
Mr. Issa. Right. So, let me just--because my time is
limited like everyone. So, it suffices to say that every bit of
the speech, or virtually every bit of the speech, whether
foreign or domestic online, fell within the normal protections
of the First Amendment, and the very act of Federal dollars
being used to stifle that speech is, in fact, historically what
we would consider an indictment against the First Amendment
protection?
Mr. Shellenberger. Correct.
Mr. Issa. That is why we have this Subcommittee. That is
why we're here today. Thank you.
Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman. A great point. I now
recognize the gentlelady from Florida for five minutes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Taibbi, I want to ask about journalistic ethics and
information sources. The Society of Professional Journalists
Code of Ethics asserts that journalists should avoid political
activities that can compromise integrity or credibility. Being
a Republican witness today certainly cast a cloud over your
objectivity.
A deeper concern that I have relates to ethics of how
journalists receive and present certain information.
Journalists should avoid accepting spoon-fed and cherry-picked
information if it's likely to be slanted, incomplete, or
designed to reach a foregone, easily disputed, or invalid
conclusion. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Taibbi. I think it depends.
[Slide.]
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Really? You wouldn't agree that a
journalist should avoid spoon-fed, cherry-picked information if
it's likely to be slanted, incomplete, or designed to reach a
foregone, easily disputed, or invalid conclusion.
Mr. Taibbi. Congresswoman, I've done probably a dozen
stories involving whistleblowers. Every reported story that
I've ever done across three decades involve sources who have
motives. Every time you do a story, you're making a balancing
test.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. Reclaiming my time. Thank you
very much.
Mr. Taibbi. OK.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I ask you this because before you
became Elon Musk's handpicked journalist--and pardon the
oxymoron--you stated this on Joe Rogan's podcast about being
spoon-fed information. I quote, ``I think that's true of any
kind of journalism.'' You will see it behind me here.
[Slide.]
I think that's true of any kind of journalism. Once you
start getting handed things, then you've lost. They have you at
that point, and you got to get out of that habit. You just
can't cross that line.
Do you still believe what you told Mr. Rogan? Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. Now, you crossed that line with
the Twitter files.
Mr. Taibbi. No--
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Elon Musk--it's my time. Please do
not interrupt me. Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked
information which you must have suspected promotes a slanted
viewpoint, or at the very least, generates another right-wing
conspiracy theory. You violated your own standard, and you
appeared to have benefited from it.
Before the release of the emails, in August of last year,
you had 661,000 Twitter followers. After the Twitter files,
your followers doubled, and now it's three times what it was
last August. I imagine your Substack leadership, which is a
subscription, increased significantly because of the work that
you did for Elon Musk.
Now, I'm not asking you to put a dollar figure on it, but
it's quite obvious that you've profited from the Twitter files.
You hit the jackpot on that Vegas slot machine to which you
referred. That's true, isn't it?
Mr. Taibbi. I've also reinvested a lot--
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. No, no, no, no. Is it true that you
have profited since you were the recipient of the Twitter
files; you've made money? Yes or no?
Mr. Taibbi. I think it's probably a wash, honestly.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Nope. You have made money that you
did not have before, correct?
Mr. Taibbi. I've also spent money that I didn't have
before.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK.
Mr. Taibbi. I just hired a whole group of people.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Patently obvious answer. Reclaiming
my time. Attention is a powerful drug: Eyeballs, money,
prominence, attention, all of it appoints to problems with
accuracy and credibility, and the larger points, which is
social media companies are not biased against conservatives. If
anything, they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and
other MAGA extremists to post incessant lies, endangering
public safety, and even our democracy. Hypocrisy is the
hangover of an addiction to attention.
Now, I want to point out another alleged finding from the
Twitter files. Mr. Shellenberger, you've referenced several
times this $3.4 million that the FBI paid to Twitter in 2020
that was referenced in general counsel Jim Baker's email. I
first want to confirm that nowhere in the email does Baker say
that the money was paid to censor information, take down posts,
suspend accounts, or do anything relating to content
moderation. Is that correct?
Mr. Shellenberger. It is.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Honest reporting would
have explained that the $3.4 million was paid to release
information, not censor it. One of my colleagues on this panel
repeated your distortions and told Americans this reimbursement
was used to, quote, ``censor certain stories.'' That's a flat-
out lie.
Mr. Shellenberger, are you aware of Section 2706 under the
Stored Communications Act. It says when social media companies
comply with subpoenas, warrants, or court orders, it cost them
money, so they get reimbursed. The FBI makes these requests and
reimbursements to discover evidence that runs relevant to a
criminal investigation. Let me repeat that. The FBI makes these
requests to help catch the bad guys. That helps keep child
predators off social media sites. It helps keep violent
criminals off our streets.
I support the FBI and our law enforcement agencies. It
would be nice if our Republican colleagues did the same and not
fabricate explanations for pavements that are designed for
clear purposes in Federal law. My time is just about wrapped
up.
Mr. Shellenberger. May I respond?
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The truth is that social media
companies are unregulated monoliths. They pose danger to
individuals, they allow posts that bring harm, and that's the
bottom line that this--the other side will not tell you. I
yield back the balance of my time.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady had no time to yield back, but
I will let the gentleman, Mr. Shellenberger, respond. I would
also point out that I did not say what the FBI paid Twitter
for.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I--
Chair Jordan. All I said was they paid Twitter $3.4
million.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, point of order, I didn't
ask Mr. Shellenberger a question.
Chair Jordan. Yes, but the witness wants to respond. The
witness has been invited as our guest, and frankly they've been
attacked by the Federal Government.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Well, please do that--
Chair Jordan. I'm going to let Mr. Shellenberger answer
that before recognizing Mr. Bishop.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. So, are you going to do that as we
move down the line of questioners.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady has not been recognized. You
had your five minutes. Frankly, I think that's at the
discretion of the Chair.
Mr. Shellenberger, you can respond briefly.
Mr. Shellenberger. I'll be brief, which is that my
understanding from those files is that Twitter had decided not
to take that money until recently. So, if you read that email,
what Stasha, I believe the person that sent it, is saying is
that they started taking money after previously not taking it.
I believe that the reason that they had not taken it earlier
was because they did not want that financial conflict, clouding
their relationship.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Chair, the money is payment under
Federal law--
Mr. Bishop. She's out of order.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. --so that they can cut costs--
Chair Jordan. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr.
Bishop, is recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. --for material that they've been
used asked for.
Mr. Bishop. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Taibbi, would you
care to--I'm down here on this end, sir. Would you care to
respond to the attack on your ethics? You weren't really given
an opportunity to answer. If you'd be brief. I've got a bunch
of stuff I want to ask you as well.
Mr. Taibbi. Sure, just quickly. That moment on the Joe
Rogan show, I was actually recounting a section from Seymour
Hersh's book, ``Reporter,'' where he described a scene where
the CIA gave him a story, and he was very uncomfortable. He
said that I who had always gotten the secrets was being handed
the secrets.
Look, again, I've done lots of whistleblower stories.
There's always a balancing test that you make when you're given
material, and you're always balancing newsworthiness versus the
motives of your sources. In this case, the newsworthiness
clearly outweighed any other considerations. I think everybody
else who worked on the project agreed.
Mr. Bishop. Doesn't it seem like any reporter who breaks a
blockbuster story is going to get attention, and there may be
even financial consequences that follow? It seems like as
surely as the night follows the day, that's the case, right?
Mr. Taibbi. That is true. Although, I would like to clear
up some things that have been misrepresented. Not one of us has
actually been paid to do any of this work. We've all traveled
on our own. We've hired our personnel on our own. I've just
hired a pretty large team to investigate this issue--
Mr. Bishop. Yes.
Mr. Taibbi. --out of my own pocket.
Mr. Bishop. The fact that the attempt comes from the dais
across the aisle to smear you, frankly, I think liberals, if I
understand that--in your background, you're both good liberals,
and come in and the Democrats' hostility to what you have
undertaken is astonishing to behold, but it's part of the
picture we're seeing.
In Twitter files No. 15, Mr. Taibbi, you exposed Hamilton
68, a website associated with a German Marshall Fund that
purported in a dashboard to identify Russian bot networks and
became ubiquitously cited by media to identify media stories or
narratives that supposedly flowed from Russia, from Russia.
You showed that the front man for Hamilton 68 was Clint
Watts, a former FBI agent. At Twitter, the trust and safety
executives were ridiculing Hamilton 68 for the ludicrous
identifications that it was making, which they could reverse
engineer and figure out who those accounts were. Then in
Twitter files No. 17, after disclosing Mr. Watts identity, you
disclosed that J.M. Berger is the creator of Hamilton 68. Guess
what? He was a Federal contractor, right?
Mr. Taibbi. He was, yes. He denies that he worked on it for
the Global Engagement Center, but he was an employee of theirs
until about a month before the dashboard's released.
Mr. Bishop. Just a month before what he said, I believe
publicly, that the dashboard was the product of three years'
work.
So, doesn't it beg sort of the intriguing question whether
the creation of this fraudulent Hamilton 68 dashboard was
effectively underwritten by government funding?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think that's a good question. Certainly,
the German Marshall Fund, which is the NGO that is at the top
of the chain in this organization, it's German Marshall Fund,
then the Alliance for Securing Democracy, and then Hamilton 68.
They're a Federal contractor. They received over $1 million
from the Department of Defense. They're the board of the
Alliance For Securing Democracy, has a former acting head of
the CIA, former deputy head of the NSA, a Former Chief of the
DHS on it.
Mr. Bishop. I want to make it--and the bigger point is hard
because the example sometimes starts making it.
I want to introduce you to--or introduce to somebody else.
I think you've mentioned it in some of your writings. Richard
Stengel. Do you know who that is?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes. He's the former--the first head of the
Global Engagement Center.
Mr. Bishop. I want the American people to hear from him for
30 seconds.
[Audio recording played.]
Mr. Bishop. Every country does it. Every country does
propaganda, and they have to do it to their own people, is what
Mr. Stengel said.
If I understand correctly, he was the head of the Global
Engagement Center at its creation, right?
Mr. Taibbi. He was. In his book ``Information Wars,'' there
are a number of passages where he talks about creating a whole-
of-government solution to the information problem. He hastened
to say that he didn't want to create a, quote, ``information
ministry.'' What he was describing roughly approximates that.
Mr. Bishop. In the half minute I've got left, he also was
associated with Hamilton 68, right?
Mr. Taibbi. The Global Engagement Center certainly had ties
to Hamilton 68, yes.
Mr. Bishop. I think it's closer than that. That'll come
out.
Mr. Taibbi. OK. Well, I'd be anxious to hear that.
Mr. Bishop. I hope I'll get yielded a minute or two from
somebody else down the way.
There's all sorts of stuff to disclose. This Committee has
to uncover, not that single instance, but this system that you
have described. This is the hope that Americans have to set
this right, this Committee. That hostility shows what we're up
against. It's not three pillars to the system; it is four.
You're seeing the left move to crush you and anybody else who
tries to expose this.
I yield.
Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman for his great five
minutes, and would now yield to the gentleman from Virginia,
Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I don't know what to say after that last one.
We're fellow Americans and we're elected officials. We're
trying to get at the truth, and we're trying to participate in
the process of getting at the truth.
