'Censorship Industrial Complex' Goes Under Microscope At Hearing Featuring Matt Taibbi

yesterday

The House Foreign Affairs Committee holds a hearing on the "Censorship Industrial Complex" and the State Department.

Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript

Stay Connected
Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes
Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes
More From Forbes: http://forbes.com

Transcript

00:00:00for any future State Department activities.

00:00:05With this, this committee will be passing into law

00:00:08a comprehensive reauthorization of the State Department

00:00:11for the first time in over 20 years.

00:00:13That was in 2002 was the last time that was done.

00:00:17And as part of this critical endeavor,

00:00:19this subcommittee is tasked with examining

00:00:21the public diplomacy functions of the State Department,

00:00:24commonly referred to as the R family

00:00:29of bureaus and offices.

00:00:31In December of 2024, Congress terminated an office

00:00:34within that family, the Global Engagement Center,

00:00:37also known as GEC, after its exposure coming out

00:00:41of an investigation that was done by this committee.

00:00:45The GEC was initially authorized

00:00:46for the statutory purpose of countering foreign propaganda

00:00:50and disinformation efforts.

00:00:52Despite that mandate for years,

00:00:53the GEC instead deployed its shadowy network

00:00:56of grantees and sub grantees to facilitate

00:00:59the censorship of American voices,

00:01:01especially if those voices were conservative

00:01:04and refused to align with the left-leaning

00:01:06establishment politics.

00:01:08Worst of all, this was being done

00:01:10using US taxpayer dollars, your dollars.

00:01:14The same month the GEC was terminated,

00:01:16the Biden State Department restructured the office

00:01:19into a quote, counter foreign information manipulation

00:01:23and interference hub, also known as RFIMI.

00:01:28The question we will be exploring today

00:01:30is whether this restructuring is actually a name only.

00:01:35Put simply, whether you call it GEC or RFIMI,

00:01:38the State Department should never, and if I can help it,

00:01:41will never again be in the business

00:01:43of silencing American voices.

00:01:46Freedom of speech is a God-given right

00:01:47enshrined in the First Amendment

00:01:49of our nation's constitution.

00:01:51It is a right that President Trump

00:01:53and his administration are committed to zealously protecting.

00:01:56On his first day in office, President Trump signed

00:01:59the Restoring Freedom of Speech

00:02:00and Ending Federal Censorship Executive Order.

00:02:03This executive order makes clear

00:02:05that no federal government employees

00:02:07or taxpayer's dollars may be used to engage in

00:02:10or facilitate the unconstitutional censorship

00:02:13of American citizens.

00:02:15And as the chairman of this subcommittee,

00:02:17I plan to introduce legislation

00:02:18that will codify that executive order.

00:02:21I'm hopeful that my colleagues will join me

00:02:23in enshrining these vital First Amendment

00:02:25protections into law.

00:02:27I want to thank the panel for being here today.

00:02:31Ms. Jankiewicz, thank you for your time,

00:02:33and you publicly supported and even spearheaded

00:02:36censorship efforts under the previous administration's,

00:02:41previous administration out of what some called

00:02:43the Ministry of Truth, as some had labeled you,

00:02:47the disinformation czar.

00:02:49I guess technically it should be czarina.

00:02:53It is crucial that the American public receive

00:02:55answers and accountability for the actions

00:02:57taken by their own government to silence their voices.

00:03:00Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Weingarten,

00:03:03your valiant reporting helped unearth the geck's role

00:03:06in the censorship of Americans.

00:03:08Mr. Taibbi, your groundbreaking work on the Twitter files

00:03:11pulled back the curtain on how the federal bureaucracy

00:03:15colluded and in some cases pressured social media companies

00:03:20to target American citizens engaged

00:03:22in protected political speech.

00:03:24Mr. Weingarten, your impactful work has unearthed

00:03:26how the geck and its implementing partners

00:03:29deployed blacklists to obliterate conservative

00:03:31news publications that the Biden administration

00:03:35disagreed with.

00:03:36Well, we as Americans and as policy makers

00:03:40must never allow these dark days of mass censorship

00:03:44to happen again.

00:03:46And that is my goal.

00:03:47And with that, I am going to yield five minutes

00:03:50to the gentlelady from California

00:03:53for her opening statement.

00:03:55Thank you, Mr. Chair.

00:03:57And thank you to our witnesses for being here

00:04:00for our first South and Central Asia subcommittee hearing.

