Biden admin's 'vast censorship enterprise' with help of NGOs slated for key hearing, lawmaker says
FIRST ON FOX: Ahead of a key hearing on Tuesday to examine the Biden administration's work with outside entities to censor Americans, Chairman Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., blasted the former president's "sprawling network of federal agencies and NGOs" reportedly used to limit speech and posts that were "disfavored."
"The Biden Administration created a vast censorship enterprise, comprised of a sprawling network of federal agencies and NGOs that have been working overtime to censor Americans' speech. From special reporting portals to the White House press secretary admitting at the podium that they were flagging posts to be taken down, the level of coordination to subvert the First Amendment and remove disfavored speech was beyond what most imagined," the Missouri senator told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement previewing the hearing.
Chairman Schmitt will lead his first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution to review "the role non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played in the censorship of Americans, all while receiving billions in federal tax dollars and subsidies," per an advisory.
While serving as Missouri Attorney General in 2022, Schmitt and now-Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its alleged collusion with tech companies and social media to censor individuals.
"When I was Missouri's attorney general, I filed the landmark Missouri v. Biden case that exposed this censorship for the world to see. Now, as a United States senator, I've introduced legislation that would hold social media companies and individual bureaucrats accountable for censorship. But the work doesn't stop there," Schmitt said.
"This hearing is an opportunity to expose how a network of NGOs contributed to this vast censorship enterprise and keep up the fight for Americans' First Amendment rights."
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty rejected the Biden Justice Department's bid to pause a preliminary injunction in 2023, which upheld the order and barred the administration from communicating with social media companies about "protected speech."
The injunction noted that while NGOs Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Partnership, and the Virality Project aren't defendants themselves, "In partnership with these non-governmental organizations, the State Department Defendants flagged and reported postings of protected free speech to the social-media companies for suppression."
"The flagged content was almost entirely from political figures, political organizations, alleged partisan media outlets, and social-media all-stars associated with right-wing or conservative political views, demonstrating likely 'viewpoint discrimination,'" Doughty wrote.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court decided 6-3 to reject a bid to stop the Biden administration from pressuring social media platforms to remove certain content. The case before the top court was known as Murthy v. Missouri and included social media users, as well as the states of Missouri and Louisiana against Biden's then-U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, among others.
Many were critical of the decision, with now-National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director nominee Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya saying at the time, "In the guise of countering misinformation, the Biden Administration used its regulatory power to suppress valid criticism of its COVID response. This led to irrational policies, such as extended school disruptions, the anti-science denial of recovered immunity, counterproductive vaccine mandates, and the sidelining and gaslighting of the vaccine-injured."
"Free speech is essential to science, to public health, and to good health. In light of the Supreme Court's reluctance to fully protect free speech today, we will need concrete action by Congress, and a popular movement, to restore free speech rights as a central plank of the American civic religion," he added at the time of the ruling.
Last year, a House Judiciary Committee 800-page report, titled "The Censorship-industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration," revealed a number of instances of COVID-19 censorship following significant pressure from the White House.
"[B]oth Facebook and Amazon referred to the Biden White House's efforts as 'pressure,'" according to the report.
July 2021 internal emails from executives at Facebook revealed that they understood the administration's position as wanting "negative information on or opinions about the vaccine" taken down, in addition to "humorous or satirical content that suggests the vaccine isn't safe."
At one point during the same month, Facebook executive Nick Clegg queried in an email why they censored the lab-leak theory of COVID-19. The response from another employee was: "Because we were under pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more.... We shouldn't have done it."
A representative for Biden did not provide comment in time for publication.
The hearing will take place at 2 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
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