Mr. Taibbi, you have said that this isn't really a matter
of right or left, that there are lots of different ideological
colorations involved in the Twitter files. Is that roughly,
correct?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Shellenberger, you would agree with that?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. So, when you release information, have you
released any information of, for example, right-wing elements
or the Trump White House attempting to moderate content at
Twitter?
Mr. Taibbi. No, not the Trump White House per se, although
I did report initially in the first Twitter files that the
Trump White House had made and requested and had been honored.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Shellenberger?
Mr. Shellenberger. I did not find that.
Mr. Connolly. You haven't found it.
So, we had a hearing the other day on Twitter, and we had
four witnesses, three for the majority, one for the minority.
All four testified under oath they had never received a request
for content moderation or takedown by the Biden White House,
but they did from Donald Trump's White House.
Specifically, the case brought up was an exchange between
Donald Trump, then President of the United States, and Chrissy
Teigen, where, he had called her something and she called him
something back. I won't repeat it.
This was under oath, confirmed, yes, that happened, and
that the White House shortly thereafter, after Teigen had her
email about the President, which was pejorative, that the White
House called Twitter to try to take down the content.
Are you aware of that, Mr. Taibbi?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes. I certainly heard that in the news, yes.
Mr. Connolly. Did you see that email exchange?
Mr. Taibbi. No, I have not seen an exchange from the Trump
White House. I have seen one from Congressman Schiff and one
from Senator Angus King.
Mr. Connolly. Yes, nice try. We're talking about the Trump
White House and people under oath confirming it. My question
is, in the Twitter files, did Elon Musk or Twitter provide you
with that exchange with Chrissy Teigen?
Mr. Taibbi. No. That's probably because the searches that I
was making--
Mr. Connolly. Well, probably because it didn't confirm the
bias that this is all about, as the gentleman from Texas would
say, the left attempting to control content when, in fact, the
evidence is the Trump White House most certainly attempted to
control content on Twitter.
Mr. Shellenberger, were you aware of that, or is this all
news to you?
Mr. Shellenberger. I already answered that question.
Mr. Connolly. No. I mean specifically the Teigen exchange.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, the Teigen exchange was news to me.
Mr. Connolly. I'm probably mispronouncing her name. I'm
sorry.
So, let me ask, have you, like, combed the so-called
Twitter files to look at other examples that aren't about the
Biden White House or the FBI that might, in fact, involve
people from the right ideologically or from the Republican
ranks, just to be fair?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, again, Mr. Congressman, I mentioned
before we're focused not on the Biden Administration or the
Trump Administration. In fact, just this morning we released an
exchange where Twitter talked about vetting the accounts of
both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Really, we were looking at the
intelligence agencies when we were doing this research. As I
mentioned before, their conclusions targeted people on both the
left and the right globally, again, including the Yellow Vests
movement in France, the pro-Maduro accounts in South America,
and leftist news organizations in America, like Truthout and
Consortium. Some of those people are my friends actually.
We found those in intelligence lists that were passed on to
Twitter, just as we found lists that included ordinary Trump
supporters.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Reclaiming my time. I appreciate
that because, in some ways, what you just said undermines the
premise of this Select Committee, which is that the Federal
Government has been organized to weaponize against conservative
voices. Of course, what you've just indicated in your testimony
is, well, actually that's not the evidence you found.
Mr. Taibbi. No. I think this Committee--my understanding is
that they're concerned about the weaponization of the
government against free speech, which is certainly what we're--
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. My time has expired, but I
appreciate your understanding of our Committee. I have a
different understanding.
I yield back.
Chair Jordan. Well, you've got the wrong understanding.
Last week in the Full Judiciary Committee hearing I introduced
into the record a story of left-wing journalists who said
that--talked about the FBI putting a paid informant, a felon,
in the Black Lives Matter movement in Denver.
I want to focus on the First Amendment, just like--
protecting the First Amendment just like these guys do.
Ms. Plaskett. Point of order, Mr. Chair.
Are you going to respond after every--
Chair Jordan. No. I'm taking my five minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. This is your--
Mr. Jordan. I can take my five minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. Oh, it's your five minutes now?
Chair Jordan. I can take my five minutes when I want to,
and I'm taking my five minutes now.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Great. Thank you.
Chair Jordan. Yes. Well, I would ask for an additional few
seconds for being interrupted by the Ranking Member.
The truth is we want to focus on protecting the First
Amendment.
Mr. Shellenberger, are you a Republican?
Mr. Shellenberger. No, I'm not.
Chair Jordan. You got any pro-Trump bumper stickers on your
car?
Mr. Shellenberger. I voted for Biden.
Chair Jordan. Voted for Biden.
You don't have any MAGA hats laying around your house,
right?
Mr. Shellenberger. I do not.
Chair Jordan. Yes. You said earlier--both you and Mr.
Taibbi said, ``this is the most chilling thing you have ever
seen as journalists.''
Mr. Taibbi, the same thing. You're not a Republican either,
are you?
Mr. Taibbi. No, I'm not.
Chair Jordan. You didn't vote for Trump.
I mean, like, this is about protecting the First Amendment.
Mr. Taibbi, I want to read from your Twitter file No. 9.
You say this:
After weeks of Twitter files, the Bureau issued a statement
Wednesday, referring to the FBI.
Here's what the FBI said:
It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are
feeding the American public misinformation with the sole
purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.
You then follow-up--and this is why I think you're an award-
winning author. You then follow-up:
They must think we're unambitious if our sole aim is to
discredit the FBI; after all, a whole range of government
agencies discredit themselves in the Twitter files.
Then you go on to--and this particular Twitter file I'm talking
about what Mr. Bishop was just talking about, the GEC at the
State Department. You talk about the CIA. You talk about the
DOD. You talk about the FBI. You talk about the DHS. You talk
about the Foreign Intelligence Task Force, which is a
combination of all these. There was one agency you didn't
mention, because you didn't know at the time, one agency, one--
you got almost the whole alphabet, but you didn't mention one
agency, the FTC. You know about them now.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, we do.
Chair Jordan. You know about them now in an up close and
personal way. You didn't know then, but you do know now.
On December 2nd, as I said earlier, December 2nd the first
Twitter file comes out, Mr. Taibbi. I think there are five
others, including the ones from Mr. Shellenberger. December
13th, the very first letter that the FTC sends to Twitter after
the Twitter files, 11 days after the first Twitter file, there
have been five of them come out. The FTC's first demand in that
first letter after the Twitter files comes out is: ``Identify
all journalists''--I'm quoting. ``Identify all journalists and
other members of the media to whom Twitter worked with.''
You find that scary, Mr. Taibbi, that you got a Federal
Government agency asking a private company, who in the press
are you talking with?
Mr. Taibbi. I do find it scary. I think it's none of the
government's business which journalists a private company talks
to and why. I think every journalist should be concerned about
that.
The absence of interest in that issue by my fellow
colleagues in the mainstream media is an indication of how low
the business has sunk. There was once a real esprit de corps
and a camaraderie within media. Whenever one of us was gone
after, we all kind of rose to the challenge and supported--
Chair Jordan. Used to be, used to be the case.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes. That is gone now. We don't protect one
another.
Chair Jordan. You know what else used to happen? Democrats
used to care about protecting First Amendment free speech
rights, too. Now, it's like, OK, if you're attacking--and I
said this on the House floor. I said,
Don't think they won't come for you. Oh, the big tech, big
media, the cancel culture, they may come for Republicans and
conservatives now, but they never--the mob is never satisfied.
They will keep coming.
Mr. Shellenberger, you know who the chair of the FTC is?
Mr. Shellenberger. Not personally.
Chair Jordan. Lina Khan. Lina Khan. You know who she used
to work for?
Mr. Shellenberger. My understanding is the Judiciary
Committee.
Chair Jordan. Yes, she's worked for these folks, the same
folks that have been attacking you today, same folks, the chair
of the FTC, worked for them.
Here's what they said--here's what she said in a letter
where they ask about who these journalists--again, they name
four personally, four journalists by name. You were two of the
four.
As I said before, I think it's, frankly, courageous and
brave of you to show up today when you know the Federal
Government's got an eye on you personally.
Here's what they asked for in that letter: ``Any
credentialing or background check Twitter has done on
journalists.''
Now, think about that. The Federal Government is saying we
want you to do a background check on members of the press.
Freedom of the press mentioned in the First Amendment. They're
doing back--they want Twitter to do a background check on you
before they can talk to you, in America? The FTC led by Lina
Khan, who used to work for these guys, is asking that question?
Now we know. Now we all know why. You guys said at the
outset, this is the most chilling story, and you guys are The
New York Times best sellers, award-winning journalists. In all
your time in the journalism field, this issue, most important.
How this--I think--what did you call it, Mr. Shellenberger,
this complex? What did you call it?
Mr. Shellenberger. Censorship industrial complex.
Chair Jordan. Totally this web of censorship, big
government, big tech, NGO's, all this web of censorship that
Mr. Bishop was getting into in his line of questioning, that's
what this Committee is going to get to. That's not right or
left. That's not--this is just right of wrong. This is wrong.
We know it's wrong, and it's about protecting the First
Amendment.
I yield back.
I now recognize the Ranking Member for her five minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Taibbi, the emails and documents you've produced all
date to around 2020. Is that correct?
Mr. Taibbi. No. There's a significant portion of them from
2017 and 2018 as well.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Mr. Shellenberger, what dates do you have?
Mr. Shellenberger. I believe that we had emails including
2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019.
Mr. Taibbi. That's also true.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Taibbi, you said 2018. Do you have 2018
as well?
Mr. Shellenberger. I can't remember.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Taibbi, how many employees did Twitter employ in
approximately the time period of 2020-2021? Do you know?
Mr. Taibbi. I don't.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. It was 7,500.
Do you know how many were in its legal team during that
time period?
Mr. Taibbi. I don't. I'm sorry.
Ms. Plaskett. Do you know how many were in its public
policy team?
Mr. Taibbi. I don't.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Shellenberger, do you know how many were
employed in content moderation during that time?
Mr. Shellenberger. I do not know.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. So, we're looking at thousands of
employees overall and hundreds in offices were the focus of
emails and documents you released.
I will ask you, Mr. Shellenberger, how many emails did Mr.
Musk give you access to?
Mr. Shellenberger. I mean, we went through thousands of
emails.
Ms. Plaskett. Did he give you access to all the emails for
the time period in which--
Mr. Shellenberger. We never had a single--I never had a
single request denied. Not only that, but the amount of files
that we were given were so voluminous that there was no way
that anybody could have gone through them beforehand. We never
found an instance where anything--there was any evidence that
anything had been taken out.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. So, you would believe that you have
probably millions of emails and documents, right? That's
correct, would you say?
Mr. Shellenberger. I don't--millions sound too high.
Mr. Taibbi. No, I think the number is less.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. A hundred thousand?
Mr. Taibbi. That's probably closer.
Mr. Shellenberger. Probably, yes.
Ms. Plaskett. Probably close to a hundred thousand that
both of you are seeing. Yet, in the Twitter files, Mr. Taibbi,
you've produced only 338 of those 100,000 emails. Is that
correct?
Mr. Taibbi. That's correct, yes.
Ms. Plaskett. Then, who gave you access to these emails?
Who was the individual that gave you permission to access the
emails?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, the attribution from my story is sources
at Twitter, and that's what I'm going to refer to.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Did Mr. Musk contact you, Mr. Taibbi?
