Jim Jordan On FBI Weaponisation | FBI Hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

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 notice 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 US government has funded organizations that pressure advertisers 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 Graphica 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 in think tanks 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 a 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 platform's censor deamplify and even ban the people on those lists foreign the censorship industrial complex combines established methods of psychological manipulation some developed by the US military during the global war on terror with highly sophisticated tools from computer science including artificial intelligence the complexes leaders are driven by the fear that the internet and social media platforms Empower populist alternative infringe 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 de-platforming 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 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 New York Times elected a published 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 and yet in 2020 the Aspen Institute and Stanford cyber policy Center urged journalists to quote break the Pentagon papers principle and not cover leech government leaked information to prevent the spread of disinformation government-funded sensors frequently invoke the prevention of real world harm to justify their demands for censorship but the sensors Define Farm Define harm far more expansively than the Supreme Court does increasingly the sensors 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 cut off funding to the sensors and investigate their activities it should mandate instant reporting of all conversations between social media Executives government employees and government contractors concerning content moderation and finally Congress should limit the broad permission given to social media platforms to censor D platform and spread propaganda thank you very much I think the gentleman for his opening statement Mr Tybee you're now recognized for five minutes chairman get that hit that hit Mr Tybee hit that um chairman Jordan ranking member Plaskett members of the select committee thank you for having me today my name is Matt taibi 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've won the national magazine award the ifstone award for independent journalism and I've written 10 books including four New York Times New York Times bestsellers I'm now the editor of the online magazine racket on the independent platform sub stack 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 the just the first tweet about the blockage of the hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million impressions and 30 million engagements but it wasn't until a week after the first report after Michael schellenberger Barry Wise 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 hints in 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 telesor the yellow vest movement that in fact is a key point of the Twitter files that it's 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 chairman we summarized and submitted them to the committee in the form of a new Twitter file thread 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 News Guard the global disinformation 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 the 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 de-amplification or de-platforming but the firms like PayPal digital advertisers like Xander and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe these companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant faceless unaccountable 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 but instead of investigating these groups journalists partnered with them if Twitter declined to remove an account right away government agencies and ngos 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 um it's just not possible to instantly arrive at truth it is 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 the censorship industrial complex if the latter can knock over our first and most important constitutional guarantee these groups will have no serious opponent left anywhere if there's anything the 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 thank you um Mr taibi we appreciate both of your opening statements the chair now recognized the gentleman from Louisiana Mr Johnson for five minutes of question 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 buying Administration as we know have worked very hard to cast doubts on the legitimacy of your reporting and some have gone so far to State it's irrelevant if Twitter was suppressing speech in coordination with the federal government but 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 this is what we know what you've documented carefully in the Twitter files are a couple of key facts you'll hear people hear a lot of things today but this is what they need to know the federal government from Democrat members of Congress to intelligence agencies including the FBI used Twitter and other social media companies to censor Americans 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 have uncovered here there's communication between Twitter and the FBI it was constant it was pervasive 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 and now we know there are 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 they did it in 2020 as well and Twitter dutifully censored content as a result Twitter Executives restricted accounts they censored speech that conflicted with the less narrative Twitter has used its internal tools to control and manipulate uh considered speech considered misinformation and 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 matter what political party you're in government should not suppress important debates in public discourse gentlemen let me start with Mr tabi uh you have a long award-winning journalist career you just highlighted here Decades of experience reporting on some of the most conflict 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 um well first of all Mr Congressman thank you for the question I I would say you know I spent 10 years covering the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis uh that was obviously a very serious issue but um this Twitter file story and what we're looking at now and what we're investigating now um 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 it's certainly the most grave story that I've ever worked on personally I want to ask you both the same question and that is first of all has anyone from the federal government contacted you during the course of this investigation or since you've reported on Twitter files and number two who do you think are the most egregious federal government agencies involved in this censorship exercise let me start with Mr schellenberger I have not been contacted sorry thank you Congressman I have not been contacted by anybody in the by the administration or relating to this topic and I would like to Echo uh 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 uh our our most recent discoveries I mean I think you understand the process is that we first raised a bunch of concerns around the way Twitter pre-elon musk was uh censoring people and creating blacklists very quickly we discovered that we had FBI agents basically in other government officials you know demanding that Twitter takes certain actions we now know that the Department of Homeland services which has uh had what's that security security sorry Department of Homeland Security uh you know had had it try to create a disinformation board third that went away after public backlash but we now realize that they have this other Enterprise and they've been building out basically mechanisms to proliferate a censorship industrial complex around the country to censor on a whole range of issues and so you've seen them you've seen this censorship industry go from well we're just fighting Isis to well we're just finding Russian disinformation Bots to well now we need to fight domestic misinformation which is just saying we need to fight against people who are saying things we disagree with online that's all that means and I 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 allow are allowing and so um yeah for me it's just it starts at DHS but we basically see almost every government agency involved in this it's frightening amount of time I yield back a gentleman uh from Massachusetts Mr Lynch is recognized thank you Mr chairman I do need to correct the record uh so there's been the suggestion here that the FBI and other government agencies uh pressured employees at Twitter to validate these theories of foreign influence when we had Mr Roth who was the old rock who's the former Global head of trust and safety at Twitter so we asked Twitter uh if there was pressure applied in Mr Rott said no I would not agree with that the FBI this is his quote the FBI was quite careful 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 so that's what Twitter said about the actions of the FBI Visa via Twitter uh 2019 special counsel Robert Mueller unequivocally found that the internet research agency owned by yovegni pregosian 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 uh these these particular findings came on the heels of the unanimous assessment on the part of the United States 18 intelligence agencies that Russian President Putin quote ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the presidential election close quote they also followed the release of a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report finding that Russia and Vladimir Putin engaged in I quote aggressive multi-faceted effort to influence the U.S president election so Mr Tybee do you believe 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 Congressman my disagreement with the issue I think this is a this is basically a yes or no question either you think so or you don't and I don't have a lot of time so okay well then I'm going to answer not in the sense that you uh that you're putting it okay um I think for all countries right engaging offensive information operations the question is scale you believe that the Twitter file has been hacking reclaiming my time is how it works now I'll ask the questions and you try to provide an answer if you can uh you have to allow them to answer do you believe the gentleman is out of order and should not be interrupting a member asking a question on our side Mr chairman reclaiming my time from everyone uh do you believe that Russia engaged in a hack and release campaign damaging to the Clinton campaign back in 2016 again I don't know and and I would I would say it's irrelevant let me ask Mr schellenbeck uh these are pretty easy questions that's just whether you believe it or not uh Mr schellenbach same question do you believe that the Russian oligarch controlled internet research agency interfere in the 2016 election I think that they tried to okay fair enough uh Mr schellenbeck do you believe that the Russians engaged in a hack and release campaign with respect to the uh damaging information they released uh regarding the Clinton campaign to the best of my awareness that is what happened okay fair enough thank you uh that's not the same thing the reason influence I understand I understand also that material was true I've been look uh I let me introduce a couple of documents uh just to reinforce uh that we've got uh that is not a legitimate practice for censorship your name is reclaiming my time sure gentleman's out of order so Mr chairman I'll ask unanimous consent to enter the indictment in the United States versus the internet research agency U.S District Court of the District of Columbia number one 18-32 and also asked to enter into the record the executive summary to volume one of the Mueller report which states in March 2016 the gru began hacking this is the Russian agency began hacking the email accounts of the Clinton campaign volunteers and employees including campaign chairman John podesta the gru later released additional materials through the organization Wikileaks the presidential campaign of Donald Trump showed interest in Wikileaks releases of the documents and welcomed their potential damage to without candidate Clinton so I've introduced these document documents without objection thank you Mr chairman uh I've introduced these documents to this clear that me that Russia's use of social media to interfere in the 2016 election created abundance times it's an abundant reason okay we I think or social media platforms to be concerned gentlemen's time is expired Lottery without objection these documents are entered into the record we now recognize the gentleman from California Mr Isa for five minutes hey Mr chairman uh I'd like to continue along in a sense the line we've been on just now Mr taibi Mr schellenberger 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 United States government and in our form of democracy I think that's a fair statement yes okay are you familiar with the organization uh in Europe the global engagement Center yes well that's it it's an American State Department I'm sorry but are you familiar with the global engagement Center's use of European and other sources to uh uh to in fact determine the where Twitter files should or shouldn't be uh if you will taken down thousands of names and Twitter files correct I'm not sure that Global engagement Center is is uh taking down Twitter files I actually wasn't aware of that I'm sorry well Twitter and the FBI have used this this organization and their funding well let me let me go on to another another stay on stay on the path I was on uh you you commented that the the scale mattered okay would you elaborate on scale mattering uh in the attempt to uh undermine free speech absolutely so a great example of this is a report um that the global engagement Center sent to Twitter um 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 I think you would call traditional hardcore uh 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 this 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 and this is the problem with the whole idea of trying to identify which which accounts are actually the internet Russian 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 the Senate select intelligence committee that they came back with a different answer okay 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 uh this country has political parties and people from the one might call the extreme left an extreme right uh and 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 yes and the ACLU and journalists almost always support their right to say what they believe even if you disagree absolutely and our constitution says we will make no law to restrain exactly that kind of free speech Yes and that includes people who promote the idea that we should redistribute all wealth uh in a communist type way as a matter of fact we still have a Communist Party in the United States isn't that correct it is okay 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 yes 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 battles did it call for Insurrection or other criminal activities that would destroy our government no I mean we did not I mean I'm not saying we're not saying that that didn't happen but we're describing people having political arguments online right so let me just uh because my time's limited like everyone's so it's suffice to say that the 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 protections correct that is why we have the subcommittee that is why we are here today thank you I think the gentleman a great point I now recognize the gentlelady from Florida for five minutes thank you Mr chairman 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 casts a cloud of your objectivity but it did a deep concern that I have relates to the ethics of how journalists receive and present certain information journalists should avoid accepting spoon-fed cherry-picked information if it's likely to be slanted in complete or designed to reach a foregone easily disputed or invalid conclusion would you agree with that I think it's I think it depends 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 Mrs congresswoman I've done probably a dozen stories involving whistleblowers every reported story that I've ever done across three decades involves sources who have motives every time you do a story you're making a a balancing test reclaiming the public claiming my time thank you very much okay I ask you this because before you became Elon musk's hand