Since Republicans reclaimed control of the U.S. House of Representatives in January, the committees have been busy holding hearings on numerous hot-button issues. The House Oversight and Accountability and House Judiciary Committees, in particular, have focused on government overreach and corruption, with the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government drilling down on the alarming efforts of the government to censor U.S. citizens, coordinating with social media and tech companies in an effort to sidestep the First Amendment.
As part of their effort to suss out the extent of the government’s overreach, the Weaponization Subcommittee has held several notable hearings, among them the March 9 hearing during which independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified regarding their findings from reporting on the Twitter Files, the May 18 hearing involving FBI whistleblowers, and most recently, the July 20 hearing which included Democrats attempting to censor Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at a censorship hearing.
Additionally, the committee has sought documents from social media and tech companies, including Meta (parent company of Facebook). Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who chairs both the House Judiciary Committee and the Weaponization Subcommittee, has indicated he is moving forward with a recommendation to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt for failing to comply with the committee’s investigation into the company’s content moderation practices.
The committee announced Tuesday that it is slated to consider its report recommending Congress hold Zuckerberg for contempt during a Thursday session.
Meta pushed back on the allegation that it has failed to comply, asserting:
For many months, Meta has operated in good faith with this committee’s sweeping requests for information. We began sharing documents before the committee’s February subpoena and have continued to do so.
To date we have delivered over 53,000 pages of documents — both internal and external — and have made nearly a dozen current and former employees available to discuss external and internal matters, including some scheduled this very week. Meta will continue to comply, as we have thus far, with good faith requests from the committee.
As noted above, the committee is set to hold a markup session Thursday afternoon to consider the report and recommendation to hold Zuckerberg in contempt. The 13-page draft report contains the following Executive Summary:
Meta and its Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg have willfully refused to comply in full with a congressional subpoena directed to Mr. Zuckerberg stemming from an investigation conducted by the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government into the Executive Branch’s coordination with social media companies and other third parties to censor free speech on digital platforms. This censorship by proxy is a serious threat to fundamental American civil liberties. A federal court recently described this conduct as “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history” and concluded that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”
Congress has an important interest in protecting and advancing fundamental free speech principles consistent with the First Amendment. To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with technology companies to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, Congress and the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech. From information available to the Committee, Meta has played a central role in this censorship scheme, frequently acquiescing and catering to the government’s censorship requests and demands.
The Committee’s subpoena to Meta, issued on February 15, 2023, requires, among other things, that Meta produce material concerning its engagement with the Executive Branch and Meta’s decisions and policies regarding content moderation. Although directly responsive to the Committee’s subpoena, Meta has failed to produce nearly all of the relevant documents internal to the company. To date, Meta has produced only documents between Meta and external entities and a small subset of relevant internal documents. The Committee has a particular need for Meta’s internal documents, which would shed light on how Meta understood, evaluated, and responded to the Executive Branch’s requests or directives to censor content, as well as Meta’s decision-making process to censor viewpoints in the modern town square.
Having exhausted all available options in obtaining timely compliance, the Chairman of the Committee and the Select Subcommittee recommends that, pursuant to 2 U.S.C. § 192, the House finds Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress for his failure to comply with the subpoena issued to him.
The draft report goes on to detail Meta’s role in the government’s censorship enterprise, noting Meta’s removal of specific posts and accounts, demotion of certain content, and revision of its policies, all to accommodate the government’s demands. Further, the draft report points to repeated “bullying” by the recently-departed Director of Digital Strategy for the White House, Robert Flaherty, along with Senior Advisor to the Covid-19 Response Coordinator in the Biden Administration, Andrew Slavitt.
We’ll find out Thursday afternoon whether the committee ultimately opts to proceed with the contempt recommendation. In the meantime, keep the popcorn close at hand.