Mr. Taibbi. Again, the attribution from my story is sources
at Twitter.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Shellenberger, did Mr. Musk contact you?
Mr. Shellenberger. Actually, no. I was brought in by my
friend, Bari Weiss. So, the story, there's been a lot of
misinformation--
Ms. Plaskett. So, Mr. Weiss brought you in.
Mr. Shellenberger. --or disinformation about that.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Taibbi--Ms. Weiss. Thank you.
Mr. Taibbi, have you had conversations with Elon Musk?
Mr. Taibbi. I have.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Mr. Taibbi, did Mr. Musk place any
conditions on the use of the--
Chair Jordan. Would the gentlelady yield for a second?
Ms. Plaskett. As long as my time is not used for it.
Chair Jordan. Are you trying to get journalists to disclose
their sources?
Ms. Plaskett. No, I'm not trying to get--no, I'm not. I am
asking--
Chair Jordan. Well, it sure sounds like it.
Ms. Plaskett. Well, if you would let me finish.
Are you--and you had conversations with him? Not where--you
said you weren't going to agree to who your sources were. I'm
not asking you your source. I'm asking you if you had
conversations with the owner of Twitter. Did Mr. Musk place any
conditions on your use of the emails or documents?
Mr. Taibbi. No. In fact, I was told explicitly that we were
given license to look at present day Twitter as well as past
Twitter.
Ms. Plaskett. So, you had unfiltered access to Twitter's
internal communications and systems?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Ms. Plaskett. Would those include H.R. files?
Mr. Taibbi. No, no, no, no. We did not have access to
personal information of any kind. In fact, we signed a waiver
foregoing--
Ms. Plaskett. Have you produced that waiver to the Members
of anyone on this Committee or any staff?
Mr. Taibbi. I'd be happy to produce it.
Ms. Plaskett. Have you?
Mr. Taibbi. I haven't, but I'd be happy to.
Ms. Plaskett. Have you given all the access to what you
were given by your source to this Committee?
Mr. Taibbi. No. I would never do that.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. I didn't ask if you had given the
Committee, the individuals, all the files. No, you have not?
Mr. Taibbi. No.
Ms. Plaskett. So, what we're getting is your dissemination,
your decision as to what was important and not important in
that, correct?
Mr. Taibbi. Which is true in every news story.
Ms. Plaskett. In every story. You have files that you say
you're sharing, but those files are just a smaller period of
the files. Is that correct?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, but there's--
Ms. Plaskett. Yes? OK. Thank you.
The FTC investigation of Twitter, you knew that they were
investigating Twitter before the time period that Mr. Musk came
on?
Mr. Taibbi. I was aware of it, yes.
Ms. Plaskett. The FTC was concerned with user data being
hacked or used. Is that correct, that they didn't have enough
checks and balances on that data?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, I wasn't privy to that part.
Ms. Plaskett. Have you seen the consent decree?
Mr. Taibbi. No, I have not.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. Well, the consent decree is concerned
with user data, which would be probably the reason that they
were concerned, if they're giving files to journalists, that
potentially data about users as well as data about individuals
and employees would be given to them.
Mr. Taibbi. My understanding is that they--
Ms. Plaskett. I didn't ask a question. I didn't ask you a
question, sir. OK.
So, do you know that Elon Musk paid $44 billion for
Twitter? Is that correct, Mr. Shellenberger? Were you aware of
that?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I read that.
Ms. Plaskett. Did you know that he received part of the
funding from Saudi Arabia as well as Qatar?
Mr. Shellenberger. I heard that.
Ms. Plaskett. Did you know that one of those individuals
who owns Biance was the company Binance--
Mr. Shellenberger. Binance.
Ms. Plaskett. --while he has Canadian citizenship, he is a
Chinese national? Were you aware of that?
Mr. Shellenberger. I did not know that.
Ms. Plaskett. OK. That he stated that this was for the
cause.
Thank you very much for answering my questions.
I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from
Wyoming for five minutes.
Will the gentlelady yield for 20 seconds?
Ms. Hageman. Yes.
Chair Jordan. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
I just think this is interesting. First, the FTC is asking
for your backgrounds, and now the Ranking Member of the
Committee on the Weaponization of Government is asking for your
sources. If that doesn't raise--
Ms. Plaskett. I never asked them for their sources.
Chair Jordan. Yes, you did.
Ms. Plaskett. I did not ask for sources.
Chair Jordan. You know what--
Ms. Plaskett. I asked if they were talking to Elon Musk.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady is not recognized.
Ms. Plaskett. They said that they were not talking--well,
you are not going to say I've asked--
Chair Jordan. I will yield back to the gentlelady. I thank
her for yielding.
Mr. Taibbi. With respect, you asked me who gave me the
files.
Ms. Plaskett. I asked you who gave it to you, and once you
said they were your sources, I then asked you if you had spoken
with Elon Musk. I did not ask you who those sources were, for
the record, so the record is correct.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady from Wyoming is recognized,
and she will receive an additional 20 seconds. The gentlelady
is recognized for five minutes of questioning.
Ms. Hageman. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today and all of
your important work that you have put into writing the Twitter
files.
Thank you for your willingness to come here and be
subjected to the kind of abuse that we've observed, when all
you're trying to do is talk about the importance of the First
Amendment and why the Federal Government should not be doing
what they did and what has been evidenced in the Twitter files.
I often say that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Boy,
after listening to you and reading the reports that I have,
does our Federal Government need to be fumigated.
Mr. Taibbi, I would like to focus on Twitter files' Part 9.
Twitter and other government agencies, as I think a lot of the
evidence you present in this section, touches on the major
takeaways that are so important for Americans to understand
about the seriousness of what was found in the Twitter files.
In your testimony describing the cooperation between the
Federal Government and tech companies like Twitter, you stated,
quote,
A focus of this growing network is making lists of people whose
opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed to be
misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.
What's interesting to me is that what is missing from that
list is the word ``unlawful.''
Mr. Taibbi. That's true, yes.
Ms. Hageman. So, it notably seems to be missing from the
FBI's lexicon. In Part 9 of the Twitter files, Mr. Taibbi notes
that the main conduit sending requests to Twitter would
routinely label these flags as violations of Twitter's terms of
service. Even Jim Baker, a Twitter employee at the time and
someone who was allegedly a former general counsel of the FBI,
stated, quote, ``But also odd that they are searching for
violations of our policies.''
Mr. Taibbi, what was the approximate percentage of the FBI
requests to Twitter being based on the justification that the
tweet violated the company's terms of service?
Mr. Taibbi. Ms. Congresswoman, I would say that was a
standard disclosure or a standard disclaimer in almost all the
communications from the FBI to Twitter. There would usually be
a line in there saying something like, for your consideration,
we believe the following 207 accounts may have violated your
terms of service.
Notably, they very rarely focused on words like ``truth''
or ``inaccuracy.'' Very often they used the words
``malinformation,'' ``misinformation,'' or ``disinformation.''
So, I think they were trying to shift the focus from one idea
to the other.
Ms. Hageman. OK. I think that's interesting as well.
What do you make of the finding that the FBI found that its
responsibility to police violation of a private company's terms
of service is a priority over policing violations of U.S.
Federal law?
Mr. Taibbi. We've--there were a couple of very telling
emails that we published. One was by a lawyer named Sasha
Cardeel (ph), where the company was being so overwhelmed by
requests from the FBI--and, in fact, they gave each other a
sort of digital high-five after one batch saying that was a
monumental undertaking to clear all of these. She noted that
she believed that the FBI was essentially creating--doing word
searches keyed to Twitter's terms of service, looking for
violations of terms of service specifically so that they could
make recommendations along those lines, which we found
interesting.
Ms. Hageman. Do you believe it's the FBI's responsibility
to police the terms of service for a private company?
Mr. Taibbi. I do not. I think you cannot have a State-
sponsored antidisinformation effort without directly striking
at the whole concept of free speech. I think the two ideas are
in direct conflict. This is a fundamental misunderstanding, I
think of a lot of the people who get into this world. Some of
them, I believe, in a well-meaning way, I think they're
actually trying to accomplish something positive. What they
don't understand, what free speech means and what happens when
you do this, it undermines the whole concept that truth doesn't
come from--isn't mandated, that we arrive at it through debate
and discussion.
Ms. Hageman. Well, in fact, wouldn't you agree with me that
the First Amendment is broader than Twitter's terms of service?
Mr. Taibbi. Absolutely, yes, yes.
Ms. Hageman. Wouldn't you also agree with me that the FBI
is responsible for complying with the First Amendment, not
Twitter's terms of service?
Mr. Taibbi. I would hope so, yes, yes.
Ms. Hageman. You also highlighted the presence of people
like Jim Baker at Twitter. Again, I've noted that he is
allegedly a former FBI employee. Part 9 also speaks of former
other government association employees working at Twitter.
What was the extent to which you found former FBI or other
intelligence community employees working at Twitter, and did
you find it odd?
Mr. Taibbi. There was a significant quantity of people who
had come from the intelligence world or who had worked at State
agencies. In fact, that was a very common method by which
members of--people who were currently working in government
would reach out to Twitter. For instance, we found an email by
a current State Department official who reached out to a former
State Department official asking that 14 ordinary Americans
have their accounts deleted. That was in a recent Twitter files
release.
So, yes, there's an extraordinary number of these people. A
lot of them come from the intelligence world, which we did find
unusual.
Ms. Hageman. OK. Thank you very much.
I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired. I thank
her.
The gentleman from California is recognized for five
minutes.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I still try to figure out where all this is going to go.
We've heard a lot from our Republican colleagues claiming that
somehow all this interaction has led to Twitter censoring
conservative voices. I really want to look at what the evidence
is that has or has not happened.
In 2020, Twitter commissioned an objective study to examine
whether its algorithms disproportionately promote conservative
or liberal voices. This was a massive study by researchers from
the University of Cambridge and Berkeley. The analysis examined
millions of Twitter accounts and 6.2 million news articles that
were shared within the United States. The study results were
quite clear. Twitter's algorithms actually amplified
conservative voices far more than liberal voices.
So, whatever comes of this question about pressure from the
Federal Government, at least up until 2020, it didn't have an
effect.
A separate study, this one from the Indiana University,
found that partisan accounts, especially conservative accounts,
tend to receive more, more followers and follow more automated
accounts.
So, Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger, are you familiar with
these studies?
Mr. Shellenberger. I am.
Mr. Taibbi. I am, yes.
Mr. Garamendi. Very good. Then you know that whatever you
may be trying to tell us, the effect on Twitter didn't happen.
Mr. Taibbi. No, I don't agree.
Mr. Garamendi. Excuse me. It's my time. Thank you.
I can also give you many real analytical studies based on
actual evidence. Since I have only five minutes, Mr. Chair, if
I might enter into the record these studies of what actually is
going on at Twitter with regard to censorship or not
censorship.
Mr. Chair, may I enter those into the file?
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I take that silence as a yes.
Chair Jordan. Did you identify the document? I'm sorry.
Mr. Garamendi. Certainly. Two documents--these documents.
Chair Jordan. What?
Mr. Garamendi. The studies that were done by universities--
Chair Jordan. Usually, it takes a little bit more for
unanimous consent than ``these documents,'' but without
objection, we'll accept them into the record.
Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
These studies found that to the extent that far right
accounts are being suspended, it's not because of their
ideology, but because they are spreading conspiracy theories,
like QAnon. You can see those up on the board. Talk about
nonsense. QAnons, are you really ready for these dots? Where in
the country has gone, the rest of the world will go. Q is real,
on and on.
They're up there, and they're now part of the file also.
This type of speech that perhaps our Republican colleagues
believe social media platforms, all whom, by the way, are
private companies, not government, are somehow obligated to
post, no matter how crazy, how offensive a post might be. These
private companies presumably must advance the lies, conspiracy
theories, and personal attacks promoted by radicals.
Now, I'm pretty sure that if the Democrats held a hearing
today to force FOX News to post certain content, my Republican
colleagues would be up in arms. This is particularly ironic
because we know for a fact that FOX News does spread
disinformation and does so while knowing that the material is
false.
We've learned from the Dominion lawsuit that FOX hosts lied
about the 2020 election. Its executives knew they were lying,
and yet they were allowed to continue peddling their lies.
Now, here's a reporter speaking to this issue, a FOX News
reporter. He said, dangerously insane.
There's two FOX executives describing FOX's decision to push
forward election lies as chasing the nuts off the cliff.
There are two other quotes--two other tweets that I think
we ought to be aware of, and FOX News was promoting it. They
were promoting Trump's lies. The quote up there: ``Big protest
in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.'' A call to
arms, and all us in this building know the result of that call.
A second one: ``Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do
what needed to be done to protect our country.''
This is the speech that my Republican colleagues would have
us to believe is being wrongly, quote, ``censored by social
media companies.'' It's offensive. It's absurd. No private
company has an obligation to amplify anything and especially
not messages that strike at the heart of our democracy.
I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
The gentleman from Utah is recognized for five minutes.
Mr. Stewart. Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
I suppose this is maybe a little bit outside your comfort
zone. You didn't find yourself with this kind of attention when
you began this endeavor, but I appreciate the courage and the
commitment you've made to doing that.
We may not agree on a lot of things when it comes to policy
and politics, but I think we agree on our concern regarding the
topic today.
I'll actually follow on from my Democratic friend and
colleague and the things that he has said, because I agree with
him. Private companies, I mean, Twitter, Facebook, they can ban
whoever they want. They can mute. They can deplatform. They can
set up whatever policy they want, and they have the ability to
do that.
I don't care about that. I agree with that. They should
have that authority. The thing that we're concerned about is
when the Federal Government by proxy essentially contracts this
out, because the Federal Government can't ban speech. They can
define time and place, but they cannot ban content. Anyone
would be foolish to think that when the FBI comes to a private
company and highlights speech and then would expect them to do
nothing, of course, they would respond to that. The FBI knew
they would respond to that. The FBI expected them to respond to
that.
I could use a couple of analogies, if I could, and they
sound dramatic, but they're exactly right. It's illegal for the
United States to assassinate a foreign leader. It would be
illegal for the United States to pay $3.2 million to someone to
go assassinate a foreign leader. It's illegal in some cases for
the United States--or not illegal, but we would have to have a
policy debate whether we would invade another country. It would
be illegal for the United States to pay a private company like
the Wagner Group in Russia to go and fight their battles for
them.
That's exactly what the FBI did here. They said, well, we
can't do this ourselves. We'll contract it out. We'll launder
this effort through another company.
I would just ask you to respond to that. Do you think I'm
overly dramatic or do you think I'm wrong in my
characterization of what we see here?
Mr. Shellenberger. I don't. I think that's absolutely
correct. Freedom of speech is the foundation for our democracy.
What we have seen here is Federal Government putting
extraordinary amounts of pressure both on Twitter and Facebook.
We haven't talked about Facebook, but we now know that we have
the White House demanding that Facebook take down factual
information on Facebook doing that. With Matt's thread this
morning, we saw the government contractors demanding the same
thing of Twitter, accurate information they said that needed to
be taken down to advance a narrative.
Mr. Stewart. I have to interrupt just to agree with you.
For heaven's sake, again, we've heard over here, well, they
have FOX News lies. There's a reason that 20 percent of the
people trust media. Oh, my gosh, if you want to have a
conversation about lies and deception in the media, I would
love to engage in that, because we've seen plenty of it over
the last six years. It's not coming from just FOX News. The New
York Times, CBS, NBC, every single one of them were saying
things that they knew was not true. They didn't say it once;
they said it for years.
The White House, again, trying to stifle things that they
know is true, but it doesn't fit their narrative.
I've got to give one illustration in the few minute--or
minute I have left. When you have an agent, Mr. Chan, who goes
to Twitter and says, ``Please see below a list of Twitter
accounts which we believe violate your terms of service.'' I
mean, how do you respond to that and defend that? Yes, the FBI
should be looking at other private companies' policies and then
highlighting, hey, these people might be violating your
policies.
Either one of you. Mr. Taibbi.
Mr. Taibbi. If I could. No, I think there's--thank you, Mr.
Congressman.
There's an important point. In conjunction with our own
research, there's the foundation, the Foundation For Freedom
Online which , there's a very telling video that they uncovered
where the director of Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership
talks about how CISA, the DHS agency, didn't have the
capability to do election monitoring, and so that they kind of
stepped in to, quote, ``fill the gaps legally before that
capability could be amped up.''
What we see in the Twitter files is that Twitter executives
did not distinguish between DHS or CISA and this group EIP. For
instance, we would see a communication that said, ``From CISA
escalated by EIP.'' So, they were essentially identical in the
eyes of the company.
EIP, by its own data--and this is in reference to what you
brought up, Mr. Congressman. According to their own data, they
significantly targeted more what they called disinformation on
the right than on the left by a factor, I think of about 10 :
1.
So, I say that as not a Republican at all. It's just the
fact of what we're looking at.
So, yes, we have come to the realization that this bright
line that we imagine that exists between, say, the FBI, DHS, or
GEC and these private companies is illusory and that what's
more important is this constellation of quasi-private
organizations that do this work.
Mr. Stewart. Well, and we're over time, so I'll conclude
reemphasizing this. By a factor of 10 : 1, they tried to mute
conservative thought, and the Federal Government cannot
contract out suppression of free expression.
Mr. Taibbi. No.
Mr. Stewart. Chair, thank you.
Chair Jordan. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentlelady from Texas is recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Speaker--I didn't get that last
time. I apologize, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Taibbi, I want to follow-up a little bit on the Ranking
Member's questions.
When was the first time that Mr. Musk approached you about
writing the Twitter files?
Mr. Taibbi. Again, Congresswoman, that would--
Ms. Garcia. I just need a date, sir.
Mr. Taibbi. I can't give it to you, unfortunately, because
this is a question of sourcing, and I don't give up--I'm a
journalist. I don't reveal my sources.
Ms. Garcia. It's not a question of sources. It's a question
of chronology.
Mr. Taibbi. No. That's a question of sources.
Ms. Garcia. Because you earlier said that someone had sent
you to the internet, some message about whether you would be
interested in some information.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes. I refer to that person as a source.
Ms. Garcia. So, you're not going to tell us when Musk first
approached you?
Mr. Taibbi. Again, Congresswoman, you're asking me to--
Ms. Garcia. You can answer yes or no.
Mr. Taibbi. You're asking a journalist to reveal a source.
Ms. Garcia. So, do you consider Mr. Musk to be the direct
source of all this?
Mr. Taibbi. No. Now, you're trying to get me to say that he
is the source. I just can't answer your question about sources.
Ms. Garcia. Well, he either is or he isn't. If you're
telling me you can't answer because it's your source, well,
then, the only logical conclusion is that he is, in fact, your
source.
Mr. Taibbi. Well, you're free to conclude that.
Ms. Garcia. Well, sir, I just don't understand. You can't
have it both ways, but let's move on because--
Chair Jordan. No, he can. He's a journalist.
Ms. Plaskett. No, he can't, because either Musk is the
source, and he can't talk about it, or Musk is not the source.
If Musk is not the source, then he can discuss his
conversations with Musk.
Mr. Johnson. No one has yielded. The gentlelady is out of
order. You don't get to speak every time--
Ms. Plaskett. She's out of order because he's interrupted.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady is not recognized.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair, you're not recognized.
Ms. Garcia. Mr. Chair, I'd like to reclaim my time.
Chair Jordan. He has not said that. What he has said is
he's not going to reveal his source. The fact that Democrats
are pressuring him to do so is such a violation of the First
Amendment.
Ms. Plaskett. We're not. We're asking him about his
conversations with Musk.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The gentlelady has not yielded you
time. You don't get to talk over her.
Ms. Garcia. I have not yielded time to anybody. I want to
reclaim my time, and I would ask the Chair to give me back some
of the time because of the interruption.
Chair Jordan. We can do that.
Ms. Garcia. Mr. Chair, I'm asking you if you will give me
the seconds that I lost.
Chair Jordan. We will give you that 10 seconds.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
Now, let's talk about another item when you responded to
the Ranking Member. You said that you had free license to look
at everything, but, yet, you, yourself, posted on your--I guess
it's kind of like a web page--I don't quite understand what
Substack is--but that: What I can say is that in exchange for
the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to
agree to certain conditions.
What were those conditions? She asked you that question,
and you said you had none. You, yourself, posted that you had
conditions.
Mr. Taibbi. No. The conditions, as I've explained multiple
times--
Ms. Garcia. No, sir. You've not explained. You told her in
response to her question that you had no conditions. In fact,
you kind of used the word ``license,'' that you were free to
look at all them, all 100,000 emails.
Mr. Taibbi. The question was posed was I free to write
about--
Ms. Garcia. Sir, did you have any conditions?
Mr. Taibbi. The condition was that we published on Twitter.
Ms. Garcia. Sir, did you have any conditions? Yes or no? A
simple question.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Ms. Garcia. All right. Could you tell us what conditions
those were?
Mr. Taibbi. The conditions were an attribution, sources at
Twitter, and that we break any news on Twitter.
Ms. Garcia. You didn't break it on Twitter. Did you send
the file that you released today to Twitter first?
Mr. Taibbi. Did I send--actually I did, yes.
Ms. Garcia. Sir, I'm asking you today, did you send it to
Twitter first?
Mr. Taibbi. The Twitter files thread?
Ms. Garcia. That was one of the conditions. Yes or no, sir?
Mr. Taibbi. The Twitter files thread actually did come out
first.
Ms. Garcia. Sir, you said earlier that you had to attribute
all the sources to Twitter first. What you released today, did
you send that to Twitter first?
Mr. Taibbi. No, no, no. I posted it on Twitter.
Ms. Garcia. First? First, sir, or did you give it to the
Chair of the Committee or the staff of the Committee first?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, that's not breaking the story. That's
giving--yes, I did. I did give--
Ms. Garcia. So, you gave all the information that you did
not give to the Democrats, you gave it to the Republicans
first, then you put it on Twitter?
Mr. Taibbi. Actually, no. The chronology is a little bit
confused. It's more or less at the same time.
Ms. Garcia. Well, then, tell us what the chronology was.
Mr. Taibbi. I believe the thread came out first.
Ms. Garcia. Where?
Mr. Taibbi. On Twitter.
Ms. Garcia. On Twitter. So, then you afterwards gave it to
the Republicans and not the Democrats?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, because I'm submitting it for the record
as my statement.
Ms. Garcia. Did you give it to them in advance?