journalists so and pardon the oxymoron you stated this on Joe Rogan's podcast about being spoon fed information and I quote I think that's true of any kind of Journalism and you'll see it behind me here 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 yes good now you crossed that line with the Twitter files no Elon Musk it's my time please do not interrupt me Alaskan Elon Musk spoon fed 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 appear to have benefited from it before the release of emails in 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 sub stack readership 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 I've also reinvested no no no is it true that you have profited since you were received you were this recipient of the Twitter files you've made money yes or no it's probably a wash honestly nope you've you have made money that you did not have before correct but I've also spent money that I didn't know okay where I just hired a whole group of people patently obvious answer reclaiming my time attention is a powerful drug eyeballs money prominence attention all of it points to problems with accuracy and credibility and the larger point which is social media companies are not biased against conservatives and if anything they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and other magic 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 another alleged finding from the Twitter files Mr schellenberger you've referenced several times this 3.4 million dollars 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 to relating to content moderation is that correct it is thank you but 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 schellenberger 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 costs them money so they get reimbursed the FBI makes these requests and reimbursements to discover evidence then run 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 helped keeps 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 defined for Clear purposes in federal law my time is just about wrapped up 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 um generally had no time to yield back but I will let the gentleman Mr schellenberger respond and I would also point out that I did not say what the FBI paid Twitter for all I said was they paid Twitter 3.4 million dollars Mr chairman point of order I didn't ask Mr schellenberger a question yeah the witness wants to respond and the witness have been invited our guests and frankly they've been attacked by the federal please do that I'm going to let Mr sellenberger answer that before recognizing Mr Bishop so are you going to do that as we move down the the line of of questioners uh the general Aid has not been recognized you had your five minutes and frankly I think that's at the discretion of the chair Mr Schellenberg you can respond briefly 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 uh what's stasha I believe the person that send it is saying is that they started taking money after previously not taking it and I believe that the reason that they had not taken it earlier was because they did not want that Financial conflict clouding their relationships money is payment under federal law so that they can gentlemen from North Carolina Mr Bishop is recognized for five material that they've been asking I think the gentleman Mr taibi uh would you care to I'm down here on this end sir uh I'm uh would you care to respond to the attack on your ethics you weren't given really an opportunity to answer and if you be brief I've got a bunch of stuff I want to ask you as well sure just quickly the that moment on The Joe Rogan show I was actually recounting a section from Seymour Rush's book reporter where he described a scene where the CIA gave him a story and he was very uncomfortable uh 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 newsworthy and it's clearly outweighed any other considerations and I think everybody else who worked on the project agreed 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 sure as the night follows the day that's the case right that is true although I would like to clear up you know some things that have been misrepresented not one of us has actually been paid to do any of this work we've all um you know traveled on our own we've hired our Personnel on our own and I've just hired a pretty large team to investigate this issue yeah out of my own pocket the fact that the attempt comes from the dice across the aisle to smear you leave uh you frankly I think liberals if I understand that uh in your background you're both good liberals and you come in and the Democrats hostility to what you've undertaken is astonishing to behold but it's part of the picture we're seeing in Twitter files number 15 Mr taibi 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 re reverse engineer and figure out who those accounts were and then in Twitter files number 17 after disclosing Mr Watts identity you disclosed that J.M Berger is the creator of Hamilton 68. and guess what he was a federal contractor right he was yes he 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 release just a month before what he said I believe publicly that he the the dashboard was the product of three or 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 yes I think it's that's a good question certainly the German Marshall fund which is the the NGO that is at the top of the chain in this organ organization it's the German Marshall fund then the alliance for securing democracy and then Hamilton 68 they're a federal contractor they received over a million dollars from the Department of Defense um they're the board of the alliance for securing democracy has a former acting head of the CIA a former deputy head of the NSA a former Chief of the DHS on it so I want to make and the bigger point is hard because the examples sometimes start making it I want to introduce you to or introduce country to somebody else I think you've mentioned it and so one of your writings Richard stingle you know who that is yes he's the former uh the first head of the global engagements I want the American people to hear from him for 30 seconds basically every country creates their own narrative story and and you know my old job at the state department was what people used to joke as the chief propaganda is job we haven't talked about propaganda propaganda I'm not against propaganda every country does it and they have to do it to their own population every country does it every country does propaganda and they have to do it to their own people is what Mr stingle said if I understand correctly he was the head of the of the G of the global engagement Center at its creation right he was in his book um information Wars there's 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 but what he was describing roughly approximates that in the half minute I've got left he also was associated with Hamilton 68 right um the global engagement Center certainly had ties to Hamilton 68. I think it's closer than that that'll come out okay I'd be anxious to hear that I hope I'll get yielded in a minute or two from somebody else down the way there's all sorts of stuff to disclose this committee has to uncover not this that single instance but this system that you have described this is the hope that Americans have to set this right this committee and that hostility shows what we're up against it's not three pillars to the to the system it is four and you're seeing the left move to crush you and anybody else who tries to expose this I yield I think the gentleman for his great uh five minutes and when now yield to the gentleman from Virginia Mr Conley thank you Mr chairman um I don't know what to say after that last one um they're fellow Americans and we're elected officials when trying to get at the truth and we'll try to participate in the process at getting at the truth Mr TB uh 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 policy is that roughly correct yes and Mr Schoenberg you you would agree with that yes 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 yes no not the Trump White House although I did report initially in the first Twitter files that the Trump White House had made and and requests and have been honored Mr shelver I did not find that 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 and 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 and specifically uh the case brought up was an exchange between Donald Trump then president of the United States and Chrissy Teigen uh where you know they he had called her something and she called him something back I won't repeat it um and uh and this was under oath confirmed yeah that happened and that the white house shortly thereafter after taking uh Tegan uh had her email about the president which was pejorative that the White House called Twitter to try to take on the content you were that Mr TB yeah I certainly heard that in the news yes and but did you see that email exchange no I have not seen an exchange from the Trump white house so I have seen one from Congressman Schiff and one from Senator Angus King yeah nice try we're talking about the Trump white house uh and people under oath confirming it and my question is in the Twitter files did Elon Musk or Twitter provide you with that exchange with Chrissy Teigen no um but that's probably because the the searches that I was making well probably probably because it didn't confirm the bias that this is all about as the gentleman from Texas would say the left attempting to uh control content when in fact the evidence is the Trump White House most certainly attempted to control content at Twitter Mr schellenberger were you aware of that or is this all news to you I already answered that question no I'm I mean specifically the Tegan Exchange yeah the T the Tegan exchange was news to me I'm probably mispronouncing her name I'm sorry um so let me ask have you like combed the uh 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 again Mr Congressman I mentioned before we're focused not on the Biden Administration under the Trump Administration in fact this just this morning we released the uh an exchange where Twitter talked about um vetting the accounts of both Mr Biden and Mr Trump uh and really we were looking at the intelligence agencies when we were doing this research and as I mentioned before their conclusions targeted people on both the left and the right globally again including the yellow vest movement in France the pro-modoro accounts in South America and left us to news organizations in America like truth out and Consortium some of those people are my friends actually um and you know we found those in intelligence lists that were passed on to Twitter uh just as we found lists that included uh ordinary Trump supporters thank you um reclaiming my time I appreciate that because in some ways what you just said undermines the Prem service of this select committee which is that the federal government has been organized to weaponize uh against conservative voices and of course what you've just indicated in your testimony is well actually that's not the evidence you found no I think this committee my understanding is that they're they're concerned about the weaponization of of the government against Free Speech which is certainly what we're I thank you my time has expired but I appreciate your understanding of our committee I have a different understanding I yield back well you got the wrong understanding last week in the in the full Judiciary Committee hearing I introduced into the record a story of a left-wing journalist who said that 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 point of order Mr chair are you going to respond after everyone no I'm taking my five minutes oh you're it's your five minutes minutes when when I want to and I'm taking my five minutes okay great yeah thank you well I would ask for an additional few seconds for being interrupted by the ranking member um but the truth is we want to focus on protecting the First Amendment Mr schellenberger are you a Republican no I'm not you gotta you got any you know pro-trump bumper stickers on your car I voted for Biden voted for Biden you know how many Maga hats laying around your house right I do not yeah but you said earlier both you and Mr Tybee said this is the most chilling thing you have ever seen as journalists Mr Tybee the same thing you're not a republican either right no no you didn't vote for I mean like this is about protecting the First Amendment Mr Tire I want to read from your uh Twitter file number nine you say this after weeks of Twitter Files The Bureau issued a statement Wednesday referring to 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 this is why I think you're 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 and then you go on to in this particular Twitter file to talk about what Mr Bishop was just talking about the gec at the state department 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 but there was one agency you didn't mention because you didn't know at the time one agency one you get almost the whole alphabet but you didn't mention one agency the FTC yeah you know about them now yes we know about them now in an up close and personal way you didn't know then but you do know uh no no now December 2nd as I said earlier December 2nd the first Twitter file comes out Mr taibi and I think there are five others including the ones from Mr schellenberger December 13th the very first letter that the FTA 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 come 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 taibi that you got a federal government agency asking a private company who in the Press are you talking with yeah I do find it scary I I I think it's none of the government's business what uh which journalists a private company talks to and why um I think every journalist should be concerned about that and the absence of interest in that issue by um my fellow colleagues in the mainstream media is an indication of how low the business has sunk there was once a realist free decor and camaraderie within media whenever one of us was gone after we all kind of rose to the challenge and supposed to be it used to be the case that is gone now we don't protect one what else used to happen Democrats used to care about protecting First Amendment Free Speech rights too now it's like okay pure attacking because and I said this on the house floor I said don't think they won't come for you oh the the big Tech big me the cancel culture they may come for republicans and conservatives now but they never the mob is Never Satisfied they will keep coming Mr schellenberger you know who the chair of the FTC is uh not personally Lena Khan Lena Khan you know who she used to work for my understanding is the Judiciary Committee yeah she's worked for these folks the same folks have been attacking you today same folks chair of the FTC work for them here's what they said here's what she said in one in a letter where they ask about who these journals 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 and they're doing that they want Twitter to do a background check on you before they can talk to you in America the FTC led by Lena 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 New York Times bestsellers award-winning uh journalists but in all your your time in the journalism field this issue most important and how this I think what'd you call it Mr Schellenberg this is complex what do you call it the censorship industrial complex hardly this web of censorship big government big Tech ngos 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 and that's not right or left that's not this is just right or wrong this is wrong we know it's wrong and it's about protecting the First Amendment I yield back I now recognize myself the the ranking member uh for her five minutes thank you thank you very much Mr chair um Mr taibi the emails and documents you've produced all date to around 2020 is that correct no uh there's a significant portion of them from 2017 and 2018 as well thank you and Mr schellenberger what dates do you have I I believe that we had emails including 2022 2021 2020. that's also true 2019 and Mr taibi said 2018 do you have 2018 as well I can't remember okay thank you uh Mr taibi how many employees did Twitter employ in approximately the time period of 20 20 21 do you know I don't okay it was 7 500. do you know how many were in its legal team during that time period I don't I'm so and do you know how many were in its public policy team I don't Mr schellenbugger do you know how many were employed in content moderation during that time I do not know okay so we're looking at thousands of employees