00:04:05I look forward to working with the chair

00:04:07in a bipartisan way on the critical issues

00:04:10that we are charged with overseeing.

00:04:13We are not having a hearing about any of those issues.

00:04:17Instead, this subcommittee is wasting taxpayer time

00:04:21and resources on the fifth such hearing Republicans

00:04:25have held across multiple committees

00:04:28on the so-called censorship industrial complex.

00:04:32The majority is relitigating a made-up conspiracy theory

00:04:37about a part of the State Department

00:04:38that no longer exists to distract from the dumpster

00:04:42fire foreign policy this administration is pursuing

00:04:46and elevating a serial sexual harasser

00:04:49as their star witness in the process.

00:04:52Mr. Chair, I request unanimous consent

00:04:54to enter into the record two articles

00:04:57about the Republican witness Matt Taibbi.

00:04:59The first is a Chicago Reader article entitled,

00:05:0220 years ago in Moscow, Matt Taibbi was a misogynist a-hole

00:05:07and possibly worse.

00:05:09And a Washington Post article titled,

00:05:11the two expat bros who terrorized

00:05:13women correspondents in Moscow.

00:05:17This hearing could not be more out of touch

00:05:19with the concerns of everyday Americans.

00:05:22People's retirement savings are being decimated

00:05:24as Trump's arbitrary temper tariffs tank the stock market.

00:05:28They are staring down the barrel of cuts to their Social Security

00:05:32and Medicare because the Republican majority

00:05:34wants to give a tax break to billionaires like Elon Musk

00:05:37who have deep financial ties to our adversaries.

00:05:40Meanwhile, Trump is siding with Putin

00:05:42against our national security interests

00:05:44and risking the lives of American soldiers

00:05:46in a signal group chat.

00:05:48I've been to the State Department

00:05:50and I do have concerns about censorship.

00:05:52Censorship of the employees who are terrified

00:05:56to say the wrong thing, to say anything

00:05:58or have the wrong word in their job title

00:06:00and be terminated by an administration

00:06:02that publicly relishes punishing people for their speech.

00:06:07If we want to talk about censorship,

00:06:08we should begin with Trump's unprecedented assault

00:06:11on the First Amendment and rule of law.

00:06:13Here are a few examples

00:06:15that should send shivers down all of our spines.

00:06:18Trump banned the Associated Press from the Oval Office

00:06:21and Air Force One because they kept using the name

00:06:23Gulf of Mexico, something that none of us

00:06:25would have hesitated to do a few months ago.

00:06:28And by the way, the Gulf of Mexico,

00:06:30it was assigned that name at birth.

00:06:32Trump signed executive orders targeting law firms

00:06:35for representing clients that opposed or investigated him,

00:06:39upending the fundamental principle

00:06:40that lawyers should not fear to represent their clients.

00:06:43And most terrifying, Trump ordered ICE agents

00:06:46to arrest and detain Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder,

00:06:49and snatch off the street a Tufts University student

00:06:52and visa holder, Rumayse Ozturk,

00:06:54for protesting and writing an op-ed

00:06:56for exercising their right to free speech.

00:07:00I would like to play a video.

00:07:05Scene of the latest Trump government crackdown

00:07:08on pro-Palestinian students.

00:07:11Plainclothes immigration officers

00:07:12surround a Turkish graduate student, Rumayse Ozturk.

00:07:18Her screams alerting residents.

00:07:21Is this a kidnapping?

00:07:22Her crime, it's unclear,

00:07:24but she co-authored a pro-Palestinian op-ed

00:07:27in a student newspaper.

00:07:30So now we're raiding college campuses

00:07:32to silence thought and dissent of the students.

00:07:34As you can see, Trump is brazenly weaponizing the government

00:07:38to intimidate and silence any part of American society

00:07:41that disagrees with him.

00:07:43Countering disinformation from hostile foreign powers

00:07:46should not be a partisan issue,

00:07:48yet this administration has crippled our capacity

00:07:51to respond to these threats

00:07:52while aiding, abetting, and amplifying

00:07:55our adversaries' influence operations.

00:07:57The PRC has invested billions in pumping out propaganda,

00:08:01weaponizing the world's largest

00:08:02online disinformation operation to silence critics,

00:08:06discredit lawmakers, and harass U.S. companies

00:08:09who are at odds with China's interests,

00:08:10and Russia maintains a sophisticated

00:08:13and sprawling disinformation apparatus

00:08:15to manipulate American public sentiment

00:08:17to Putin's advantage,

00:08:18even paying conservative influencers

00:08:20to create and amplify pro-Kremlin content.