Mr. Taibbi. I gave it to them today.
Ms. Garcia. You gave it to them today, but you still have
not given anything to the Democrats.
Well, again, I'll move on.
I wanted to ask, Mr. Shellenberger, the same questions,
sir. When did you first visit with or get contacted by Mr.
Musk?
Mr. Shellenberger. I'm not going to reveal my sources. Like
I said, I was invited by Bari Weiss, and it was--
Ms. Garcia. I'm not asking for sources, sir. I'm just
asking for chronology.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I was--
Ms. Garcia. When did you first make contact with Mr. Musk?
Mr. Shellenberger. I don't know the exact date.
Ms. Garcia. Was it 2020?
Mr. Shellenberger. It was December. It was December.
Ms. Garcia. December of--well, there's a lot of Decembers
in history.
Mr. Shellenberger. December of last year.
Ms. Garcia. Which December?
Mr. Shellenberger. December of last year, ma'am.
Ms. Garcia. Last year, 2022?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Ms. Garcia. All right. Now, in your discussion--in your
answer you also said that you were invited by a friend, Bari
Weiss?
Mr. Shellenberger. My friend, Bari Weiss.
Ms. Garcia. So, this friend works for Twitter, or what is
her--
Mr. Taibbi. She's a journalist.
Ms. Garcia. Sir, I didn't ask you a question. I'm now
asking Mr. Shellenberger a question.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, ma'am, Bari Weiss is a journalist.
Ms. Garcia. I'm sorry, sir?
Mr. Shellenberger. She's a journalist.
Ms. Garcia. She's a journalist. So, you work in concert
with her?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Ms. Garcia. Do you know when she first was contacted by Mr.
Musk?
Mr. Shellenberger. I don't know.
Ms. Garcia. You don't know. So, you're in this as a
threesome?
Mr. Shellenberger. There were many more people involved
than that.
Ms. Garcia. There were many more people involved with it.
Are you being paid to be here today, either through
consulting fees--
Mr. Shellenberger. No.
Ms. Garcia. --campaign contributions to your next run?
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has--
Ms. Garcia. Do you have an interview scheduled after this
hearing?
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
Chair Jordan. I don't know what to say other than I'll
recognize the gentleman from North Dakota for five minutes.
Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll yield my five
minutes to you.
Chair Jordan. Oh, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
I do think it's worth pointing out that I have cosponsored,
I think some of my colleagues have cosponsored The Shield Act
in previous Congresses, with Democrats, to protect what we see
them trying to do today, protect journalists from having to
reveal their sources to government. That used to be a shared
position in the Congress. Unfortunately, as we're seeing now
multiple occasions, it's not the position anymore.
Mr. Shellenberger, I want to go to Twitter files' Part 7. I
related a lot of what you put in there in my opening statement.
I want to give you as much time as you want, because I'm going
to read the very first sentence, because something jumped out
at me when I read the first sentence.
In Twitter files No. 7, the FBI and the Biden laptop. You
say this:
How the FBI and the intelligence community discredited factual
information about the Biden foreign business dealings both
after and before the New York Post revealed the contents of his
laptop on October 14, 2020.
What stuck--kind of jumped out at me was the way you framed
it. Because you did it backward from what it's normally said.
Normally, you would say--the sentence would read: Foreign
business dealings both before and after.
I assume you did that for a reason because, in fact, I
think the next sentence you say: ``Social media companies
discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and
after.'' You used the normal customary way in the second
sentence, but the first sentence strikes me as you were trying
to emphasize the before component of that statement.
Now, I want you to just walk us through why you said that,
because when I read it, it certainly was an operation both
before and after, as you said, after and before.
Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Reading through
the whole sweep of events, I do not know the extent to which
the influence operation aimed at prebunking the Hunter Biden
laptop was coordinated. I don't know who all was involved. What
we saw was--you saw Aspen and Stanford many months before then
saying, ``Don't cover the material in the hack and leak without
emphasizing the fact that it could be disinformation.'' OK. So,
they're priming journalists to not cover a future hack and leak
in the way that journalists have long been trained to in the
tradition of the Pentagon Papers made famous by the Steven
Spielberg movie. They were saying cover the fact that it
probably came from the Russians.
Then you have the former general counsel to the FBI, Jim
Baker, the former deputy chief of staff to the FBI both
arriving at Twitter in the summer of 2020, which I find what an
interesting coincidence.
Then, when the New York Post publishes its first article on
October 14, it's Jim Baker who makes the most strenuous
argument within Twitter, multiple emails, multiple messages
saying, ``This doesn't look real.'' There's people--there's
intelligence experts saying that this could be Russian
disinformation. He is the most strenuous person inside Twitter
arguing that it's probably Russian disinformation.
The internal evaluation by Yoel Roth, who testified in
front of this Committee, was that it was what it looked to be,
which was that it was not a result of a hack-and-leak
operation. Why did he think that? Because the New York Post had
published the FBI's subpoena, taking the laptop in December
2019, and they published the agreement that the laptop computer
store owner--the computer store owner, rather, had with Hunter
Biden that gave him permission after he abandoned the laptop to
use it however he wanted.
So, there really wasn't much doubt about the providence of
that laptop, but you had Jim Baker making a strenuous argument.
Then, of course, you get to--a few days after the October 14
release, you have the President of the United States echoing
what these former intelligence community officials were saying,
which is that it looked like a Russian influence operation.
Chair Jordan. Yes.
Mr. Shellenberger. So, they were claiming that the laptop
was made public by a conspiracy theory and the conspiracy
theory that somehow the Russians got it, and they--
Chair Jordan. Right.
Mr. Shellenberger. Basically, they convinced Yoel Roth that
it was--they convinced him it was this wild hack-and-leak story
that somehow the Russians stole it, got the information, gave
it to the computer store, and it was bizarre.
So, you read that chain of events, and it appears as though
there is an organized influence operation to prebunk--
Chair Jordan. Why? Why do you think they could predict the
time, the method, and the person? Why could the FBI predict it?
Mr. Shellenberger. I'm--
Chair Jordan. Not only did they predict it--they predicted
it, so did the Aspen Institute.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Chair Jordan. Seemed like everyone was in the know saying,
here's what's going to happen. We can read the future.
Why do you think--how do you think they were able to do
that?
Mr. Shellenberger. I think the most important fact to know
is the FBI had that laptop in December 2019. They were also
spying on Rudy Giuliani when he got the laptop and when he gave
it to the New York Post.
Now, maybe the FBI agents who were going to Mark Zuckerberg
at Facebook and to Twitter executives and warning of a hack and
leak potentially involving Hunter Biden, maybe those guys
didn't have anything to do with the guys that had the laptop.
Chair Jordan. Maybe.
Mr. Shellenberger. We don't know that.
Chair Jordan. I know.
Mr. Shellenberger. I have to say, as a newcomer to this, as
somebody that thought it was Russian disinformation in 2020--
everybody I knew thought it was Russian--I was shocked to see
that series of events going on. It looked to me like a
deliberate influence operation. I don't have the proof of it,
but the circumstantial evidence is pretty disturbing.
Chair Jordan. It's pretty overwhelming. Thank you, Mr.
Shellenberger.
I now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Goldman,
for five minutes.
Mr. Goldman. Oh, I think it's Mr. Allred first.
Chair Jordan. Oh, I'm sorry. You just walked in.
I recognize the gentleman from Texas. Go right ahead.
Mr. Allred. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to ask unanimous consent to enter a few tweets
into the record.
Chair Jordan. Sure. Can you identify the tweets?
Mr. Allred. Let's see, I think staff should have them. Can
we put the tweets up on the screen?
Let's take a look at a couple of tweets from Kanye West,
who now goes by Ye, at the time of these tweets had 32 million
followers.
Mr. Taibbi, can you read the tweet on the left? Do you see
the text there?
Mr. Taibbi. I actually can't. My eyesight is not so that
great.
Mr. Allred. I'll read it to you. It says: ``I'M A BIT
SLEEPY TONIGHT, BUT WHEN I WAKE UP I'M GOING DEATH CON 3 ON
JEWISH PEOPLE,'' in all caps. The funny thing is I actually
can't be anti-Semitic because Black people are actually Jew.
Also, you guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone
whoever opposes your agenda.
Can you see the tweet next to it?
Mr. Taibbi. I can, yes.
Mr. Allred. It's a--would you describe it as a Star of
David with a swastika in the middle of it?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Mr. Allred. Should those tweets have been taken down by
Twitter?
Mr. Taibbi. I think it's a difficult question. Hate speech
is protected in the United States.
One of my heroes growing up was the Ukraine-born author
Isaac Babel. He gave a speech at the first Soviet Writers
Congress, and he was asked if any important rights had been
taken away. He sarcastically answered, No. The only rights that
have been taken away are the right to be wrong.
The crowd laughed, but he was making an important point,
which is that in a free country you can't have freedom without
the freedom to be wrong.
Mr. Allred. Let's move on to a couple of other tweets not
from somebody with 32 million followers.
This one says: ``Elon now controls Twitter. Unleash the
racial slurs, K word and N word.''
The other one says: ``I can freely express how much I hate
N words now. Thank you, Elon.''
See, these tweets were taken down, even by Elon Musk
Twitter, and they should have been because they're hate speech,
and they lead to real world reactions. In fact, in the 12 hours
after Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, hate speech of all
kinds spiked on Twitter, including a 500 percent increase in
the use of the N word.
It's not just online. From 2020-2021, hate crimes rose
almost 44 percent in major cities. So, hate speech online has
real impacts in life. So, does election misinformation and
propaganda online.
Mr. Taibbi, I've read a lot of your work. I respect some of
it, but you've cast a lot of doubt on Russian interference in
our elections. Today, you have virtually alleged a vast
government conspiracy to censor speech. I can tell you that the
threat to our democracy--
Mr. Taibbi. Not allegedly.
Mr. Allred. I'm not asking you a question. I'll let you
know when I do.
I can tell you that the threat to our democracy is very
real, and it's not just the elections that get all the
headlines. In 2018, in a congressional race, two Kremlin-
maligned foreign nationals named Lev Parnas and Igor Freeman
succeeded in funneling illegal Russian money to a Trump-aligned
super-PAC that spent $1.3 million to support the Republican
candidate.
That was my election. My neighbors in east Dallas saw
advertisements online, in their mailbox, and on their TV, paid
with Russian money. That's not my opinion. That's a fact proven
in the Southern District of New York. Both Parnas and Freeman
were convicted to 21 months and one year, respectively, for
conspiring to make political contributions by a foreign
national, along with other campaign finance-related violations.
We live in an information age where malign actors do want
to use social media to influence our elections, both big, the
ones you spend a lot of time talking about, and small like
mine.
Mr. Taibbi. Mr. Congressman, may I ask a question?
Mr. Allred. It should be a bipartisan goal--no, you don't
get to ask questions here.
Mr. Taibbi. OK.
Mr. Allred. It should be a bipartisan goal to ensure that
Americans, and only Americans, determine the outcome of our
elections, not fear mongering.
I think--I hope that you can actually take this with you,
because I honestly hope that you will grapple with this: That
it may be possible that if we can take off the tin foil hat
that there's not a vast conspiracy, but that ordinary folks and
national security agencies responsible for our security are
trying their best to find a way to make sure that our online
discourse doesn't get people hurt or see our democracy
undermined, and that the very rights that you think they're
trying to undermine, they may be trying to protect.