overall and hundreds in offices where the focus of emails and documents he released um I will ask you Mr schellenberger how many emails did Mr musk give you access to I mean we we went through thousands of emails did he give you access to all of the emails for the time period in which yeah we never had a single I never had a single request denied and 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 and we never found an instance where anything there was any evidence that anything had been taken out okay so you would you would believe that you have probably Millions of emails and documents right that's correct would you say I don't know I think the numbers less too high okay a hundred thousand that's probably probably close to 100 000 that both of you are seeing yet in your the Twitter files Mr taibi you've produced only 338 of those 100 000 emails is that correct that's correct yes and then who gave you access to these emails who was the individual that uh gave you permission to access the emails well the attribution from my story is sources of Twitter and that's what I'm going to refer to okay did Mr musk contact you Mr taibi again the attribution for my story is sources of Twitter Mr schellenberger did Mr must contact you uh actually no I was brought in by my friend Barry Weiss and so this story there's been a lot of misinformation Ms Weiss thank you Mr taibi have you had conversations with Elon Musk I have okay uh Mr Tybee did Mr musk place any conditions yield for a second uh as long as my time is not used are you trying to get journalists no I'm not trying to get yourself I'm not I am asking no well if you will let me finish uh you and you had conversations with him not 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 and did Mr musk place any conditions on the use of the emails or documents no the in fact I was told uh explicitly that um we were given license to look at present-day Twitter as well as past Twitter so you had unfiltered access to Twitter's internal communication but those include HR files no no no no we we didn't we did not have access to personal information of any kind in fact we signed a waiver um don't produce that waiver to the members of anyone on this committee or any staff I'd be happy to have you I haven't but have you uh given all of the access to what you were given by your source to this committee no no I would never do that okay I didn't ask if you were given the committee uh the individuals but all of the files no you have not no so what we're getting is your dissemination your decision as to what was important and not important and that correct which is true in every news story in every story but you have files that you say you are sharing but those files are just a smaller period of the files is that correct yes okay thank you and the FTC investigation of Twitter you knew that they were investigating Twitter before the time period that Mr musk came on I was aware of it and 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 well I I wasn't privy to that part have you seen the consent decree no I have not okay 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's about individuals and employees would be given to them my understanding so I didn't ask a question I didn't ask you a question sir okay so do you know that Elon Musk paid 44 billion for Twitter is that correct Mrs shellenberger were you aware of that yes I read that and did you know that he received that um part of the funding from Saudi Arabia as well as Qatar uh I I heard that and did you know that one of those individuals who owns um Beyonce was the company um but binance while he has a Canadian citizenship he is a Chinese National do were you aware of that I did not know that okay and that he uh stated that that was for the cause but thank you very much for answering my questions I yield back chair now recognized the generally from Wyoming for five minutes with a generally yield for 20 seconds yes I I thank the gentlelady for Yale I just think this is interesting first the the FTC is asking for your backgrounds and now the the ranking member of the committee on the weaponization of government is asking for your sources if I never ask them for their sources yes I did not ask for sources and they said that they were not talking well you are not going to say yield back to the generally I thank her for yielding respect you asked me who gave me who gave me I asked you who gave it to you and when she said that they were your sources I then asked you if you had spoken with Elon Musk I did not ask you who those sources were General the generation is recognize and she will receive an additional 20 seconds uh the gentlelady is recognized for five minutes a question thank you Mr chairman and thank you to our Witnesses for being here today and all of your important work that has you have put into writing the Twitter files uh 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 and boy after listening to you and reading the reports that I have does our federal government need to be fumigated Mr taibi I'd 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 end quote what's interesting to me is that what is missing from that list is the word unlawful it's true yes and so as notably seems to be missing from the FBI's lexicon in part nine of the Twitter files Mr taibi 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 is allegedly a former general counsel of the FBI stated quote but also odd that they are searching for violations of our policies Mr taibi what was about the what was the approximate percentage of the FBI request to Twitter being based on the justification advice that the the Tweet violated the company's terms of service uh uh Mr Congressman I would say that that was a standard disclosure or a standard disclaimer in almost all the communications from the FBI to Twitter uh they would there would usually be a line in there saying something like foyer consideration we believe the following 207 accounts may have violated your terms of service um but notably they they were they very rarely focused on words like truth or inaccuracy very often they use the words Mal information misinformation or disinformation uh and so I think they're trying to shift the focus from one idea to the other hey I think that's interesting as well what do you make of the finding that the FBI founded its responsibility to police violation of a private companies terms of service is a priority over policing violations of U.S federal law we've there there were a couple of very telling emails that we Pat um we published uh one was by the a lawyer named Sasha cardiel where the company was being so overwhelmed by um by requests from the FBI and in fact they they gave each other a sort of digital high five after one batch saying that was a Monumental undertaking to clear all of these but she noted that that she believed that that the FBI was essentially um creating doing word search is 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 FBI's responsibility to police the terms of service for a private company I do not I I think you cannot have a state-sponsored anti-disinformation effort um and also without directly striking at the whole concept of free speech I think the two ideas are in direct conflict uh and 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 that I think they 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 well in fact wouldn't you agree with me that the first amendment is broader than Twitter's terms of service absolutely yes yeah and wouldn't you also agree with me that the FBI is responsible for complying with the First Amendment not Twitter's terms of service I would hope so yes yeah you also highlighted the presence of people like Jim Baker at Twitter and again I've noted that he is allegedly a former FBI employee part nine also speaks of a former a 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 uh there was a significant quantity of people who had come from the intelligence World um 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 uh 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 there's an extraordinary number of these people a lot of them come from the intelligence World which we did find unusual I think okay thank you very much and I yield back General Lee's time inspired I think here the gentleman from California is recognized for five minutes thank you Mr chairman I still try to figure out where all of this is going to go but we've heard a lot from our Republican colleagues claiming that somehow all of this interaction has led to Twitter censoring conservative voices and I really want to look at what the evidence is that that has or has not happened in 2020 Twitter commissioned an objective study to examine whether its algorithms disproportionately promotes 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 amplifies 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 talibi and Mr schallenberger are you familiar with these studies I am I am very good then you know that whatever you may be trying to tell us the effect on Twitter didn't happen um no I don't agree excuse me it's my time thank you I can also give you many real analytical studies based on actual evidence but since I left only five minutes Mr chairman 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 chairman may I enter those into the file thank you Mr chairman I take that silence as a yes did you identify the document I'm sorry certainly two these documents studies that were done by universities uh and we usually take a little bit it takes a little bit more for unanimous consent than these documents but without objection we'll accept them into the record thank you Mr thank you Mr chairman uh 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 cunan you can see those up on the board uh you know talk about nonsense cunans are you really ready for these dots where in the country is 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 of whom all of 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 personal attacks promoted by radicals I'm pretty sure if the Democrats held a hearing today to force Fox News to post a certain content my Republican colleagues would be up in arms and 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 of Fox news reporter he said dangerously insane there's two Fox Executives describing Fox decision to push forward election lies as chasing the nuts off the cliff there are two other quotes two are the tweets that I think we ought to be aware of and Fox News was promoting it they were promoting Trump's lies quote up there big protest in D.C on January 6 be there will be wild a call to arms and all of 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 protect our country this is the speech that my Republican colleagues would have us to believe is being wrongly quote unquote 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 uh gentlemen gentleman yields back gentleman from Utah is recognized for five minutes thank you chairman 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 and I 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 de-platform 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 and 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 and I I could use a couple 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 dollars to someone to go assassinate a foreign leader it's illegal in some cases for United States are 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 and 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 and 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 what we see here I don't I think you're I think that's absolutely correct uh freedom of speech is the foundation for our democracy and what we've seen here is federal government putting extraordinary amounts of pressure both on Twitter and Facebook and we haven't talked about Facebook but we we now know that we have the we have the White House demanding that Facebook take down factual information and Facebook doing that and we and 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 in order to advance a narrative and I have to interrupt just to agree with you for heaven's sakes again we've heard over here well they got to you know Fox News lights there's a reason that 20 of the people trust media oh my gosh if you want to have a conversation about lies and deception the media I would love to engage in that because we've seen plenty of it over the last six years and it's not coming from just Fox News New York Times CBS NBC every single one of them were saying things that they knew was not true and they didn't say it once they said it for years and the and the White House again trying to stifle things that they know is is true but it doesn't fit their narrative and I got to give one illustration in the in a few minutes or a minute I have left when you have an agent Mr Chan who goes to his Twitter says please see below list of Twitter accounts which we believe violate your terms of service I mean how do you respond to that and defend that yeah 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 tabi if I could yeah no I think there's I think Mr congressman and there's an important Point um you know in conjunction with our own research there's a foundation the foundation for freedom online which um you know there's a very telling video that they uncovered where the director of Stanford's election Integrity partnership talks about how um the DHS agency didn't have the capability to do election monitoring and so that they kind of stepped in to filled quote fill the gaps legally um before that capability could be amped up and 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 um from cisa escalated by EIP so they were essentially identical in the eyes of the company uh 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 just what they call disinformation on the right and on the left by a factor I think of about ten to one so and I say that as not a republican at all it's just a fact of what we're looking at um so yes we have come to the to the realization that this bright line that we imagine that exists between say the FBI or the DHS or the gec and these private companies is illusory and that it's what's more important is this constellation of kind of quasi-private organizations that do this work well we're over time so I'll conclude with re-emphasizing this by a factor of ten to one they tried to mute conservative thought and the federal government cannot contract out suppression of free expression chairman thank you thank you gentleman's time has expired the generally from Texas is recognized for five minutes thank you Mr Speaker I mean I get that last time I apologize Mr chairman um Mr taibi um I want to follow up a little bit on the ranking members questions what was the first time that Mr musk approach you about writing uh the Twitter files again congresswoman that would I just need a date sir but I can't give it to you unfortunately because this this is a question of sourcing and I don't give them I'm a journalist is a question of chronology no that's a question you earlier said that that someone had said you through the internet some message about whether or not you would be interested in some information yes and I refer to that person as a source so you're not going to tell us when musk first approached you again Congressman you're asking University you're asking a journalist to reveal can you consider Mr must to be the direct source of all this no no you're you're trying to get me to say that he is the source I I I can't answer your question if you're telling me you can't answer because it's your Source well then Dad the only logical conclusion is that he is in fact your Source well you're free to conclude that well sir I just don't understand you can't have it both ways but let's move on because no he can he's a journalist he can't because either musk is the source and he can't talk about it or musk is not the source and if musk is not the source then he can discuss no one has yielded the gentle lady's out of order you don't get to see that everybody what he said is he's not going to reveal his source and the fact that Democrats are pressuring him to do so is not we're asking him about his conversations all time to anybody I want to reclaim my time and I would ask the chairman to give me back some of the time because of the interruption Mr chairman I'm asking you if you will give me the seconds that I lost we will give you that 10 seconds thank you now let's talk about another uh item that you 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 your um I guess it's kind of like a web page and don't quite understand what sub stack is but uh 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 but you yourself