Debbie Wasserman Schultz Blasts Jim Jordan And House Weaponization Committee

7 months ago

At a House Weaponization Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) spoke about the committee's work.

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Transcript

00:00yields back the gentle lady from Florida's recognized. Thank you Mr.

00:06Chairman. It's breathtaking that now we're suggesting that we arrest people

00:10who are trying to make sure that they could save lives and prevent them from

00:14dying of a novel virus that killed millions of people. But as we heard today

00:19there is a lawsuit against the U.S. government for allegedly colluding with

00:22social media companies to censor conservative speech online, a cage that

00:25has now reached the Supreme Court. My colleagues across the aisle favor the

00:29position that the government must be forbidden from communicating and

00:32collaborating with social media companies. While I disagree, holding that

00:36opinion is acceptable, yet clearly we're here so Republicans can influence the

00:40justices as the ranking member said before this upcoming case and that's

00:44what's unacceptable. To wage an inappropriate court influence scheme

00:48under the cover of oversight and impugn men who did their job and did it well is

00:52not just improper, it's actual weaponization of the federal government.

00:56So this begs the question, are we gonna be launching an investigation into our

01:00own sham subcommittee? Because that's the weaponization of the federal government.

01:04Here we are attacking civil servants who work to keep America safe. That's clear

01:09based on the chairman's question line that was designed to bully rather than

01:14seek actual information directed at a public servant who was communicating the

01:19best scientific information available at the time. We all have comms directors, we

01:23know they're not experts, they're communicators. Instead of using their

01:27public megaphone to suggest people put bleach in their bodies to fight COVID,

01:31Mr. Slavitt and Mr. Flaherty clearly tried to save actual lives amid a global

01:36pandemic using sound medical and scientific methods and they did just

01:40that. Numerous studies show that millions of lives were saved because of their

01:44work and you know we're not hearing one Republican say that today but it doesn't

01:49make it any less true. Another thing we haven't been hearing today is that there

01:52are other legitimate interests for government to engage social media

01:56companies and barring such communications could leave us vulnerable

01:59if our election systems are attacked, for example. In Florida, voter suppression is

02:03a real concern. Citizens in my state overwhelmingly, for example, said in 2018

02:08that they wanted to restore voting rights to felons. Sadly, over the next

02:12four years, rather than help our citizens understand Florida's complicated voter

02:15eligibility rules, Republicans instead resorted to intimidation and

02:19anti-democratic prosecutions. My fear is social media platforms could be used to

02:24confuse or intimidate voters. In those cases, why would we stop governments from

02:28sharing these legitimate concerns with such powerful, wholly

02:32unregulated companies? So Mr. Seligman, could prohibiting communications between

02:36government officials and social media platforms further disenfranchise voters

02:40whose communities already face voter suppression, briefly? Yes. Thank you. We've

02:47seen the power of one individual like Rudy Giuliani encourage intimidation and

02:51violence against election workers. What would happen if social media platforms

02:54were amplifying those threats or triggering them? They would become more

02:58severe. Could you see a ban on such communication between government and

03:02social media platforms leading to increased violence against election

03:05workers, for example? Absolutely. The bottom line here is that this is a

03:09Hail Mary of a hearing designed to improperly influence the Supreme Court

03:13and it puts two good men who saved many lives through a blizzard of baseless and

03:17distorted accusations and innuendo. Witnesses from the social media

03:21companies repeatedly confirmed that nobody in the government ever

03:25coerced or threatened them to take action, but Chairman Jordan refuses to

03:30let the public see the transcripts or videos of their interviews. He's covering

03:34it up, which has been repeatedly obvious during this hearing because for the

03:38first time in my 20-year career in Congress, I have never seen the majority

03:43not allow introduction by unanimous consent of information into the record

03:48for a committee hearing. That's what we should be investigating here today. And

03:52Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the full email

03:57chain dated March 4th, 2021, re-following up between Amazon employees and White

04:01House employees, which shows that Mr. Slavitt and Mr. Flaherty only asked for

04:04a meeting with Amazon to understand Amazon's policies, not make specific

04:08requests about content or subject books. And I also ask unanimous consent to

04:13enter experts from the committee's April 16th, 2024 interview with the Amazon

04:19employee who received this email, in which the employee explains that he had

04:24been working at the Amazon, had been working on policies regarding vaccine

04:27related books on Amazon for weeks before Mr. Slavitt's email.

04:33Object. Objection be raised to the second part. Again, I want to give a

04:39roadmap to other witnesses we plan on calling. We will release all that

04:43when we've done our investigation. I'll give you an extra 10 seconds.

04:49Okay, what we're trying to do is introduce into the record the email that

04:55ensures that we have an opportunity. We said fine to that. Okay, and then the

05:00interview with the Amazon employee who received this email, in which the

05:04employee explains that Amazon had been working on policies regarding vaccine

05:08related books on Amazon for weeks before Mr. Slavitt's email. Those are

05:12connected. Those two things are important information to highlight the

05:17obvious evidence that what the two gentlemen were doing had nothing to do with what you're proposing.

05:22The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky for his five minutes.

05:25I yield back. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio. I appreciate the gentleman

05:31yielding. Professor...

Debbie Wasserman Schultz Blasts Jim Jordan And House Weaponization Committee

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