I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie, is recognized for
five minutes.
Mr. Massie. I want to talk about the weaponization of the
CDC against the American people. This overlaps with one of the
Twitter files, No. 13 by my count, actually by Alex Berenson,
not one of our two witnesses, but I would like your comment on
it.
A week before Christmas 2020, the vaccines came out. The
FDA curated the Pfizer trial results, and then the CDC curated
the FDA's opinion. The CDC said in their MMWR, which is never
peer-reviewed--they're very proud it's not peer-reviewed. They
treat it like science. It's not science. They said that the
vaccine was 92 percent efficacious for people who had already
had COVID. The Pfizer trial data said no such thing. In fact,
there was no support for that claim.
So, I called up the head of CDC, recorded the conversation,
the head in Washington, DC. She said she'd get the top
scientists on the line. There was a snowstorm that day, so I
was impressed; she got this top scientist on the line. They
said I was eagle eye Massie. They couldn't believe how that
statement had made it into their report and that I was
absolutely correct there was no support for it.
So, I said ``How are you going to fix it? Are you going to
redact it? Are you going to change it? What are you going to
do?'' They said, ``We'll do all of that.'' I said, ``Great.''
A month later, it was still on their website. I made some
more phone calls. They brought in an old hand, an old fixer,
Dr. Schuchat. These are her notes of her phone call with me
about natural immunity in January when I called them out on it
again. These are the entirety of her notes that were obtained
in the FOIA from somebody--a third party.
I took all my recordings, released them to Sharyl
Attkisson. She blew the whistle on this. A lot of people have
forgotten about it.
Here's why I find it interesting, and I'm going to tie it
into the Twitter files. By the way, I told them I was not an
anti-vax. I said the problem with your story is there's a
misallocation of vaccines which are not available for all the
old people in Kentucky, but you've got young people in Kentucky
taking them, because you're telling them on the website, even
if you've had COVID, go get it. So, that was my complaint.
On May 10, 2021, Todd O'Boyle--this name will come up in
the Twitter file later. He is the top lobbyist in Twitter's
Washington office, who was also Twitter's point of contact in
the White House. He encouraged the CDC to enroll in the partner
support program. Oh, OK. The CDC is now a partner with Twitter
because they're in the partner support program. He said, ``In
the future, that's the best way to get a spreadsheet like this
reviewed.''
Now, this is an email from--between Todd O'Boyle and the
folks at CDC.
By the way, let me talk to this, too. These are more of my
conversations with the CDC, completely redacted, the subject
thereof.
Next one, please.
I also found as a result of the FOIA, CDC tracks every
tweet that a Congressman puts out, not just Republican, but
Democrat. They keep the spreadsheet. They make it every week.
This showed up in the FOIA for me because I'm in their
spreadsheet that they track.
Why is this interesting? OK. So, they're tracking
Congressmen's tweets at CDC. They're enrolled in the partner
support portal at Twitter. Then I found--this is why--I found
Alex Berenson's report very interesting, because what he found
out is that Scott Gottlieb worked hard, and Twitter complied,
it looks like, to censor a tweet from a doctor about natural
immunity.
Guess what? On the same day, that doctor's tweet was
censored, so were my tweets on natural immunity. Why is this
important? What is consequential about the date? This is three
days after the military vaccine mandate came out and a week
before the Federal vaccine mandates came out.
This truth was toxic to a narrative that Pfizer was
spreading that Joe Biden wanted out there so that he could
force the vaccine on everybody, whether you had natural
immunity or not.
Now, I actually--you guys might not agree with me on this.
I don't think the press gets special privileges on the First
Amendment. I don't think Congress does. I think every American,
by virtue of being an American, has the right to free speech
enshrined in the Constitution.
So, I'm not so much worried that they censored a
Congressman, but they disabled all of the comments from my
constituents. Those are the voices they squelched. My beef is
not with Twitter, but my beef is with the CDC and these Federal
agencies.
I encourage you all, if you can, to find more about this.
Do you have any--either of you have any comments on this topic?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, absolutely.
Chair Jordan. The gentleman's time has expired, but the
gentleman may--
Mr. Massie. I still had three seconds.
Chair Jordan. --the witnesses may respond. OK.
Mr. Taibbi. Just quickly, we found just yesterday a tweet
from the Virality Project at Stanford, which is partnered with
a number of government agencies and Twitter where they talked
explicitly about censoring stories of true vaccine side effects
and other true stories that they felt encouraged hesitancy.
Mr. Massie. This isn't true.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, so they used the word ``true'' three times
in this email. What's notable about this is that it reflects
the fundamental misunderstanding of this whole disinformation
complex--and disinformation complex. They believe that ordinary
people can't handle difficult truths. So, they think that they
need minders to separate out things that are controversial or
difficult for them. Again, that's totally contrary to what
America is all about, I think.
Mr. Shellenberger. I will just briefly add, this is very
disturbing because what they're doing when they're putting
these labels on there is they're actually also trying to
discredit you. So, it's not just--it's a form of censorship,
but it's also a disinformation campaign. I think what Matt says
is really important to understand--now, we went from--you go
from a situation where we were fighting ISIS recruiting. Then
it was Russian disinformation. Now they're in a situation where
they're wanting to censor true information, accurate facts
because they're worried that people might behave in ways that
they don't want them to. That involves mind reading at a level
that is grossly inappropriate.
I worry even about making this defense, because let's
remember, the First Amendment protects our right to be wrong.
It protects our right to lie. It's bizarre to me that we would
need to make a defense of the First Amendment and remind people
that we have a right to be wrong--and being wrong, as Matt was
explaining, is a big part of being a human being and having a
democracy.
So, this is disturbing and showing, and you're absolutely
right to be outraged by it. There needs to be a full truth and
reconciliation that I hope everybody would appreciate having on
this issue, because a lot of bad behavior has come out about
what they've done.
Mr. Massie. Thank you. I yield back.
Chair Jordan. Good job. The gentleman's time has expired.
We now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Gomez.
Ms. Plaskett. Actually, excuse me, it's Ms. Sanchez.
Chair Jordan. Oh, I'm sorry.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair, since that went over two minutes
with them responding, will you give an additional time?
Chair Jordan. There's a question at the end of someone--
it's customary if there's a question at the end of someone's
five minutes and the witnesses haven't responded, we'll give
them time to do. Many times, you go over, and then don't,
there's no question.
Ms. Plaskett. I understand that, but two minutes. OK. Thank
you.
Chair Jordan. That's customary, so we'll certainly do that.
The gentlelady from California is recognized, excuse me.
Ms. Sanchez. I would like to yield my time to Mr. Goldman.
Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez.
Mr. Shellenberger, first, I'd just like to compliment you
on your choice of tie today. It seems like we're on the same
page. I would also just like to respond to your last point and
just remind everyone that, of course, we all believe in the
First Amendment. The First Amendment applies to government
prohibition of speech, not to private companies.
I want to talk about your Twitter files No. 7, Mr.
Shellenberger. Are you aware that Rudy Giuliani was the sole
source of the hard drive obtained by the New York Post.
Mr. Shellenberger. That is my understanding.
Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that Rudy Giuliani had been
openly cavorting with agents of Russian intelligence throughout
2020?
Mr. Shellenberger. That is also my understanding.
Mr. Goldman. Now, this is the same Russian agent who had
been feeding information to Senators Johnson and Grassley, I
might add. Also, are you aware that Rudy Giuliani told The New
York Times that he did not want anyone to do an analysis of the
hard drive until it was published?
Mr. Shellenberger. I was not aware of that exactly, but--
Mr. Goldman. You don't dispute it?
Mr. Shellenberger. I don't dispute it.
Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that one of the New York Post
reporters for the Hunter Biden story refused to put his byline
on the story?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that Fox News called this story,
quote, ``very sketchy,'' unquote?
Mr. Shellenberger. I'm aware that somebody at Fox News said
that, yes.
Mr. Goldman. Correct. Bret Baier at Fox News said that.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that the FBI had nothing to do
Twitter's decision to pause the New York Post story?
Mr. Shellenberger. I am not aware of that.
Mr. Goldman. OK. Well, let me read you the testimony from
Yoel Roth at the hearing we had on February 8. Quote,
The FBI was quite careful and consistent to request review of
the accounts, but not to cross the line into advocating for
Twitter to take any particular action.
Then Jim Baker said, in response to the Chair's question, when
he asked, ``Did you talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden
story?'' He said, ``To the best of my recollection, I did not
talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story before that day.''
In other testimony, Yoel Roth said that the information that he
received from the FBI had nothing to do with the Hunter Biden
story.
Now, are you aware that there was an analysis of the hard
drive that was done by The Washington Post at a later date?
Mr. Shellenberger. My awareness is that multiple media
organizations have done analyses and found the--including CBS,
and found that it was, indeed--the laptop was authentic, and
that nothing had been changed on it.
Mr. Goldman. OK. So, let's just get something clear, the
laptop that the FBI had is different than the hard drive that
Rudy Giuliani gave to the New York Post? A hard drive, you
agree with this, is a copy from a laptop, right?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. You are aware that hard drives can be altered,
are you not?
Mr. Shellenberger. Of course.
Mr. Goldman. OK. So, are you aware that The Washington Post
analysis of the hard drive showed that it had been altered?
Mr. Shellenberger. I haven't heard that, but I'm also
saying CBS verified--
Mr. Taibbi. Politico.
Mr. Shellenberger. --and other media organizations have
verified.
Mr. Goldman. We're not talking about authenticity. We're
not talking about authenticity.
Mr. Shellenberger. You're not really making this argument.
OK.
Mr. Goldman. We're not talking about authenticity.
Mr. Shellenberger. OK.
Mr. Goldman. We're talking about whether it's been altered.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. OK. There's no question there's some material
on the hard drive that is authentic and accurate. Are you aware
that there's some material that is not?
Mr. Shellenberger. My understanding is there are copies of
the hard drive that have been tampered with. That media
organizations, including CBS, have verified that the laptop in
question was not tampered with.
Mr. Goldman. I don't know what the laptop in question, but
let's move on. Because you said in your Twitter files, am I
correct, that every single fact in the New York Post story was
accurate?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. OK. Do you recall that the first paragraph of
that Post story said that then-Vice President Joe Biden
pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general because he was
investigating Burisma where Hunter Biden was on the board?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. I have here, which I'd like to enter into the
record, the Trump Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report--300 pages
by the House Intelligence Committee. Did you review this report
before you said that every fact in this story was accurate?
Chair Jordan. Without objection, the material will be
entered in the record.
Mr. Shellenberger. Did I read that before I wrote the
Twitter files? No. Aware of the contents--
Mr. Goldman. If you read this you would have known that
every single State Department and Trump Administration expert
on Ukraine said that Vice-President Joe Biden, in concert with
the European Union and the IMF, was executing official U.S.
policy by encouraging Ukraine to fire the prosecutor general
because he was not prosecuting corruption and was not
prosecuting companies like Burisma. So, that story,
notwithstanding your allegations, was false. I yield back.
Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize--
the Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Gaetz,
for five minutes.