posted that you had conditions the conditions as I've explained multiple times not sure you've not explained you told her her response to her question that you had no conditions in fact you kind of used the word license did you were free to look at all of them all 100 000 emails I I was the question was posed was was I free to write about Sir did you have any conditions the condition was that we published or did you have any conditions yes or no a simple question yes all right could you tell us what conditions those were the conditions were an attribution sources of Twitter and that we we break any news on Twitter but you didn't break it on Twitter did you send the file that you released today to Twitter first yeah you did you send it to Twitter first the Twitter that was one of the conditions yes or no sir the Twitter files thread actually did come out first but sir you 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 no no I post I posted it on Twitter first first sir or did you give it to the ranking Amendment to the chairman of the committee or the staff of the committee first well that's not breaking the story that's giving yes I do I did give uh so you gave all the information that you did not give to the Democrats you give it to the Republicans first then you put it on Twitter actually no the chronology is a little bit confusing more or less what the chronology was I believe the thread came out first where on Twitter on Twitter so then you afterwards gave it to the Republicans and not the Democrats yes because I'm submitting it for the record as my as my statement did you give it to him in advance I gave it to them today you gave it to them today but you still have not given anything to the Democrats well I'll again I'll move on and I wanted to ask uh Mr schillenberger the same questions sir when did you first uh visit with or get contacted by Mr Musk I'm not going to reveal my sources but like I said I was invited by Barry Weiss I'm not asking for sources sir I'm just asking technology did you first make contact with Mr Musk I don't know the exact date was it it was December it was December December of well there's a lot of Decembers in December of last year which December December of last year ma'am last year the 2022 yes all right now in um in your discussion in your answer you also said that you were invited by a friend Barry Weiss my friend Barry Weiss so this friend works for Twitter or what is what is her um she's a journalist sir I didn't ask you a question I'm now asking Mr schellenberger a question please yes ma'am Barry Weiss is a journalist I'm sorry sir she's a journalist she's a journalist or you work in concert with her um yeah do you know when she first uh was contacted by Mr musk I I don't know you don't know so you're in this as a threesome um there was many more people involved in that there wasn't many more people involved with it are you being paid to be here today either through Consulting campaign absolutely not and the lady's time has expired thank you I just I don't know what to say other than I recognize the gentleman from North Dakota for five minutes thank you here's Mr chairman and I'll yield my five minutes I appreciate the gentleman uh yielding I do think it's worth pointing out that you know I have a co-sponsored I think some of my colleagues have co-sponsored 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 it's not the position anymore uh Mr Schellenberg I want to go to Twitter files part seven I related a lot of what you put in there in my opening statement and 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 number seven the FBI and the Biden laptop you say this how the FBI and 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. and what stuck kind of jumped out at me was the way you framed it because you did it backwards from what it's normally said normally you would say but the sense would read foreign business dealings both before and after but 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 use 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 and I want you to just walk us through why you said that because when I read it it certainly was an operation uh both before and after as you said after and before thank you Mr chairman reading through the whole sweep of events I do not know the extent to which the influence operation aimed at pre-bunking the hunter Biden laptop was coordinated I don't know who all was involved but what we saw was you saw Aspen and Stanford many months before then saying don't cover the material in the hacking League without emphasizing the fact that it could be disinformation okay so they're priming journalists to not cover a future hack and leak and the way that journalists have long been trained to with the in the in the tradition of the Pentagon papers made famous by the the Steven Spielberg movie they were saying cover the fact that it 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 14th it's Jim Baker who makes the most strenuous argument within Twitter multiple emails multiple messages saying this doesn't look real uh 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 Joel 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 and why did he think that because the New York Post had published the FBI subpoena taking the laptop in December of 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 provenance of that laptop but you had Jim Baker making a strenuous argument and then of course you get to a few days after the October 14th release you have the president of the United States echoing what these these Former Intelligence Community officials were saying which is that it looked like a Russian influence operation so they were 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 and basically the they convinced Joel Roth that it was they give me some of 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 pre-bunk why why do you think they could predict the time the method and the person why could the FBI predict it um they predict this they predicted it so did the Aspen Institute 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 I think the most important fact to know is that 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 worrying of the hack and leak potentially involving Hunter Biden maybe those guys didn't have anything to do with the guys that have a laptop we don't know that I know I have to say as a newcomer to this as somebody that thought it was Russian disinformation in 2020 every day I knew thought it was Russian I was shocked to see that period 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 is pretty disturbing it's pretty overwhelming thank you uh Mr Sheldon will now recognize the gentleman from New York Mr Goldman for five minutes I think it's uh Mr Allred first oh I'm sorry I'm sorry just walking recognize the gentleman from Texas go right ahead well thank you Mr chair I'd like to ask um you know Miss consent enter a few tweets into the record sure identify the tweets let's see it 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 yay at the time of these tweets said 32 million followers Toby can you read the tweet on left can you see the text there I actually can't my eyesight is not it's not so great I'll read it to you it says I'm a bit sleepy tonight 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 toured with me and tried to blackball anyone whoever opposes your agenda and can you see the Tweet next to it I can yes it's a would you describe it it's a star of David the swastika in the middle of it yes should those tweets have been taken down by Twitter 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 his speech at the first Soviet writers Congress and he was asked if any important rights had been taken away and 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 let's uh let's move on to a couple of other tweets not from somebody 32 million followers this one says Elon Now controls Twitter unleash unleash the racial slurs k word and n word the other one says I can freely express how much I hate in words now thank you Elon see these tweets were taken down even by Elon Musk Twitter and they should have been because their 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 increase in the use of the n-word and it's not just online from 2021 from 2020 to 2021 hate crimes Rose almost 44 in major cities so hate speech online has real impacts in life and so does election misinformation and propaganda online 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 and today you have virtually alleged a vast government conspiracy to censor speech I can tell you that the threat to our democracy I'm not asking you a question I'll let you know when I do I can say 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 aligned foreign Nationals named Lev parnis and Igor frumin succeeded in funneling illegal Russian money to a trump Alliance Super PAC that spent 1.3 million dollars 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 partners and Freeman were convicted to 21 months and one year respectively for conspiring to make political contributions by a foreign National along with another other campaign Finance related violations we live in Information Age where malign actors do want to use social media to influence our elections both big the ones that you spend a long time talking about and small like mine Mr Congressman it should be a bipartisan goal no you don't get to ask questions here okay it should be a bipartisan goal to ensure that Americans and only Americans determine the outcome of our elections not fear-mongering and 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 tinfoil hat that there's not a vast conspiracy but that ordinary folks and national security 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 yield back gentleman yields back gentleman from Kentucky Mr Massey is recognized for five minutes I want to talk about the weaponization of the CDC against the American people and this overlaps with one of the Twitter files number 13 by my account 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 coveted the Pfizer trial date had said no such thing in fact there was no support for that claim so I called up the head of the CDC recorded the conversation the head in Washington D.C 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 Massey 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 you're going to redact it you're 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 shuchat these are her notes with of her phone call with me about natural immunity in January when I called him out on it again these are the entirety of her notes that were obtained in before you from somebody a third party I took all of my recordings released them to Cheryl Atkinson she blew the whistle on this people a lot of people have forgotten about it uh here's here's why I find it interesting and I'm going to tie it into the Twitter files and by the way I told them I was not an anti-vaxx 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 got young people in Kentucky taking them because you're telling them on their website even if you've had covet go get it so that was my complaint um on May 20 or May 10th 2021 toddo Boyle this name will come up in a Twitter file later he is the top lobbyist and Twitter's Washington office who was also his Twitter's point of contact in the white house he encouraged the CDC to enroll in the uh partner Support Program oh okay the CDC is now a partner with Twitter because they're in the partner support program they he said in the future that's the best way to get a spreadsheet like this reviewed now this is an email from uh between Todd O'Boyle and uh and the folks at CDC by the way let me let me talk to this too this is these are more of my conversations with the CDC completely redacted the subject thereof uh next 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 a 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 okay so they're tracking congressman's tweets at CDC they're enrolled in the partner support uh portal at uh at Twitter and then I found this is why um I found Alex berenson's report very interesting because uh what he found out is that Scott Gottlieb worked hard and and Twitter complied it looks like to censor a tweet from a doctor about natural immunity guess what on the same day that that doctor's tweet was censored so were my tweets on natural immunity why is this important what is 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 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 think I don't think Congress does I think every American by virtue of being an American is has the right to free speech enshrined in the Constitution so I'm not so much worried that they they uh censored us a congressman but they disabled all the comments from my constituents those are the voices they squelched and my beef is not with Twitter but my beef is with the CDC and these federal agencies and I encourage you all if you can to find more about this and uh do you have any either of you have any comments on this topic yeah Gentlemen's timing expired but the gentleman maybe still had three seconds Witnesses May respond okay just quickly we found just yesterday a tweet from um the the virality project at Stanford which was partnered with a number of government agencies on Twitter where they talked explicitly about um censoring stories of true vaccine side effects um and other true stories that they felt uh encouraged hesitancy now the import the it's interesting true yes so that they use the word true three times uh in this email and what's what's notable about this is that it reflects the fundamental misunderstanding of this whole disinformation complex and its information complex they believe that ordinary people can't handle uh difficult truths and so they think that they need minders to separate out things that are controversial or difficult um for them and that's again that's totally contrary to what America is all about I think I'll 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 just trying to discredit you so it's not just uh it's a form of censorship but it's also a disinformation campaign and I think what Matt said is really important to understand I mean we went from you go from a situation where we were fighting Isis recruiting and then it was Russian disinformation and 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 mean 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 I mean 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 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 Shilling and you're absolutely right to be outraged by 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 thank you good job gentlemen's Tom has expired me now recognize gentleman from uh New York Mr Goldman actually excuse me it's Mrs Miss Sanchez I'm sorry and Mr chair since that went over two minutes with them responding will you give an additional time there's a question at the end of someone the customer if there's a question at the end of someone's five minutes and the witnesses haven't responded uh we'll give them time to do that many times you guys go over and then don't I understand that but two minutes okay that's customers so we'll certainly do that gentlelady from California is recognized excuse me I'd like to yield my time to Mr Goldman thank you uh Miss Sanchez um Mr schellenberger first I'd just like to compliment you on your choice of Thai today um seems like we we're we're on the same page um I would also just like to respond to your last uh point and just remind everyone that of course we all believe in the First Amendment but the first amendment applies to government prohibition of speech not to private companies um I want to talk about your Twitter files number seven Mr schellenberger uh are you aware that Rudy Giuliani was the sole source of the hard drive obtained by the New York Post that is my understanding and are you aware that Rudy Giuliani had been openly cavorting with agents of Russian intelligence throughout 2020. that is also my understanding now this was the same Russian agent who had been feeding information to Senators uh Johnson and Grassley I might add um but 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 I was not aware of that exactly but but you don't dispute it I don't dispute it and are you aware um that one of the New York Post reporters for the hunt and biters story refused to put his byline on the story yes and are you aware that Fox News called the story quote very sketchy unquote I'm aware that somebody at Fox News said that yes correct Brett Baer at Fox News said yes um and are you aware that the FBI had nothing to do with Twitter's decision to pause the New York Post story I am not aware of that okay well let