00:08:24And how has Trump confronted these threats?

00:08:26He shut down independent media broadcasters

00:08:28like USAGM and Radio Free Asia,

00:08:31a move that was actually celebrated in Chinese state media,

00:08:35and he dismantled the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force,

00:08:38which his own administration first created in 2017

00:08:42to uncover disinformation and propaganda

00:08:45targeting Americans.

00:08:46We should be exploring more real partisan solutions

00:08:49to this pressing national security

00:08:51on behalf of the American people

00:08:53instead of perpetuating cultural wars and divisions.

00:08:56Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.

00:08:58General Lady yields back,

00:09:00and I had done a brief introduction

00:09:04to our witnesses prior.

00:09:07I do want to note that the General Lady well knows

00:09:09we have done a series of roundtables

00:09:13within the jurisdiction of this subcommittee,

00:09:16and yes, this is the first hearing

00:09:19that this Congress is doing on this particular issue.

00:09:24And obviously, our witnesses,

00:09:26you can see the tone and tenor

00:09:27of what's gonna be happening today here, sadly,

00:09:29but Mr. Taibbi, I'm gonna give you a brief moment

00:09:33to answer some charges that were put against you here,

00:09:38but I also want to note that

00:09:42there are some who don't believe

00:09:43that the censorship industrial complex exists.

00:09:46In fact, I think our other witness this morning on Blue Sky

00:09:49had said, quote, I'm going to tell them it doesn't exist,

00:09:52it's a lie peddled by those who seek power and profit

00:09:56in a dangerous distraction from the real threats we face.

00:10:00I won't bring up the dissent cables

00:10:02that weren't allowed to be sent out of Afghanistan

00:10:06and a number of other things

00:10:07that happened in the last administration,

00:10:08but Mr. Taibbi, there are those who don't believe

00:10:12that this actually exists and is going on.

00:10:14Can you explain what the Election Integrity Partnership is

00:10:18and what its relationship to GECC is?

00:10:22If you can turn your mic on, please.

00:10:25Sorry, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

00:10:27The Election Integrity Partnership

00:10:28was an organization run out of Stanford University.

00:10:33It had four non-governmental partners.

00:10:37There was a Stanford Internet Observatory.

00:10:40There was a company called Grafica.

00:10:42There was the Center for an Informed Public

00:10:45from University of Washington.

00:10:49And the fourth, I'm sorry, I'm blank.

00:10:50I'm sorry, the Digital Forensic Research Labs

00:10:53of the Atlantic Council.

00:10:55They also partnered with the Global Engagement Center

00:11:00and if I'm remembering correctly,

00:11:03the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency at DHS.

00:11:08And we came across EIP

00:11:13when we first got access to the Twitter files

00:11:16when those documents were made known to us.

00:11:20We didn't have any guidance at all.

00:11:22We didn't know what we were looking at.

00:11:23We just simply saw a big pile of complaints.

00:11:27You uncovered it, literally, right?

00:11:28And you just uncovered it, you came across this.

00:11:31They just said, you can start searching

00:11:33and gave us access to a search engine.

00:11:38We started looking at various documents.

00:11:41We found these complaints that would essentially

00:11:44be referrals from this non-governmental organization

00:11:48that was partnered with governmental organizations

00:11:52about various types of content

00:11:55related to the 2020 election.

00:11:57And these complaints would go into

00:12:00what was called the JIRA ticketing system

00:12:02after which there would often be a recommendation

00:12:06to remove or deamplify or place

00:12:09some kind of restriction on the account.

00:12:12So I would characterize

00:12:14the Election Integrity Partnership

00:12:17as a wide scale organization designed

00:12:24to funnel complaints to multiple internet platforms at once.

00:12:31Mr. Tlaiby, I'm so sorry.

00:12:32I made a terrible mistake on this

00:12:35where I had fully just missed it, caught up in the moment.

00:12:42We needed to go and have each one of you

00:12:44do an opening statement for five minutes.

00:12:47So my apologies, yes, I have some confused colleagues

00:12:51up here, my apologies on that.

00:12:53So we're gonna go to those opening statements.

00:12:57I will then go into the questions that we have.

00:13:00I will take some time off of my time.