Mr. Gaetz. Impeachment nostalgia always warms my heart, but
we are here focused on a weaponized government, a whole-of-
government approach that has been turned against the American
people. While Rudy Giuliani may have been running around with
the laptop in 2020, what is an indisputable fact is that the
FBI had the laptop in 2019. It appears that the last round of
questioning misses the boat, that it's true. The information is
authentic. The pictures, the videos, the emails--there hasn't
been a single allegation that there is a single doctored email.
Unlike what we saw before the FISA courts, where the FBI itself
was doctoring emails to try to smear President Trump.
I have to get to a question I'm amazed hasn't been asked of
the two of you. This FTC consent decree, where it is government
action subject to rigorous scrutiny under First Amendment
standards, government action demanding that your names be
listed. How did it feel when you found out that you were being
expressly targeted by a government document based on your
reporting?
Mr. Shellenberger. It was chilling--I mean, it's
disturbing. I never thought that would happen in the United
States of America to be perfectly honest. I've lived in a bunch
of authoritarian countries. I visited a lot of authoritarian
countries. I never thought this kind of thing would be going on
here.
Mr. Gaetz. The nexus to authoritarianism is the desire to
control the nature of truth itself. Our understandings change
about things. We learn new changes. We challenge prior
assumptions. If a bunch of people in Washington, DC, get to
decide what the truth is and then enforce it on the country and
then punish and target those who report on their conduct, we
are drifting more toward that. How did you feel, Mr. Taibbi,
when you saw your name?
Mr. Taibbi. I was upset, obviously. I lived in Russia
during the nineties and early 2000's, so I was there when Putin
took power. I was friends with a group of very brave muckraking
reporters in Russia, many of whom didn't make it. A few of them
were murdered after Putin came to power.
So, I've always been conscious of how the risks that other
reporters take in other countries are inconsiderably severe.
That's one of the reasons why I'm motivated to protect the
First Amendment, because our country has the best protections
for reporters in the world. This kind of thing where the
government is looking for information about reporters, it's
usually a canary in the coal mine that something worse is
coming in terms of an effort to exercise control over the
press. So, on that level, it's absolutely disturbing.
Also, the Aspen Institute report that we published today,
talked about today in the Twitter files thread, one of their
recommendations was that the FTC be empowered to have unlimited
power to search all data of private companies so that they
could more freely and more accurately search the speech of
ordinary citizens.
Mr. Gaetz. So, as we're trying to put downward pressure on
the government's expanding authority to be able to engage in
what we see mostly from dictatorships, what you're reporting,
and what you're observing is that, actually, they view this as
a growth industry, the information business, right?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Mr. Gaetz. This Censorship Industrial Complex is a growth
industry to the government.
Mr. Shellenberger. I think the key thing to also--yes, and
the thing to understand is that NSS--
Mr. Gaetz. What is NewsGuard, and how are they part of the
Censorship Industrial Complex?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, and by the way, we talk about
Richard Stengel, he is on the board of NewsGuard. NewsGuard and
the disinformation index are both U.S. Government funded
entities who are working to drive advertiser revenue away from
disfavored publications and toward the ones that they favor.
This is totally inappropriate.
Mr. Gaetz. Now, what I'm used to in this town is government
officials pick their favorite outlets, and they give them the
best scoops, and they give them the best stories. There's a
fusion of media and government that has long made me
uncomfortable. What you're describing now is literally the
directing of revenue to certain media companies over other
media companies designed and implemented with the U.S.
Government funding and support.
Mr. Shellenberger. That's right.
Mr. Gaetz. That is an astonishing--if we do not take a look
at NewsGuard, we have failed. You talked about the brave
reporting that occurs and what it subjects you to. I would
suggest there's also political bravery that I have observed.
While we've only heard from Democrats on this panel, attacking
you, discrediting you, a lot like they've tried to attack and
discredit FBI whistleblowers who are truth tellers, there are
brave Democrats who still believe in free speech. I would
advise my colleagues to look at the comments of Ro Khanna who
has been deeply, deeply concerned about this weaponization of
government. He believes these Twitter files are indeed worthy
of our focus and our energy, and that is exactly what we are
going to do. I yield back.
Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman. I would now recognize
the gentlelady from New York.
Mr. Goldman. I still have my five minutes, Mr. Chair.
Chair Jordan. Oh, that's right. I forgot.
Mr. Goldman. I understand why you may not want to.
Chair Jordan. The gentleman from New York is recognized for
five minute.
Mr. Goldman. Mr. Shellenberger, I may have misheard
earlier, but is it your testimony here today that you disagree
with the two indictments by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that
definitively established that Russia interfered in our 2016
election through social media disinformation and the hack-and-
leak operation.
Mr. Shellenberger. No, I don't disagree.
Mr. Goldman. OK. Mr. Taibbi, do you disagree with those two
indictments?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, indictments aren't a thing to do--
Mr. Goldman. Do you disagree--there are about 40 or 50
pages. Do you disagree with the evidence outlined in those
indictments?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, indictments are just charges.
Mr. Goldman. I just asked you: Do you disagree with the
evidence included in those indictments, yes or no?
Mr. Taibbi. I'm not on the jury of that case. I couldn't
possibly say yes or no.
Mr. Goldman. OK. Because you said earlier, I believe, that
you did not see Russia--that could not confirm that Russia
interfered in our election in 2016, that you don't believe
that. Is that your testimony here today, you don't believe that
they did?
Mr. Taibbi. I think it's possible that they may have on a
small scale, but certainly not to what's been reported.
Mr. Goldman. What's been reported or what's been included
in the indictments?
Mr. Taibbi. Well, again, indictments are allegations.
They're not proof.
Mr. Goldman. I understand. It's pretty detailed
allegations.
Mr. Taibbi. In the Mueller indictment, by the way--
Mr. Goldman. You should go read the indictment and then
come back and tell us if you actually think there's no proof of
it.
Mr. Taibbi. Well--
Mr. Goldman. Let me move on, please.
Mr. Taibbi. Well, some of those things happened by the way
when the--
Mr. Goldman. Please, let me move on. That's how this works.
You should know this by now.
So, do you disagree with the Special Counsel Mueller's
conclusion in his report, Mr. Taibbi, that the Trump campaign
knew about Russia's interference, they welcomed it, and they
used it for their benefit? You have no reason to disagree with
that, don't you? You have no information.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. So, after that foreign interference in our
2016 election, Twitter and other social media companies
naturally wanted to work with the intelligence community to
stop Vladimir Putin from interfering in our elections again.
Mr. Taibbi, do you think it's a legitimate pursuit of the
FBI to try to stop foreign interference in our elections?
Mr. Taibbi. Again, sir, will I be allowed to answer this
question, or--
Mr. Goldman. It's a yes-or-no question. Do you think it's a
legitimate pursuit of the FBI to--
Mr. Taibbi. It's not a yes-or-no answer. It depends.
Mr. Goldman. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not asking how. I'm
saying, as an objective, do you think it's a legitimate
objective of the FBI to stop foreign interference in our
elections?
Mr. Taibbi. I think it's a legitimate objective to stop
actual foreign interference.
Mr. Goldman. OK. I don't know what the difference is, but
that's fine. So, since Russia used social media disinformation,
according to Special Counsel Mueller, I understand you may
disagree with the allegations to interfere in our 2016
elections, are you trying to say that the FBI had no basis to
inform social media companies about efforts to potentially
interfere in our elections after 2016?
Mr. Taibbi. I can tell you that I read internal Twitter
emails where Twitter expressly talked about the fact that the
FBI couldn't possibly know more than they did about whether or
not there was Russian interference, and that, in fact, even
they couldn't determine which accounts were actually IRA and
which ones weren't.
Mr. Goldman. OK. I understand you like to filibuster. That
was not an answer to my question, but I'll move on.
Mr. Shellenberger, in all the emails that you reviewed, did
the FBI ever direct Twitter to take down any accounts or remove
any posts?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. They directed Twitter to remove them, or they
said these may violate your terms and services?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. Which.
Mr. Shellenberger. I think that's an accurate use of the
word ``direct.''
Mr. Goldman. They said these may violate--you think that
saying that--saying that these may violate your terms and
conditions is the same--
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I do.
Mr. Goldman. --as directing them to take an account down.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I think if a police officer says,
all right, well, you broke the law.
Mr. Goldman. That's very helpful. That's very helpful. I'm
glad to know that you think flagging--
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. --something for a private company to make a
decision about what they should do is a direction.
Now, Mr. Chair--
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Goldman. --you have repeatedly said that this Committee
is all about protecting the First Amendment.
Chair Jordan. Uh-huh.
Mr. Goldman. What is unfortunate here is that we are
talking about Twitter, and that we were not talking about
Republican government officials around the country who are
banning books. We are not talking about--
Chair Jordan. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Goldman. No, I will not. We are not talking about
Donald Trump jailing his former counsel to prohibit him from
publishing a book that the President did not want. The former
President literally jailed his enemy, and we're here talking
about Twitter. Twitter. Even with Twitter, you cannot find
actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any
lawful speech. When I say ``lawful,'' I mean noncriminal
speech. Because plenty of speech is noncriminal.
Chair Jordan. I'll give you one. The gentleman's times has
expired. I'd unanimous consent to enter into the record the
following email from Clark Humphrey, Executive Office of the
Presidency White House Office. On January 23, 2021, that's the
Biden Administration, 4:39 a.m.:
Hey, folks--this goes to Twitter--Hey, folks, I wanted to use
the term--they used the term Mr. Goldman just used--wanted to
flag the below tweet and then wondering if we can get moving on
the process for having it removed ASAP.
That is--
Mr. Goldman. Could you read the below tweet.
Chair Jordan. Then, if we can keep an eye out for tweets
that fall in this same genre, that would be great. This is a
tweet on various--the various--you see the Thomas--
Mr. Goldman. Can you just--for the fullness of the record,
can you read the--because I have not seen this--can you read
the tweet that it's referencing?
Chair Jordan. I don't have the tweet here with me--
Mr. Goldman. Oh, shocking.
Chair Jordan. --but the gentleman's point was--tell us--you
said, no time did government try to tell Twitter to take that--
to explicitly remove something.
Mr. Goldman. No, I said explicitly remove lawful speech.
Lawful speech. We're going to conflate. The First Amendment
does not--is not absolute.
Chair Jordan. This is something from Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Ms. Plaskett. For the record--
Chair Jordan. I assume that's lawful speech.
Ms. Plaskett. --as a point of order, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Goldman. Because Robert Kennedy, Jr., said it, that's
why it's lawful speech?
Ms. Plaskett. Just a minute. Just a minute, Mr. Goldman.
Chair Jordan. All I'm saying is you said, ``at no time did
the government explicitly say to take a tweet down.'' Here we
have it right here from the White House.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair?
Chair Jordan. They couldn't even wait two days. Two days
into this administration they were asking Twitter to take
something down. We will get you the underlying tweet.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Chair Jordan. With that I recognize the gentlelady from New
York.
Ms. Plaskett. Will you place it into the record as well,
sir, the underlying tweet?
Chair Jordan. Robert Kennedy, Jr., is talking about--he's
talking about Hank Aaron's death after he received the vaccine.
That's what the tweet is about. We'll give you a copy.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Chair Jordan. I think that's--and I would say one thing,
that's.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I--
Chair Jordan. I would say one thing, that's--
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent--
Chair Jordan. --that's certainly lawful speech.
Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent
to enter the tweet that you referenced into the record of the
Committee.