me read you the testimony from Joel Roth uh at the hearing we had on February 8th the FB 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 and then Jim Baker said in response to the Chairman'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 my awareness is that multiple media organizations have done analyzes and found the including CBS and found that it was indeed the laptop was authentic and that nothing had been changed on it 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 yes and you are aware that hard drives can be altered are you not of course okay so are you aware that the Washington Post analysis of the hard drive showed that it had been altered I have heard that but I'm also saying CBS verified Politico and other media organizations have verified I mean we're not talking about we're not talking about authenticity we're not talking about authenticity we're talking about whether it's been altered yeah okay there's no question there's some material on the hard drive that is authentic and accurate but are you aware that there's some material that is not my understanding is that there are copies of the hard drive that have been tampered with and that media organizations including CBS have verified that that the the laptop in question was not tampered with 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 yes okay um do you 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 barisma where Hunter Biden was on the board yes okay okay 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 actually not objection record I I did I read that before I wrote the Twitter files no okay 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 Inc in uh 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 barisma so that story notwithstanding your allegations was false and I yield back gentleman yields back uh now recognize the chair now recognize the gentleman from um Florida Mr gates for five minutes 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 and 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 and 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 that hasn't been a single allegation that there is a single dot single doctored email unlike what we saw before the fisa courts where the FBI itself was doctoring emails to try to smear president Trump but I 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 it was chilling I mean it's disturbing I I never thought that would happen in the United States of America be perfectly honest I've been in a bunch I've lived in a bunch of authoritarian countries that visit a lot of authoritarian countries never thought this kind of thing would be going on here and the Nexus to authoritarianism is the desire to control the nature of Truth itself our understandings change about things we learn new things we challenge prior assumptions but 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 Tybee when you saw your name I was you know upset obviously um I I lived in Russia during the 90s and early 2000s I was there when Putin took power I was friends with a group of uh very brave uh 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 incredibly severe and that's one of the reasons why I'm motivated to protect the First Amendment because our our country has the best protections for reporters in the world but 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 and so on that level it's it's absolutely disturbing also the Aspen Institute report that we published today talked about today in the Twitter files thread ex one of their recommendations was that the FTC be empowered uh to get to have unlimited power to search all data of uh private companies so that they could more freely and more accurately search the speech of ordinary citizens 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 this this censorship industrial complex is a growth industry to the government I think the key thing also yes and the thing to understand is that NSF what is newsguard and how are they part of the censorship industrial complex yeah and we by the way we talked about Richard stangle he's on the board of News Guard News Guard and the disinformation index are both U.S government-funded entities who are working to to drive Advertiser Revenue away from disfavored Publications and towards the ones that they favor this is uh not totally 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 and there's a fusion of media and government that has long made me uncomfortable what but 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 that's right I that that is an astonishing one if we do not take a look at newsguard we we have failed and you talk 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 and I would advise my colleagues to look at the comments of rokana who has been deeply deeply concerned about this weaponization of government and 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 I think I think the gentleman would now recognize the gentlelady from uh New York I I still have my five minutes Mr well that's right I forgot I understand well you may know Mr Mr uh because you were yelled at five the gentleman from New York is recognized for five minutes excuse me Mr schellenberger 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 a hack and leak operation no I don't disagree okay Mr taivi do you disagree with those two indictments indictments aren't a thing to do you disagree there are about 40 or 50 pages do you disagree with the evidence outlined in those indictments well indictments are just charges when I just ask you do you disagree with the evidence included in those indictments yes or no I'm not on the jury of that case I couldn't possibly say yes or no okay because you said earlier I believe that you did not see Russia you you 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 I think it's possible that they they may have on a small scale but certainly not to what's been reported what's been reported or what's been included in the indictments well again indictments are allegations that are not proof and I understand and it's pretty detailed allegations the Mueller indictment by the way we should go read the indictment and then come back and tell us if you actually think there's no proof of it well let me move on let me move on please by the way please let me move on that's how this works you should know that by now so do you disagree with the special counsel Mueller's conclusion in his report Mr taibi 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 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 taivi do you think it's a legitimate pursuit of the FBI to try to stop foreign interference in our elections again sir will that be allowed to answer this question or or it's a yes or no question do you think it's a legitimate pursuit of the FBI it's not a yes or no answer 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 I think it's a legitimate objective to stop actual foreign interference okay I mean I don't know what the difference is but that's fine well so since Russia used social media disinformation according to special counsel Mueller I understand you may disagree with the uh 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 in our elections after 2016. I can tell you that 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 okay I understand you liked the filibuster that was not an answer to my question uh but I'll move on um Mr schellenberger in all of the emails that you reviewed did the FBI ever direct Twitter to take down any accounts or remove any posts yes they directed Twitter to to remove them or they said these May violate your terms and services yes I think that's a wish I think that's an accurate use of the word Direct they said these May these May violate you think that the same saying that these May violate your terms and conditions is the same as directing them to take some account down yeah I mean I think if a police officer says all right well you broke so very helpful that's very helpful I'm I'm glad to know that you think flagging something for a private company to make a decision about what they should do is a Direction now Mr chairman yeah you have repeatedly said that this committee is all about protecting the First Amendment and what's unfortunate here is that we are talking about Twitter and that we are not talking about Republican government officials around the country who are Banning books and we are not talking about with the gentleman you no I will not and 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 and even with Twitter you cannot find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any lawful speech and when I say lawful I mean non-criminal speech because plenty I'll give you one which is non-criminal I'll give you one gentleman's time to expire I'd ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the following email from Clark Humphrey Executive Office of the presidency White House Office January 23 2021 that's the Biden Administration 4 39 A.M hey folks this goes to um Twitter Hey folks one or two use the term they use the term Mr Goldman just use one and two flag the below tweet and then wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed ASAP boom that is could you read the below tweet and then if we can keep an eye Opera tweets that fall in this same genre genre that would be great this is a tweet on the very issue that uh Thomas uh the fullness of the record can you re uh read the because I've not seen this can you read the tweet that it's referencing I don't have the Tweeter with me but the gentleman's point was tell us you said no time did government try to tell uh Twitter to take that to explicitly remove something and no I said selflessly move lawful speech lawful speech we're going to conflate the First Amendment does not is not absolute Twitter this is something from Robert Kennedy Jr but for the record I assume that's lawful point of order Mr chair because Robert Kennedy Jr that's why it's lawfulness in no time did the governments explicitly say to take a tweet down here we have it right here Mrs White House they did they couldn't even wait two days two days into this Administration they were asked Twitter to take something down and we will get you the underlying tweet thank that I recognize the gentlelady from New York will you place it into the record as well sir the underlying tweet Robert Kennedy Jr is talking about uh he's talking about Hank Aaron's death after he received the vaccine that's what the tweet's about we'll get we'll get you a copy thank you consent to enter the tweet that you referenced into the record of the committee 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 people's First Amendment liberties with that I recognize the gentlelady from New York for five minutes I want to yield to Mr Johnson thank you just to point out quickly that Mr Goldman is proving himself to be a master of obfuscation he said the first amendment applies to government censorship of speech and not private companies but what we're talking about and what the chairman 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 general lady an open hearing with FBI director Chris Ray and 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 I mean we we saw I mean like I said we don't we don't know I mean so at this point we just have to take his word on it but what we saw was a huge amount of FBI uh 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 I would like to I would like to ask him a bunch of questions about that because I find it very suspicious and unresolved Mr Tybee do you have comments on that we do know that there was a teleporter communication that had 10 documents in it just before the story broke but um we don't know what those documents were and so we can't suppose well I don't take his word for it we have lots of examples where it has not been uh they have 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 sign 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 records that's what they claim related to Hunter Biden's controversial employment by the Ukrainian Energy company barisma right right this was if they knew because they they did know so I would like your comments Mr Schellenberg 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 yeah so there's actually two things and one of them we just discovered recently which is that there was a Stanford uh 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 depending on paper's principle this is the idea that if 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 Washington Post published those that was considered one of the greatest moments of American journalism here you have Stanford cyber policy Center saying we should abandon that principle you should instead make the issue about you know frankly the theories about where it might have come from then you had this then you had the Aspen Workshop which was attended by the way by New York Times CNN 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 long-standing 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 students stand for we're we're running against American journalists and the social media companies Mr Tybee comments yes um I think you know there were a couple of moments in the Twitter files that really speak to a kind of larger problem in the first footer files we saw an exchange between representative uh rokhana and Vijaya God uh where he's trying to explain the basics of speech law uh in America and she's completely she seems completely unaware of what for instance New York Times V Sullivan is there are other cases like Bart Nicky vopper which legalize uh 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 and in this case and in 2016 you were 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 um and journalists have always understood that and this has never been an issue or a controversial issue until very recently and by the way just one quick thing I'll add that's the exact same strategy of the Mal information 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 this is uh we're so far down the slippery slope you know you've crashed at that point I mean it's um it's a disturbing Trend in journalism in social media and in the relationship from the intelligence Community to these organizations how have you been targeted since the publication of the Twitter files we'll give a quick answer if we can I mean again and I have known journalists who suffered a real brutal Harms in my career so they've said a lot of nasty things about me on Twitter but um it hasn't been so bad uh I would say the FTC thing is is the the only thing that's legitimately concerning and that's not really for my sake it's it's more because it's a general problem for journalists everywhere I've been censored on Facebook since the year 2020 for writing accurate information in an article that went viral I remained censored they continue to flag warnings on posts that I write that have nothing to do with the environment and uh there we now know that one of the US government-funded organizations has put out a report that specifically targets me and and presents disinformation about my own position on climate change and so I've got a lot at stake here yield back it's a chair can I ask unanimous give the record a letter the fifth 2020 to Mark Zuckerberg from Chad Wolf the acting Secretary of Homeland Security in which he asked Twitter asked Facebook to keep Americans safe by taking appropriate action consistent with your terms of service against content that promotes insights or assists the commission of eminent illegal 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 the objection gentle lady from Florida is recognized for five minutes thank you Mr chairman 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 we're here to discuss the weaponization of government and I want to follow up on my colleague representative Massey's comments on the CDC up on the screen you can see a email from October of 2020. this is from then NIH director Francis Collins to Dr Anthony fauci it goes on into say this proposal talking about the Great Barrington declaration is from three Fringe epidemiologists who met with the secretary and it seems to be getting a lot of attention even a signature a co-signature from a Nobel Prize winner 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 of 2021 the Biden Administration was raging at social media companies there is Communications that we can produce for the record that state we would like you to combat quote unquote misinformation now we thanks to the Twitter files know that Twitter Executives were using the term visibility filtering and that really to the rest of the American General Public was Shadow Banning correct yes okay 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 