As the mainstream media finally admits the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Republicans in Congress feel increasingly emboldened to find out why this story was censored by Americans ahead of the 2020 election.
On Thursday, Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee sent letters to Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook AND Parag Agrawal on Twittercalling on both social media platforms to censor The New York Post’s reporting on the Bidens.
“Facebook ignored our letter [from October 14, 2020] and for several months he avoided any significant responsibility for his actions. Now, even with New York Times confirming the truthfulness of the above Lent“Reports indicate that we are investigating Facebook’s actions to interfere with free and fair public discourse related to the election on its platform to the benefit of President Biden and to the detriment of former President Trump,” the letter to Zuckerberg begins in part.
The letter referred to Big Tech’s election interference and cover-up.
“Soon after Lent published his article, Facebook’s director of political communications, a former employee of Democratic elected officials, announced that Facebook was “limiting its distribution on our platform.” Facebook probably did this because “it s[aw] “signals” that Lent the story was “false”. As far as we know, Facebook has never identified or explained these “signals.” Instead, Facebook announced that the article would be “eligible for fact-checking by [the company’s] third-party fact-checking partners, but Facebook has never disclosed the results of this fact-checking or even whether it occurred,” the letter reads.
Before detailing the eight items Zuckerberg asked for, the letter used more forceful words.
“Facebook appears to have knowingly and intentionally used its platform to control election-related information available to Americans shortly before the 2020 election, and that it did so primarily to benefit then-Vice President Biden. Facebook’s actions helped protect Vice President Biden from increased scrutiny over violations detailed in Article Lent article,” we read. “In addition, Facebook’s actions gave rise to other news outlets, tech platforms, and even Biden himself, who dismissed the Post article as misinformation or false — when in fact it was never debunked. This irresponsible behavior requires a thorough investigation so we can understand how Big Tech exercises its enormous power over the free flow of information to the detriment of free and fair elections.”
The eight items, requested by April 14, focus on examining “all documents and communications from October 1, 2020 to the present” related to Facebook’s decisions to “limit dissemination,” as well as which employees made such decisions. and more information about fact checkers. It also asked about the connection of employees involved in these decisions to the DNC or Biden campaign, as well as Facebook’s decision to report or not report “its activities to the Federal Election Commission as an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.”
Agrawal’s letter similarly indicated that “Twitter has blocked Lentuser account, blocked users from sharing a link to the article, and even marked the material as “unsafe” for users. Twitter also censored the official website of the House Judiciary Committee, where we republished the article so that the public could access it without Twitter’s interference [sic]. “Even though Twitter’s former CEO admitted that Twitter’s censorship actions were ‘wrong,’ Twitter continues to censor political speech in a way that suppresses conservative voices.”
The letter doubles down on calling for censorship. “Though Lent explained exactly how he obtained the reporting emails, Twitter continued to suppress the article – even going so far as to block it Lentuser account and the account of any user who attempted to share the article because the article allegedly violated Twitter’s “Hacked Materials Policy.” Major media outlets followed Twitter’s example, falsely claiming that the Post’s article was “misinformation” and unverified. Twitter also claimed it censored the article because it contained images depicting “personal and private information.” But when we published the article on our website without personal or private information, Twitter also censored us.”
Agrawal is being asked to submit eight similar items, also by April 14, although GOP members also want to know what determined the New York Post article violated Twitter’s “Hacked Materials Policy” as well as “All Documents and correspondence between October 1, 2010, 2020 and herein relating to or relating to Twitter’s decision to censor the website of the House Judiciary Committee for republication New York Post Office article.”
Republicans are currently in the minority and their options are constrained. However, this may change in a few months.
A GOP communications source familiar with the committee assured Townhall that “we are committed to getting to the bottom of what I believe are the twin stories,” with each being “the full truth about this unprecedented abuse of power, and then the story Not yet written about what we did to make sure this never happens again.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), who has served on the committee for several years, compared the Hunter Biden scandal to another great moment in history. “This is the most serious scandal since Watergate and warrants an investigation no less robust and no less bipartisan than the one that led to the president’s resignation,” Townhall said.
Jonathan Wilcox, communications director for Rep. Issa, added that “Democrats want no part of this because they know where it inevitably leads: the full realization of the worst of what Big Tech, their mainstream media, and the Democratic industrial complex that connects them all is capable of.”
While Thursday appearance on Fox BusinessRanking member Jim Jordan of Ohio responded “of course” to Stuart Varney’s question: “Did the media and social media intentionally suppress the Hunter Biden story?” The congressman also said that “Big Tech, Big Democrat Party and Big Media have colluded to keep critical information from the public in the run-up to the 2020 election.”
If Republicans take control of the House after the midterms, as they are expected to do, the Judiciary Committee will be largely made up of veterans like Issa and Jordan. Last November, in an interview with Townhall announcing his book, Jordan, a Republican, said he hoped to become chairman of the House Judiciary Committee if it were in the majority.
As I wrote last month, a 2020 Public Polling Project poll conducted for Inside The Numbers found that in key states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, about 75 percent of voters had heard of Hunter Biden’s story. Heading into the 2016 election, Rich Baris told Townhall that about 90 percent of voters had heard about Hillary Clinton’s scandals.
In 2020 and 2021, the Media Research Center commissioned McLaughlin & Associates to conduct a survey on article censorship.
The 2020 surveyconducted shortly after the election found that 36 percent of voters were unaware of the story providing “linking evidence [Biden] to the corrupt financial deal with China” and that if they had known that 13 percent would not have voted for Biden, which would have meant a loss of 4.6 percent of his total votes.
In 2021 the poll showed it 51.8 percent of respondents believe Big Tech “interfered in the 2020 election” by censoring coverage on Facebook and Twitter.