00:13:04But I do apologize to the folks on the panel

00:13:11and to my colleagues for that.

00:13:13All right, the committee recognizes

00:13:15the importance of the issues before us

00:13:17and is grateful that you're here today.

00:13:19Your full statements will be part of the record

00:13:21and I ask that each of you keep your spoken remarks

00:13:24to five minutes in order to allow for those times.

00:13:28So Ms. Jankowicz, if you would please take five minutes

00:13:31and we'll have your opening statement.

00:13:35Chairman Huizenga and Ranking Member Kamlager-Dove,

00:13:38I appreciate the invitation to speak with you today.

00:13:42I believe it's my patriotic duty to do so

00:13:44because the premise of this hearing,

00:13:46the so-called censorship industrial complex,

00:13:49is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts

00:13:53on my life and safety, but on our national security.

00:13:57More alarmingly, this fiction is itself suppressing speech

00:14:01and stymieing critical research that protects our country.

00:14:05I want to acknowledge the irony we're having this discussion

00:14:08as we witness an assault on the First Amendment

00:14:11we have not seen in decades.

00:14:13The Trump administration has directed

00:14:15far more egregious violations of our constitution

00:14:18than the imagined actions of the Biden administration

00:14:22on which this hearing is premised.

00:14:24Each one is chilling, but as a Fulbright alumna,

00:14:28the recent arrest of Rumesya Ozturk,

00:14:30a Fulbright PhD student at Tufts University,

00:14:33especially disturbed me.

00:14:35The Secretary of State seemingly revoked Ms. Ozturk's visa

00:14:40for publishing an op-ed in Tufts campus newspaper.

00:14:45For using her constitutionally protected right

00:14:47to free speech, she was spirited away

00:14:50by plainclothes ICE officers in broad daylight.

00:14:53This is what I'm used to observing

00:14:55in authoritarian countries that I study,

00:14:58and if this had happened in a country

00:15:00in this subcommittee's portfolio,

00:15:02I think you'd issue a statement of concern,

00:15:05but it happened here.

00:15:07So yes, we do need some First Amendment protections

00:15:11at the State Department, but not for imagined transgressions

00:15:14of previous administrations.

00:15:16We need those protections from this administration today.

00:15:21In pursuing investigations and hearings

00:15:23on the censorship lie, Congress has punted

00:15:26its responsibility on national security,

00:15:29opting instead for political theatrics

00:15:31that are high on fantasy and low on facts.

00:15:35Congress used government resources

00:15:37to attack disinformation researchers,

00:15:39deliberately misconstruing their work,

00:15:41burying them with requests for documents and depositions,

00:15:45and stoking the fires of public rage against them.

00:15:49These tactics echo the dark days of McCarthyism,

00:15:52but with a chilling 21st century twist.

00:15:55Even as America faces unprecedented threats

00:15:58in the information space, from our adversary's

00:16:00increasing capabilities to the exponential growth

00:16:04of emerging technologies, committees including this one

00:16:07continue to waste valuable time and taxpayer dollars

00:16:12targeting American citizens who are doing work

00:16:14in the public interest.

00:16:17I know this intimately.

00:16:18In my written testimony, I explain in detail

00:16:21the lies that upended my life when my appointment

00:16:24to lead the DHS Disinformation Governance Board

00:16:27was announced.

00:16:28As demonstrated by both the board's founding documents

00:16:31and my five-hour sworn testimony before your colleagues

00:16:34on the Judiciary Committee, the board's mission

00:16:37was to protect civil rights, civil liberties, privacy,

00:16:41and the First Amendment, the very subject of this hearing.

00:16:45Many continue to lie that the board was a censorship body

00:16:49because it's politically useful to them.

00:16:52That lie was the first chapter in the tall tales

00:16:54about the so-called censorship industrial complex

00:16:57that have since emerged.

00:16:58They've been buoyed by the Twitter files, which

00:17:01falsely allege that Twitter executives were colluding

00:17:03with government to censor disfavored content.

00:17:07The Twitter files crafted almost endless fiction

00:17:10based on selectively edited email and text

00:17:12excerpts between researchers, platforms,

00:17:15and federal agencies.

00:17:17They're riddled with errors and outright falsehoods.

00:17:20The allegation that researchers are somehow

00:17:22committing acts of censorship by conducting independent research

00:17:26and sharing it is outlandish, and it's harmful.

00:17:29Research is speech, government-funded or not.