I haven't seen that but I haven't seen that either so would you agree that there was a blacklist created in 2021 sorry yes Jay bhattacharya the Stanford Professor who I don't think anybody considers a French epidemiologist was indeed I'm sorry I couldn't I didn't piece it together he's he was indeed um visibility filtered correct and so this Blacklist that was created that really was used to uh de-platform uh reduce visibility um 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 absolutely and not only that but these are secret blacklists so Professor bhattacharya had no idea he was on it I mean this is he's Germany Stasi kind of behavior that's what this is and um the Great Barrington declaration by the way I was skeptical over the time but it actually now looks pretty good in terms of how response to covid but even if it was totally wrong it still deserved I mean this is the whole point of the first amendment is that I think we all have the experience of you're not right until you're wrong a lot you know you actually have to have that debate in that conversation so by repressing that we actually stifled I think a much broader conversation we could have had about how to effectively respond to covid because they were secretly blacklisting people like Jay bhattacharya and I think to the bigger point that Americans are concerned about when it comes to the weaponization of government this isn't Republican or 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 and 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 absolutely correct and 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 a more of a disproportionate blacklisting of of more populist voices or just ideas that we would consider slightly outside of the Overton window the mainstream opinion at the time but the Overton window moves 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 to for knowledge to grow and for the Democracy to function with the 14 seconds that I have left Mr taibi if you'd 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 just quickly again yesterday discovered the this email talking about the suppression of people telling their own stories of stories of true vaccine side effects so these are people who are telling about their own experiences things that are hap that happen to them that are true and 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 and 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 I'm my time has expired I yield back thank you too the gentle lady yields back I want to thank um I want to thank our Witnesses for um for being here today and um you know I think maybe if we can get this right and stop this and and whatever What legislation whatever it takes we can stop this I think they're 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 and now with the idea that the FTC is coming after you um that's that's something I think is pretty darn important and and certainly noteworthy so we appreciate you sitting here for two and a half hours uh 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 people's 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 to hearing is adjourned authorized declare recess at any time would ask the gentleman from North Carolina Mr Bishop to lead the committee and those present for the hearing in the Pledge of Allegiance United States of America welcome everyone to the second hearing of the select committee on the weaponization of the federal government the chair now recording himself for an opening statement in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election FBI special agent Elvis Chan in his deposition in Missouri versus 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 yet he repeatedly told him something was coming Joel Roth head of trust and safety at Twitter testified that he had had regular meetings with the office of the director National tele intelligence the Department of Homeland Security 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 and he was told they would occur in a period shortly before the 2020 presidential election likely in October and 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 the government telling a hacking leak operation was coming how often did the government tell him this repeatedly for a year when did the government say it was going to happen October of 2020 and who did the government say it would involve Hunter Biden now think about it government had no evidence of any intrusions no evidence of a hacking leak yet for a year they tell Twitter that a Hackett leak is coming it's coming in October and it will involve Hunter Biden no evidence but the FBI knows what's 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 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 and 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 greeting hey Twitter folks emails that ask Twitter to take down accounts and limit visibility of tweets FBI handed out security clearance to Folks at Twitter they communicated with Twitter on this secret teleporter app where messages disappear after a certain length of time and of course they paid Twitter 3.4 million dollars in addition on on August 6 2020 the FBI brief Senators Grassley and Johnson and according to the center's 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 undermined the Senator's investigation in September of 2020 a 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 in the former head of the news at Twitter the mock exercise is hosted by the Aspen Institute the Aspen Institute which by the way in 2020 their budget was 9.3 million dollars five million dollars from the state department four million dollars from usaid almost all their budget guess the title guess the title of this exercise the Aspen digital hack and dump working group and guess who the subject was guess who the subject was Hunter Biden that's amazing October 14 2020 the New York Post runs the 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 19th 51 former Intel officials signed a letter with the now famous sentence dividend 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 schellenberger pointed out in his reporting the information op was run on us run on We the People and if that's not the weapon a weaponization of government I don't know what is and I really I'll get to this in a second but I want to thank our our Witnesses for being here today I'll get to this after we allow the ranking member her opening statement I yield to the ranking member for an opening statement thank you before my opening statement Mr chairman is 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 uh 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 to see any of that information will be you will you be using any of the information that uh has recently been released by excuse me will you be using any of that information we'll be using whatever information our staff has put together for us to use it this year and have you've had that information before this hearing began before today we we use all information that that is given to our staff and we will use it to make sure we educate the American information which you have not shared with us oh we think it was posted online that uh in within a half just this half an hour last 20 minutes but it's not information you want us to get you a copy of it because we can make it I think we can go online and find a copy we can look on our Twitter accounts and see it but I just want the point of order that you have not shared any of that with us and I understand that well you may have been looking at this long before today's hearing is colleagues trying to speak vegetarian if you don't know okay it's the gentlelady's time okay all right well and I recognize you for an opening statement and I had a point of order which I was asking you to answered your question okay great um now I'll begin my point at my opening statements three weeks ago house oversight had this hearing with actual Twitter Executives who had actual first-hand knowledge about what happened in 2020 and 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 like 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 with taxpayer dollars have brought us here to Washington to do and the Republicans have brought in two of Elon musk's public scribes to release cherry-picked out of context emails and screenshots designed to promote his chosen narrative Elon Musk 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 of 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 the 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 the must 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 chairman 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 use the data what agreements has Elon Musk reach with them 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 dollars in financing from Beyonce that's in highlight for you a crypto exchange platform run by Chinese billionaire that billionaire has described his funding as a small contribution to the cause I don't know what that cause is must got 1 billion from Larry Ellison whose Super PAC spent Millions on Republican candidates last cycle including election deniers musk got 370 mil 75 million highlighted here from Qatar which has recently been questioned about its lobbying practices musk got 700 million from VI capital A secretive investment fund based in Dubai and more very interesting as you can see down below the nephew of the Saudi king is Twitter's second largest investor at a a much larger amount and this year wants us to think that Elon Musk is the victim the chairman wants us to believe that the Republicans are concerned with the federal government unfairly going out to 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 wonder to score the very real threat posed by Twitter files and by the Witnesses in front of us today here's Joel 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 thank you Twitter employees as far away as Manila in the Philippines the Twitter files I would note first and foremost didn't just affect me but affected much more Junior employees at Twitter employees as far away as Manila in the Philippines were doxed had their families threatened and experienced harm equal to or greater than what I've experienced but concurrent with the Twitter files Elon Musk also made the decision to share a defamatory allegation that I support or condone pedophilia and this lie led directly to a wave of homophobic and anti-semitic threats and harassment against me of which Twitter has removed vanishingly little and following the daily mail's decision to publish where I live ultimately I had to leave my home and sell it those are the consequences for this type of online harassment and speech thank you Mr chairman I'm not exaggerating when 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 exactly this is unacceptable I'm ready for it I don't know if a lot of other people are but 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 6. this is a new Republican Playbook apparently the richest American Safety and Security to score political points the gentle lady's word should be struck we do not accuse Witnesses of threatening others that is out of line and outside the rules of this guy and I can have enough you don't get to determine what's struck down you do get an opening statement and so let me go over we know this is because at the first hearing the chairman claimed that big government and big test 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 General lady uh 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 see I did that two journalists who would not give that offer at eight o'clock last night now your time was right it was uh neither of us are in time I don't think they're here to help us politically I think they're here to tell us the truth and 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 and you guys don't care you don't care you don't want the 2011 people to see you know what the American people to see what happened the full video the transparency 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 The Binding Administration you say they're here to help us they're here to tell their story and frankly I think they're Brave individuals for being willing to come after they've been named in a letter from the Biden FTC is this your question Tom now no I'm responding to your ridiculous statements you made in your in your opening State okay well let's get on with it oh now we want to get on with so you can say all the things you want I did in 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 no objection all other opening statements will be included in the record we will introduce today's witness Matt taibi he's a journalist and author he's one of the authors of the Twitter files previously worked for Rolling Stone that right-wing publication Rolling Stone where so many Republicans work at he's also written several books about American politics and culture and of course as I pointed out as the Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday on the front page was named by the FTC oh Michael schellenberger is also a journalist author and one of the authors of the Twitter files he's also co-founded several non-profits 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 would you please stand and raise your right hand do you swear affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is true and correct to the best of your knowledge information and belief so help you God let the record show both Witnesses have answered in the affirmative um thank you and be seated please uh we will now start with Mr taibi you guys I think understand though would you want to go with Mr shelburn we can go with Mr Schellenberg we'll start with Mr schellenberger uh you understand how it works you get five minutes make sure you hit the microphone so we can all hear uh when it gets to Yellow it means just like you would expect time to start winding up and when it gets to Red it's time to stop it we'll be a little bit leaning on the time Mr schellenberger you are recognized for your opening statement chairman 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 Attorney's General lawsuits and investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies academic institutions and non-governmental 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 and I support the right of governments to communicate with the public including to dispute inaccurate information but 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 there's 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 US government has funded organizations that pressure advertisers 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 Graphica 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 in think tanks 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 a 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 de amplify and even ban the people on those lists the censorship industrial complex combines established methods of psychological manipulation some developed by the US military during the global war on terror with highly sophisticated tools from computer science including artificial intelligence the complexes leaders are driven by the fear that the internet and social media platforms Empower populist alternative infringe 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 de-platforming 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 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 New York Times elected a published 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 and yet in 2020 the Aspen Institute and Stanford cyber policy Center urged journalists to quote break the Pentagon papers principle and not cover leech government leaked information to prevent the spread of disinformation government-funded sensors frequently invoke the prevention of real world harm to justify their demands for censorship but the sensors Define Farm Define harm far more expansively than the Supreme Court does increasingly the sensors 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 cut off funding to the sensors and investigate their activities it should mandate instant reporting of all conversations between social media Executives government employees and government contractors concerning content moderation and finally Congress should limit the broad permission given to social media platforms to censor D platform and spread propaganda thank you very much I think the gentleman for his opening statement Mr Tybee you're now recognized for five minutes chairman get that hit that hit Mr Tybee hit that um chairman Jordan ranking member Plaskett members of the select committee thank you for having me today my name is Matt taibi 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've won the national magazine