Chair Jordan. Without objection, we'll enter that into the
record, along with the statement from the White House, the
Biden White House two days into the administration when they're
directly attacking the people's First Amendment liberties.
Chair Jordan. With that I recognize the gentlelady from New
York for five minutes.
Ms. Stefanik. I want to yield to Mr. Johnson.
Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Thank you. Just to point out,
quickly, that Mr. Goldman is proving himself to be a master of
obfuscation. He said, the First Amendment applied to government
censorship of speech and not private companies. What we're
talking about and what the Chair just illustrated is that what
we have here and what your Twitter files show is the Federal
Government has partnered with private companies to censor and
silence the speech of American citizens. I yield back to the
gentlelady.
Ms. Stefanik. I just came from an open hearing with FBI
Director Chris Wray. He said under oath that no one from the
FBI communicated with Twitter regarding the Hunter Biden laptop
story. Based upon both of your courageous reporting, can you
address that?
Mr. Shellenberger. I mean, we saw--like I said, we don't
know. It's at this point we just have to take his word on it.
What we saw was a huge amount of FBI communications to Twitter.
We saw the former deputy Chief of Staff, the former general
counsel showing up at Twitter, right at the critical period.
So, I find a lot of suspicious activity. I would like to ask
him a bunch of questions about that because I find it very
suspicious and unresolved.
Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Taibbi, do you have comments on that?
Mr. Taibbi. We do know that there was a teleporter
communication that had 10 documents in it just before the story
broke, but we don't know what those documents were, and so we
can't suppose.
Ms. Stefanik. Well, I don't take his word for it. We have
lots of examples where it has not been--they've not been
accurate from that particular agency when it comes to
testifying before Congress. So, it is our job in this Committee
to get to the truth, to shine sunlight and transparency for the
American people.
I want to ask you both about the Aspen Digital Hack and
Dump Working Group, which involved an 11-day scenario in
October 2020, that began with the imaginary release of
falsified record, that's what they claim, related to Hunter
Biden's controversial employment by the Ukrainian energy
company, Burisma.
Mr. Shellenberger. Right.
Ms. Stefanik. This was if they knew, because they did know.
So, I would like your comments, Mr. Shellenberger, these were
the files that you did extensive reporting on about how
concerning this is, and how this is truly the definition of the
weaponization against free speech and suppressing accurate
reporting.
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, so there's actually two things, and
one of them we just discovered recently, which is there was a
Stanford Cyber Policy Institute Report which said that--which
was, in menacing terms, telling journalists that they should
abandon the Pentagon principle. Again, this is the Pentagon
paper's principle. This the idea that--if Daniel Ellsberg
brings you materials he's taken from the Pentagon, about how
the war in Vietnam is going. The New York Times and The
Washington Post publish those, that was considered one of the
greatest moments of American journalism. Here you have Stanford
Cyber Policy Center saying, you should abandon that principle.
You should have instead made the issue about, frankly the
theories about where it might have come from.
Then you had the Aspen workshop, which was attended, by the
way The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, Wikipedia,
Facebook, Twitter, many other journalists where they
basically--you read it, it's like a kind of programming of the
journalists that they should not follow this longstanding
journalistic principle of taking materials from a hack and
leak, or any other situation and take them seriously. So, I
mean, you read this, and it feels like a kind of brainwashing
exercise that Aspen and Stanford were running against American
journalists in the social media companies.
Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Taibbi, any comments?
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think there were a couple of moments in
the Twitter files that really speak to a kind of larger
problem. In the first Twitter files we saw an exchange between
Representative Ro Khanna and Vijaya Gadde where he's trying to
explain the basics of speech law in America. She's seems
completely unaware of what, for instance, New York Times v.
Sullivan is. There are other cases like Bartnicki v. Vopper
which legalized the publication of stolen material. That's very
important for any journalist to know.
I think most of these people are tech executives, and they
don't know what the law is around speech and around reporting.
In this case, and in 2016, you are dealing with true material.
There is no basis to restrict the publication of true material
no matter who the source is and how you get it. Journalists
have always understood that. This has never been an issue or a
controversial issue until very recently.
Mr. Shellenberger. By the way, just one quick thing I'll
add. That's the exact same strategy of the malinformation,
misleading--in other words, they were saying, they were saying,
even if the material you think is true, it could lead people to
have conclusions that we don't want them to have, and,
therefore, you should change your journalism because of that.
So, we're so far down the slippery slope. You've crashed at
that point. I mean, it's a disturbing trend in journalism and
social media and in the relationship from the intelligence
community to these organizations.
Ms. Stefanik. How have you been targeted since the
publication of the Twitter files?
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired. We'll give
a quick answer, if we can.
Mr. Taibbi. Again, I have known journalists who have
suffered real brutal harms in my career. So, they've said a lot
of nasty things about me upon Twitter, but it hasn't been so
bad, I would say. The FTC thing is the only thing that's
legitimately concerning, and that's not really for my sake,
it's more because it's a general problem for journalists
everywhere.
Mr. Shellenberger. I've been censored on Facebook since the
year 2020 for writing accurate information in an article that
went viral. I remain censored. They continue to flag warnings
on post that I write that have nothing to do with the
environment. We now know that one of the U.S. Government's
funded organizations has put out a report that specifically
targets me and presents disinformation about my own position on
climate change. So, I've got a lot at stake here.
Ms. Stefanik. I yield back.
Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair, may I ask unanimous consent to
enter into the record a letter dated June 25, 2020, to Mark
Zuckerberg from Chad Wolf, the Acting Secretary of Homeland
Security, in which he asks Twitter--asks Facebook to keep
Americans safe by taking appropriate action, consistent with
your terms of service against content that promotes, incites,
or assists the commission of imminent legal activities. Those
committed to protecting free exchange of ideas should not turn
a blind eye to illegal activity and violence fermenting in your
platform. This is after the summer in which Black Lives Matter
protests took place.
Chair Jordan. Without objection.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady from Florida is recognized for
five minutes.
Ms. Cammack. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our
witnesses for appearing here today. I know it doesn't feel
exactly warm and fuzzy, but believe me, I think what you guys
are doing is very important.
[Slide.]
Ms. Cammack. We're here to discuss the weaponization of
government. I want to follow-up on my colleague Representative
Massie's comments on the CDC. Up on the screen, you can see an
email from October 2020. This is from then-NIH Director Francis
Collins to Dr. Anthony Fauci. It goes on in to say this
proposal, talking about the Great Barrington Declaration, is
from three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary.
It seems to be getting a lot of attention. Even a signature, a
co-signature from a Nobel Prize winner.
A key line in here that I would like to point out. There
needs to be a, quote,
. . . quick and devastating published takedown of its
premises. I don't see anything like that online yet. Is it
underway? Signed Francis
Now, what I find interesting is if you fast forward into
June 2021, the Biden Administration was raging at social media
companies. There are communications that we can produce, for
the record, that State we would like you to come combat quote,
``misinformation.'' Now, we think, so the Twitter files know,
that Twitter executives were using the term visibility
filtering, and that really to the best of the American general
public was shadow banning, correct?
Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Ms. Cammack. So, all of a sudden, we saw a rash of
blacklists created by Twitter at the highest levels that were
taking down some of the signatories and creators of this very
Barrington Declaration, correct? This is to both of you.
Mr. Taibbi. I haven't seen that.
Mr. Shellenberger. I haven't seen that either.
Ms. Cammack. So, would you agree that there was a blacklist
created in 2021.
Mr. Shellenberger. Oh. Sorry. Yes. Jay Bhattacharya--
Ms. Cammack. Yes.
Mr. Shellenberger. --the Stanford professor who I don't
think anybody considers a fringe epidemiologist was indeed--I'm
sorry, I didn't piece it together--he was indeed fringe
visibility filters.
Ms. Cammack. Correct. So, this blacklist that was created
that really was used to deplatform a reduced visibility--
Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
Ms. Cammack. --create lists internally where people
couldn't even see their profiles, that was used against doctors
and scientists who produced information that was contrary to
what the CDC was putting out, despite the fact that we now know
that what they were publishing had scientific basis and, in
fact, was valid?
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely. Not only that, but these are
secret blacklists. So, Professor Bhattacharya had no idea he
was on it. I mean, this is East Germany Stasi kind of behavior.
That's what this is. The Great Barrington Declaration, by the
way, I was skeptical at the time, but it actually now looks
pretty good in terms of how response to COVID. Even if it was
totally wrong, it still deserved--this is the whole point of
the First Amendment is that--
Ms. Cammack. Absolutely.
Mr. Shellenberger. --I think, we all have the experience of
you're not right until you're wrong a lot. You actually have to
have that debate and that conversation. So, by repressing that,
we actually stifled a much broader conversation we could have
had about how to effectively respond to COVID because they were
secretly blacklisting people like Jay Bhattacharya.
Ms. Cammack. I think to the bigger point that Americans are
concerned about when it comes to the weaponization of
government, this isn't Republican or a Democrat issue, this is
an American issue. You had individuals, millions of Americans
who, in many cases, were being mandated to take an experimental
vaccine. When those that wanted to consider taking it were
trying to make an informed decision, you had opinions that were
being silenced because it didn't fit a specific narrative
pushed by the Biden Administration, correct.
Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely, correct. That's why we use
the language of disfavored ideas and disfavored people, because
it doesn't fall neatly among left and right lines. If there's
anything going on here, it tends to be more of a
disproportionate blacklisting of more populist voices, or just
ideas that we would consider slightly outside of the Overton
window, the mainstream opinion at the time. The Overton window
moves--
Ms. Cammack. Right.
Mr. Shellenberger. --and so, the idea that you're just
going to narrow the entire--what's acceptable on social media
to what is mainstream at the time would basically freeze us and
not allow the society to progress and for knowledge to grow and
for the democracy to function.
Ms. Cammack. With the 14 seconds that I have left, Mr.
Taibbi, you would like to weigh in on any of this that we have
talked about and why this is a direct threat to Americans
today, I would appreciate it.
Mr. Taibbi. Yes, just quickly, again, we yesterday
discovered this email talking about the suppression of people
telling their own stories of true vaccine side effects. So,
these are people who are telling about their own experiences,
things that happened to them that are true. They're being
suppressed because what anti-disinformation does is the
opposite of what the press does. They are aiming for what the
narrative is. They already know in advance what they're looking
for. Whereas a journalist goes into a story, does not know what
the truth is. We often find that the thing we expect to find
turns out to be completely different. They know in advance what
they're looking for, and that's why this is so dangerous.
Ms. Cammack. My time has expired. I yield back. Thank you
two.
Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back. I want to thank
our witnesses for being here today. I think maybe if we can get
this right and stop this--and what I read--with legislation,
appropriators, whatever it takes, we can stop this. I think in
the future, people will look back and look at your courage as
people in journalism, in the press, to come here with what
you've been facing, what you've had to endure. Now, with the
idea that the FTC is coming after you, that's something that I
think is present darn important and certainly noteworthy. So,
we appreciate you sitting here for 2\1/2\ hours, taking the
questions you did, but giving so much valuable information to
this Committee who is--certainly on our side--committed to
protecting the First Amendment and peoples' right to speak.
So, that concludes today's hearing. Again, we thank you
both for being here. Without objection, all Members will have
five legislative days to submit additional written questions
for the witnesses or additional materials for the record.
Without objection, the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:42 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=115442.