00:17:34The only reason the censorship lie has been perpetuated

00:17:37is because it's politically and financially beneficial

00:17:40to those who peddle it.

00:17:42Actions like this hearing are a dangerous distraction

00:17:45from the real threats we face.

00:17:47My organization, the American Sunlight Project,

00:17:50has identified plenty of foreign interference

00:17:53we could be talking about today, including a pro-Russia content

00:17:56aggregation network pushing out 3.6 million pieces of content

00:18:01a year, poisoning LLM-powered chatbots.

00:18:04China and Iran are also actively targeting the US

00:18:08as we sit here.

00:18:09But our capacity to respond to these threats

00:18:12has been eviscerated based on conspiracy theories,

00:18:16sending a signal to our adversaries

00:18:18that America is weak.

00:18:20Beijing, Tehran, and Moscow interpret

00:18:22these partisan attacks on counter-disinformation work

00:18:25as a sign that their interference is

00:18:27likely to succeed.

00:18:29Our adversaries use information operations

00:18:31to undermine democratic values.

00:18:33We must act not only as the staunchest defender

00:18:36and guarantor of those values abroad,

00:18:38but fight just as hard to preserve them at home.

00:18:43It's only as time has expired.

00:18:45Mr. Taibbi, you have five minutes.

00:18:47The forum mentioned Twitter files, author, founder of Racket

00:18:50News.

00:18:51You have five minutes.

00:18:53Mr. Chairman, Madam Ranking Member, thank you.

00:18:57My name is Matt Taibbi.

00:18:58I'm the editor of the independent site Racket.

00:19:01And I've been covering digital censorship issues

00:19:03since 2018, the fictional ones.

00:19:07On March 14, 2016, Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13721,

00:19:13developing a new integrated global engagement center

00:19:16to support government-wide counterterrorism communications

00:19:19activities directed abroad.

00:19:21It directed the Secretary of State

00:19:22to create a new body, the GEC or GEC,

00:19:25to, quote, counter the messaging and diminish

00:19:28the influence of international terrorist organizations,

00:19:31including ISIL, al-Qaeda, and other violent extremists

00:19:35abroad.

00:19:37Seven years later, while working on a story involving

00:19:39internal communications at Twitter,

00:19:41I found myself reading emails between GEC officials

00:19:44and Twitter executives about subjects ranging from COVID-19

00:19:48to the 2020 election to Donald Trump.

00:19:51Chairman, Mr. Chairman, you were right to point out

00:19:54that they were once focused abroad.

00:19:57But by this time, GEC officials were largely

00:20:00concerned with domestic English-language accounts,

00:20:03people with no ties to terror groups

00:20:05or relationships with adversary nations

00:20:07like Iran, China, or Russia.

00:20:11When I went back this weekend through those documents

00:20:13to find examples of GEC pressuring Twitter

00:20:16to remove or deamplify Americans accused of misinformation,

00:20:19I found an exchange that we Twitter Files reporters

00:20:23missed in 2023.

00:20:25A lawyer at the company asked several other executives

00:20:28if they had any, quote, appetite for writing GEC a letter

00:20:31to ask them to stop going to the media

00:20:33with sensationalist claims about epidemics of foreign bots.

00:20:38One of the company's senior communications executives

00:20:41gave a remarkably candid answer.

00:20:44From my chair, it would be very helpful, he wrote.

00:20:47Referencing a well-known Washington reporter,

00:20:49he went on, the pre-briefed Ellen Nakashima article

00:20:52in The Post on Bernie and this coronavirus story,

00:20:56no heads up, are making me worry a little

00:20:59about how good faith these players will be

00:21:01through the press into 2020.

00:21:04So it wasn't just conservatives, it was also Bernie Sanders.

00:21:08The date on that email was February 24th, 2020,

00:21:12three days after The Washington Post

00:21:14ran a devastating feature titled Bernie Sanders

00:21:17briefed by U.S. officials that Russia

00:21:19is trying to help his presidential campaign.

00:21:21This was an extremely impactful story

00:21:23that opened the floodgates on a conspiracy theory

00:21:27that Sanders was the recipient of Russian help.

00:21:29It claimed bots helping Bernie online

00:21:32were part of, quote, Russia's broader interest

00:21:34in sowing division in the United States

00:21:36and uncertainty about the validity of American elections.