award the ifstone award for independent journalism and I've written 10 books including four New York Times New York Times bestsellers I'm now the editor of the online magazine racket on the independent platform sub stack 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 the just the first tweet about the blockage of the hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million impressions and 30 million engagements but it wasn't until a week after the first report after Michael schellenberger Barry 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 hints in 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 telesor the yellow vest movement that in fact is a key point of the Twitter files that it's 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 chairman we summarized and submitted them to the committee in the form of a new Twitter file thread 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 News Guard the global disinformation 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 the 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 de-amplification or de-platforming but the firms like PayPal digital advertisers like Xander and crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe these companies can and do refuse service to law-abiding people and and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul of a distant faceless unaccountable 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 but instead of investigating these groups journalists partnered with them if Twitter declined to remove an account right away government agencies and ngos 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 um it's just not possible to instantly arrive at truth it is it is however possible becoming technologically uh 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 the censorship industrial complex if the latter can knock over our first and most important constitutional guarantee these groups will have no serious opponent left anywhere if there's anything the 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 thank you um Mr taibi we appreciate both of your opening statements the chair now recognized the gentleman from Louisiana Mr Johnson for five minutes of question 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 buying Administration as we know have worked very hard to cast doubts on the legitimacy of your reporting and some have gone so far to State it's irrelevant if Twitter was suppressing speech in coordination with the federal government but 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 this is what we know what you've documented carefully in the Twitter files are a couple of key facts you'll hear people hear a lot of things today but this is what they need to know the federal government from Democrat members of Congress to intelligence agencies including the FBI used Twitter and other social media companies to censor Americans 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 have uncovered here there's communication between Twitter and the FBI it was constant it was pervasive 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 and now we know there are 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 they did it in 2020 as well and Twitter dutifully censored content as a result Twitter Executives restricted accounts they censored speech that conflicted with the less narrative Twitter has used its internal tools to control and manipulate uh considered speech considered misinformation and 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 matter what political party you're in government should not suppress important debates in public discourse gentlemen let me start with Mr tabi uh you have a long award-winning journalist career you just highlighted here Decades of experience reporting on some of the most conflict 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 how serious is this um well first of all Mr Congressman thank you for the question I I would say you know I spent 10 years covering the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis uh that was obviously a very serious issue but um this Twitter file story and what we're looking at now and what we're investigating now um 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 it's certainly the most grave story that I've ever worked on personally I want to ask you both the same question and that is first of all has anyone from the federal government contacted you during the course of this investigation or since you've reported on Twitter files and number two who do you think are the most egregious federal government agencies involved in this censorship exercise let me start with Mr schellenberger I have not been contact sorry thank you Congressman I have not been contacted by anybody in the Biden Administration or relating to this topic and I would like to Echo uh 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 uh our our most recent discoveries I mean I think you understand the process is that we first raised a bunch of concerns around the way Twitter pre-elon musk was uh censoring people and creating blacklists very quickly we discovered that we had FBI agents basically in other government officials you know demanding that Twitter takes certain actions we now know that the Department of Homeland services which has uh had what's that security security sorry Department of Homeland Security uh you know had had it try to create a disinformation board third that went away after public backlash but we now realize that they have this other Enterprise and they've been building out basically mechanisms to proliferate a censorship industrial complex around the country to censor on a whole range of issues and so you've seen them you've seen this censorship industry go from well we're just fighting Isis to well we're just finding Russian disinformation Bots to well now we need to fight domestic misinformation which is just saying we need to fight against people who are saying things we disagree with online that's all that means and I 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 allow are allowing and so um yeah for me it's just it starts at DHS but we basically see almost every government agency involved in this it's frightening amount of time I yield back a gentleman uh from Massachusetts Mr Lynch is recognized thank you Mr chairman I do need to correct the record uh so there's been the suggestion here that the FBI and other government agencies uh pressured employees at Twitter to validate these theories of foreign influence when we had Mr Roth who was the old rock who's the former Global head of trust and safety at Twitter so we asked Twitter uh if there was pressure applied and Mr Roth said no I would not agree with that the FBI this is his quote the FBI was quite careful 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 so that's what Twitter said about the actions of the FBI Visa via Twitter uh in 2019 special counsel Robert Mueller unequivocally found that the internet research agency owned by yvegmy pregosian 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 uh these these particular findings came on the heels of the unanimous assessment on the part of the United States 18 intelligence agencies that Russian President Putin quote ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the presidential election close quote they also followed the release of a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report finding that Russia and Vladimir Putin engaged in I quote aggressive multi-faceted effort to influence the U.S president election so Mr Tybee do you believe 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 Congressman my disagreement with the issue I think this is a this is basically a yes or no question either you think so or you don't and I don't have a lot of time so okay well then I'm going to answer not in the sense that you uh that you're putting it okay um I think all countries engaging offensive information operations the question is scale you believe that the Twitter files and hacking reclaiming my time is how it works now I'll ask the questions and you try to provide an answer if you can you have to allow them to answer do you believe the gentleman is out of order and should not be interrupting a member asking a question on our side Mr chairman reclaiming my time from everyone uh do you believe that Russia engaged in a hack and release campaign damaging to the Clinton campaign back in 2016 again I don't know and and I would I would say it's irrelevant let me ask Mr schellenbeck uh these are pretty easy questions that's just whether you believe it or not uh Mr schellenbach same question do you believe that the Russian oligarch controlled internet research agency interfere in the 2016 election I think that they tried to okay fair enough uh Mr schellenbeck do you believe that the Russians engaged in a hack and release campaign with respect to the uh damaging information they released uh regarding the Clinton campaign to the best of my awareness that is what happened okay fair enough thank you uh that's not the same thing the reason influence I understand I understand also that material was true I've been look uh I let me introduce a couple of documents uh just to reinforce uh that we've got uh that is not a legitimate practice for censorship your name is reclaiming my time sure gentleman's out of order so Mr chairman I'll ask unanimous consent to enter the indictment in the United States versus the internet research agency U.S District Court of the District of Columbia number one 18-32 and also asked to enter into the record the executive summary to volume one of the Mueller report which states in March 2016 the gru began hacking this is the Russian agency began hacking the email accounts of the Clinton campaign volunteers and employees including campaign chairman John podesta the gru later released additional materials through the organization Wikileaks the presidential campaign of Donald Trump showed interest in Wikileaks releases of the documents and welcomed their potential damage to without candidate Clinton so I've introduced these document documents without objection thank you Mr chairman uh I've introduced these documents to this clear that me that Russia's use of social media to interfere in the 2016 election created abundance times it's an abundant reason okay we I think or social media platforms to be concerned gentlemen's time is expired Lottery without objection these documents are entered into the record we now recognize the gentleman from California Mr Isa for five minutes hey Mr chairman uh I'd like to continue along in a sense the line we've been on just now Mr taibi Mr schellenberger 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 United States government and in our form of democracy I think that's a fair statement yes okay are you familiar with the organization uh in Europe the global engagement Center yes well that's it it's an American State Department I'm sorry but are you familiar with the global engagement Center's use of European and other sources to uh to in fact determine the where Twitter files should or shouldn't be uh if you will taken down thousands of names and Twitter files correct I'm not sure that Global engagement Center is is uh taking down Twitter files I actually wasn't aware of that I'm sorry well Twitter and the FBI have used this this organization and their funding well let me let me go on to another another stay on stay on the path that was on uh you you commented that the the scale mattered okay would you elaborate on scale mattering uh in the attempt to uh undermine free speech absolutely so a great example of this is a report um that the global engagement Center sent to Twitter um 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 I think you would call traditional hardcore uh 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 this 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 and this is the problem with the whole idea of trying to identify which which accounts are actually the internet Russian 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 the Senate select intelligence committee that they came back with a different answer okay 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 uh this country has political parties and people from the one might call the extreme left an extreme right uh 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 yes and the ACLU and journalists almost always support their right to say what they believe even if you disagree absolutely and our constitution says we will make no law to restrain exactly that kind of free speech Yes and that includes people who promote the idea that we should redistribute all wealth uh in a communist type way as a matter of fact we still have a Communist Party in the United States isn't that correct it is okay 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 yes 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 battles did it call for Insurrection or other criminal activities that would destroy our government no I mean we did not I mean I'm not saying we're not saying that that didn't happen but we're describing people having political arguments online right so let me just uh because my time's limited like everyone's so it's suffice to say that the 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 protections correct that is why we have the subcommittee that is why we are here today thank you I think the gentleman a great point I now recognize the gentlelady from Florida for five minutes thank you Mr chairman 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 casts a cloud of your objectivity but it the concern that I have relates to the ethics of how journalists receive and present certain information journalists should avoid accepting spoon-fed cherry-picked information if it's likely to be slanted in complete or designed to reach a foregone easily disputed or invalid conclusion would you agree with that I think it's I think it depends 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 Mrs congresswoman I've done probably a dozen stories involving whistleblowers every reported story that I've ever done across three decades involves sources who have motives every time you do a story you're making a a balancing test reclaiming the public claiming my time thank you very much okay I ask you this because before became Elon musk's hand journalists and pardon the oxymoron you stated this on Joe Rogan's podcast about being spoon fed information and I quote I think that's true of any kind of Journalism and you'll see it behind me here 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 yes good now you crossed that line with the Twitter files no Elon Musk it's my time please do not interrupt me Alaskan Elon Musk spoon fed 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 appear to have benefited from it before the release of emails in 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 sub-stack readership 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 I've also reinvested no no no is it true that you have profited since you were received you were this recipient of the Twitter files you've made money yes or no it's probably a wash honestly nope you've you have made money that you did not have before correct but I've also spent money that I didn't know okay where I just hired a whole group of people patently obvious answer reclaiming my time attention is a powerful drug eyeballs money prominence attention all of it points to problems with accuracy and credibility and the larger point which is social media companies are not biased against conservatives and if anything they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and other magic 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 another alleged finding from the Twitter files Mr schellenberger you've referenced several times this 3.4 million dollars 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 to relating to content moderation is that correct it is thank you but 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 schellenberger 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 costs them money so they get reimbursed the FBI makes these requests and reimbursements to discover evidence then run 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 helped keeps 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 defined for Clear purposes in federal law my time is just about wrapped up 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 um generally had no time to yield back but I will let the gentleman Mr schellenberger respond and I would also point out that I did not say what the FBI paid Twitter for all I said was they paid Twitter 3.4 million dollars Mr chairman point