Josh Hawley Roasts DHS Secretary Mayorkas Over His Lies and Misrepresentations About His Censorship Program
Friday’s bombshell release of Twitter’s internal documents demonstrating how the Biden campaign and Twitter staffers connived to subvert the 2020 election is sucking most of the oxygen out of social media today (BREAKING: Elon Musk Spills the Tea on Twitter’s Suppression of the Hunter Biden Laptop Story). The revelations that confirm what conservatives have long claimed to be the case are a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, they overshadow another investigation by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley that show that federal bureaucrats are working behind the scenes to limit what Americans can read and talk about.
The Hawley-Grassley investigation’s focus was not on social media, per se, but on the practice of some federal agencies becoming actively involved in suppressing content that was not helpful to their aims. The primary means of doing this started out as the Disinformation Governance Board run by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency; see Creepy-Sounding ‘Disinformation Board’ Faces Heavy Criticism; Elon Musk Calls it ‘Discomforting.’
Thanks to Hawley, we found that social media outlets had created a “portal” where the FBI and other agencies could order the take-down of offending posts (Leaked Documents Show DHS, the FBI, and Social Media Platforms Worked Together to Stop Debate on COVID, Hunter’s Laptop, and Election Integrity). We also know that foreign governments had access to that portal, but we don’t know which ones.
Thanks to the security, the “Disinformation Governance Board” was disbanded, at least in its current form (IN MY ORBIT: Nina Jankowicz Goes, ‘Bye Bye!’ as DHS Puts the Disinformation Board on Pause ) and its rather bizarre “director” (IN MY ORBIT: ‘Minister of Truth’ Nina Jankowicz Is as Dangerous, as She Is Ridiculous; You’ve Been Warned) went off to another career as a registered agent of a foreign government (Joe Biden’s Much-Hyped Disinformation Czar Becomes a Foreign Agent).
Senator Hawley sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security jefe Mayorkas with some pretty pointed questions concerning his agency’s role in suppressing free speech.
Senator Hawley’s entire questioning of Mayorkas is in the video. It is cued up to the question to which Mayorkas lied about.
The documents show that coordination was underway between Jankowicz and colleagues and the Facebook official responsible for stomping on the Hunter Biden laptop story–even as Mayorkas claimed the board was not yet functioning.
The Disinformation Governance Board also coordinated directly with Democrat dark money groups about policy.
Omidyar’s influence is widespread on the left. It also funds that bastion of conserving conservatism, The Bulwark. I’ve been told he is the sugar daddy for another site run by some former writers at a prominent conservative publication, but that is just rumor.
The Twitter revelations need to be read side-by-side with Hawley’s investigation. The Twitter documents show how decisions were made inside that corporation. Hawley is showing how Twitter was just one of many social media outlets working as an unofficial arm of the federal government to censor the news available to Americans.
Senator Hawley’s Letter to Secretary Majorkas
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