of order I didn't ask Mr schellenberger a question yeah the witness wants to respond and the witness have been invited to our guests and frankly they've been attacked by the federal please do that I'm going to let Mr sellenberger answer that before recognizing Mr Bishop so are you going to do that as we move down the the line of of questioners uh the general Aid has not been recognized you had your five minutes and frankly I think that's at the discretion of the chair Mr schellenberger you can respond briefly 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 uh what's stasha I believe the person that send it is saying is that they started taking money after previously not taking it and I believe that the reason that they had not taken it earlier was because they did not want that Financial conflict clouding their relationship money is payment under law so that they can gentlemen from North Carolina Mr Bishop is recognized for five serials that they've been asking I thank the gentleman Mr taibi uh would you care to I'm down here on this end sir uh I'm uh would you care to respond to the attack on your ethics you weren't given really an opportunity to answer and if you be brief I've got a bunch of stuff I want to ask you as well sure just quickly the that moment on The Joe Rogan show I was actually recounting a section from Seymour Rush's book reporter where he described a scene where the CIA gave him a story and he was very uncomfortable uh 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 newsworthy and it's clearly outweighed any other considerations and I think everybody else who worked on the project agreed 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 that is true although I would like to clear up you know some things that have been misrepresented not one of us has actually been paid to do any of this work we've all um you know traveled on our own we've hired our Personnel on our own and I've just hired a pretty large team to investigate this issue yeah out of my own pocket the fact that the attempt comes from the dice across the aisle to smear you uh you frankly I think liberals if I understand that uh uh in your background you're both good liberals and you come in and the Democrats hostility to what you've undertaken is astonishing to behold but it's part of the picture we're seeing in Twitter files number 15 Mr taibi 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 re reverse engineer and figure out who those accounts were and then in Twitter files number 17 after discloses Mr Watts identity you disclosed that J.M Berger is the creator of Hamilton 68. and guess what he was a federal contractor right he was yes he 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 release just a month before what he said I believe publicly that he the the dashboard was the product of three or 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 yes I think it's that's a good question certainly the German Marshall fund which is the the NGO that is at the top of the chain in this organ organization it's the German Marshall fund then the alliance for securing democracy and then Hamilton 68 uh they're a federal contractor they received over a million dollars from the Department of Defense um they're the board of the alliance for securing democracy has a former acting head of the CIA a former deputy head of the NSA a former Chief of the DHS on it so I want to make and the bigger point is hard because the examples sometimes start making it I want to introduce you to or introduce country to somebody else I think you've mentioned it and so one of your writings Richard stingle you know who that is yes he's the former uh the first head of the global engagements I want the American people to hear from him for 30 seconds basically every country creates their own narrative story and and you know my old job at the state department was what people used to joke as the chief propaganda as job we haven't talked about propaganda propaganda I'm not against propaganda every country does it and they have to do it to their own population every country does it every country does propaganda and they have to do it to their own people is what Mr stingle said if I understand correctly he was the head of the of the G of the global engagement Center at its creation right he was in his book um information Wars there's 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 but what he was describing roughly approximates that in the half minute I've got left he also was associated with Hamilton 68 right um the global engagement Center certainly had ties to Hamilton 68. I think it's closer than that well that'll come out okay I'd be anxious to hear that I hope I'll get yielded in a minute or two from somebody else down the way there's all sorts of stuff to disclose this committee has to uncover not this that single instance but this system that you have described this is the hope that Americans have to set this right this committee and that hostility shows what we're up against it's not three pillars to the to the system it is four and you're seeing the left move to crush you and anybody else who tries to expose this I yield I think the gentleman for his great uh five minutes and when now yield to the gentleman from Virginia Mr Conley thank you Mr chairman um I don't know what to say after that last one um you're fellow Americans and we're elected officials when trying to get at the truth and we're trying to participate in the process at getting at the truth Mr TB uh 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 policy is that roughly correct yes and Mr Schoenberg you you would agree with that yes 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 yes no not the Trump White House although I did report initially in the first Twitter files that the Trump White House had made and and requests and have been honored this dish over I did not find that 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 and 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 and specifically uh the case brought up was an exchange between Donald Trump then president of the United States and Chrissy Teigen uh where you know they he had called her something and she called him something back I won't repeat it um and uh and this was under oath confirmed yeah that happened and that the white house shortly thereafter after taking uh Tegan uh had her email about the president which was pejorative that the White House called Twitter to try to take on the content you were that Mr TB yeah I certainly heard that in the news yes and but did you see that email exchange no I have not seen an exchange from the Trump white house so I have seen one from Congressman Schiff and one from Senator Angus King yeah nice try we're talking about the Trump white house uh and people under oath confirming it and my question is in the Twitter files did Elon Musk or Twitter provide you with that exchange with Chrissy Teigen no um but that's probably because the the searches that I was making well probably probably because it didn't confirm the bias that this is all about as the gentleman from Texas would say the left attempting to uh control content when in fact the evidence is the Trump White House most certainly attempted to control content at Twitter Mr schellenberger were you aware of that or is this all news to you I already answered that question no I'm I mean specifically the Tegan Exchange yeah the T the Tegan exchange was news to me I'm probably mispronouncing her name I'm sorry um so let me ask have you like combed the uh 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 again Mr Congressman I mentioned before we're focused not on the Biden Administration one of the Trump Administration in fact this just this morning we released the uh an exchange where Twitter talked about um vetting the accounts of both Mr Biden and Mr Trump uh and really we were looking at the intelligence agencies when we were doing this research and as I mentioned before their conclusions targeted people on both the left and the right globally again including the yellow vest movement in France the pro-modoro accounts in South America and left us the news organizations in America like truth out and Consortium some of those people are my friends actually um and you know we found those in intelligence lists that were passed on to Twitter uh just as we found lists that included uh ordinary Trump supporters thank you um reclaiming my time I appreciate that because in some ways what you just said undermines the Prem service of this select committee which is that the federal government has been organized to weaponize uh against conservative voices and of course what you've just indicated in your testimony is well actually that's not the evidence you found no I think this committee my understanding is that they're they're concerned about the weaponization of of the government against Free Speech which is certainly what we're I thank you my time has expired but I appreciate your understanding of our committee I have a different understanding I yield back well you got the wrong understanding last week in the in the full Judiciary Committee hearing I introduced into the record a story of a left-wing journalist who said that 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 point of order Mr chair are you going to respond after every no I'm taking my five minutes oh you're it's your five minutes minutes when when I want to and I'm taking my five minutes okay great yeah thank you well I would ask for an additional few seconds for being interrupted by the ranking member um but the truth is we want to focus on protecting the First Amendment Mr schellenberger are you a Republican no I'm not you gotta you got any you know pro-trump bumper stickers on your car I voted for Biden voted for Biden you know how many Maga hats laying around your house right I do not yeah but you said earlier both you Mr type you said this is the most chilling thing you have ever seen as journalists Mr type typy same thing you're not a republican either right no no you didn't vote for I mean like this is about protecting the First Amendment Mr taibi I want to read from your uh Twitter file number nine you say this after weeks of Twitter Files The Bureau issued a statement Wednesday referring to 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 this is why I think you're 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 and then you go on to in this particular Twitter file to talk about what Mr Bishop was just talking about the gec at the state department 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 but there was one agency you didn't mention because you didn't know at the time one agency one you get almost the whole alphabet but you didn't mention one agency the FTC yeah you know about them now yes we know about them now in an up close and personal way you didn't know then but you do know uh no no now December 2nd as I said earlier December 2nd the first Twitter file comes out Mr taibi and I think there are five others including the ones from Mr schellenberger December 13th the very first letter that the FTA 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 come 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 taibi that you got a federal government agency asking a private company who in the Press are you talking with yeah I do find it scary I I I think it's none of the government's business what uh which journalists a private company talks to and why um I think every journalist should be concerned about that and the absence of interest in that issue by um my fellow colleagues in the mainstream media is an indication of how low the business has sunk there was once a realist free decor and a camaraderie within media whenever one of us was gone after we all kind of rose to the challenge and supposed to be yeah that is gone now we don't protect one what else used to happen Democrats used to care about protecting First Amendment Free Speech rights too now it's like okay pure attacking because and I said this on the house floor I said don't think they won't come for you oh the the big Tech big me the cancel culture they may come for republicans and conservatives now but they never the mob is Never Satisfied they will keep coming Mr schellenberger you know who the chair of the FTC is uh not personally Lena Khan Lena Khan you know who she used to work for my understanding is the Judiciary Committee yeah she's worked for these folks the same folks have been attacking you today same folks chair of the FTC work for them here's what they said here's what she said in one in a letter where they ask about who these journals 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 and they're doing that they want Twitter to do a background check on you before they can talk to you in America the FTC led by Lena 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 New York Times bestsellers award-winning uh journalists but in all your your time in the in the journalism field this issue most important and how this I think what'd you call it Mr Schellenberg this is complex what'd you call it the censorship industrial complex totally this web of censorship big government big Tech ngos all this web Accenture ship that Mr Bishop was getting into in his line of questioning that's what this committee is going to get to and that's not right or left that's not this is just right or wrong this is wrong we know it's wrong and it's about protecting the First Amendment I yield back I now recognize myself the the ranking member uh for her five minutes thank you thank you very much Mr chair um Mr taibi the emails and documents you've produced all date to around 2020 is that correct no uh there's a significant portion of them from 2017 and 2018 as well thank you and Mr schellenberger what dates do you have I I believe that we had emails including 2022 2021 2020. that's also true 2019 and Mr taibi said 2018 do you have 2018 as well I can't remember okay thank you Mr taibi how many employees did Twitter employ in approximately the time period of 2020 2021 do you know I don't okay it was 7 500. do you know how many were in its legal team during that time period I don't I'm sorry and do you know how many were in its public policy team I don't Mr schellenberger do you know how many were employed in content moderation during that time I do not know okay so we're looking at thousands of employees overall and hundreds in offices where the focus of emails and documents he released um I will ask you Mr schellenberger how many emails did Mr musk give you access to I mean we we went through thousands of emails did he give you access to all of the emails for the time period in which yeah we never had a single I never had a single request denied and 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 and we never found an instance where anything there was any evidence that anything had been taken out okay so you would you would believe that you have probably Millions of emails and documents right that's correct would you say I don't know no I think the numbers less too high okay a hundred thousand that's probably probably close to a hundred thousand that both of you are seeing yet in your the Twitter files Mr taibi you've produced only 338 of those 100 000 emails is that correct that's correct yes and then who gave you access to these emails who was the individual that uh gave you permission to access the emails well the attribution from my story is sources of Twitter and that's what I'm going to refer to okay okay contact you Mr taibi again the attribution for my story is sources of Twitter Mr schellenberger did Mr musk contact you uh actually no I was brought in by my friend Barry Weiss and so the story there's been a lot of misinformation Ms Weiss thank you Mr taibi have you had conversations with Elon Musk I have okay uh Mr Tybee did Mr musk place any conditions on these the gentle lady yield for a second uh as long as my time is not used are you trying to get journalists no I'm not trying to get yourself I'm not I am asking no well if you will let me finish uh you and you had conversations with him not 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 and did Mr musk place any conditions on the use of the emails or documents no the in fact I was told uh explicitly that um we were given license to look at present-day Twitter as well as past Twitter so you had unfiltered access to Twitter's internal communication with those include HR files no no no no we we didn't we did not have access to personal information of any kind in fact we signed a waiver

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Id: 4oNqJRxxkdU

Length: 206min 0sec (12360 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023