00:21:41In response to this odd sequel of claims

00:21:43about Russian bots aiding Donald Trump,

00:21:45the company's head of trust and safety,

00:21:47Yoel Roth, gave an unflattering description

00:21:49of Geck's methods, quote, they use Brandwatch

00:21:53to monitor a handful of openly Russian accounts,

00:21:56for instance, RT, and an unspecified number

00:21:59of accounts that they baselessly assert are inauthentic.

00:22:03This is the exact formula we previously found

00:22:07behind another often used online tool called Hamilton 68,

00:22:11whose founders were also quoted in The Post piece.

00:22:14Hamilton 68 mixed a smattering of real Russian accounts

00:22:18with a crowd of mostly American,

00:22:19mostly anti-establishment accounts

00:22:23to create a dashboard that synthesized, falsely,

00:22:25the appearance of Russian social media backing

00:22:28for everything from the Devin Nunes memo

00:22:31to the Parkland shooting.

00:22:33Although many of the most controversial stories

00:22:36about Geck involved their funding

00:22:37of commercial media scoring operations

00:22:40that downranked conservative news outlets,

00:22:43the Geck also pressured Twitter

00:22:45about left-leaning figures like Sanders,

00:22:47anti-war accounts, libertarians, and independents,

00:22:50as well as conservatives.

00:22:52They managed this by using a trick

00:22:54that gave domestic propaganda the appearance

00:22:56of a counter-terrorist operation.

00:22:59Geck sent out reports that would first identify

00:23:01a few social media accounts with real ties

00:23:04to Russia or China or Iran.

00:23:06Then it would separately list accounts

00:23:08they called highly connective

00:23:10to that country's propaganda ecosystem.

00:23:13These would be American or European citizens

00:23:15with inconvenient views.

00:23:17For instance, Geck identified the Twitter accounts

00:23:20of former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte

00:23:22and former Italian Democratic Party Secretary

00:23:25Nicola Zingaretti, who was often compared to Bernie,

00:23:28as being highly connective to Russia.

00:23:30All he had to do to get on the list

00:23:32was retweet what they called anti-US propaganda,

00:23:35or Geck's subjective definition of pro-Russian propaganda.

00:23:38No actual connection was required.

00:23:41Through this means, the Geck exactly rehabilitated

00:23:44the fellow-traveler concept used by infamous smear artists

00:23:47and witch hunters from history,

00:23:48from Leon Trotsky to the House Un-American Affairs Committee.

00:23:52It was a way to accuse someone

00:23:54who hasn't done anything wrong of guilt

00:23:56by ideological association.

00:23:59And I'll just wrap up, I've gone over my time,

00:24:02but they weren't looking for misinformation

00:24:04and disinformation, they were looking for orthodoxy

00:24:06and unorthodoxy, obedience and disobedience.

00:24:10The idea behind Geck in particular

00:24:12was finding a way to propagandize American citizens

00:24:15and encourage acceptance of official policy

00:24:18the way we've always done to foreign populations.

00:24:20It's a flagrant violation of First Amendment ideals

00:24:23and should be eradicated from the government completely.

00:24:26No one should have this tool, not Democrats,

00:24:28not the Trump administration, nobody.

00:24:30Gentlemen's time has expired.

00:24:33With that, Mr. Weingarten, investigative journalist

00:24:37and columnist, you have five minutes.

00:24:40Chairman Huizenga, Ranking Member Kamladgar Dove,

00:24:43and esteemed members of the subcommittee,

00:24:44thank you for the opportunity to testify.

00:24:47The censorship industrial complex

00:24:48poses a mortal threat to our republic.

00:24:51The sprawling whole-of-society regime

00:24:53has sought to purge unauthorized opinions

00:24:55and inconvenient facts en masse

00:24:58under guise of combating mis, dis, and mal information.

00:25:01Today's hearing highlights one of the regime's

00:25:03most insidious manifestations,

00:25:06the turning of federal agencies

00:25:07that are supposed to target foreign adversaries

00:25:10instead on Americans and our core political speech.

00:25:13The Global Engagement Center was a key cog in such efforts

00:25:17through its cultivation of hundreds of ostensibly

00:25:19non-governmental counter-disinformation players.

00:25:22Two players that Geck funded and promoted

00:25:24were risk raters, so-called, NewsGuard and GDI.

00:25:28These relationships should have raised

00:25:30immediate alarm bells.

00:25:31The Geck's stated mission was to counter

00:25:33foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts,

00:25:35as the chairman noted.

00:25:37Yet, NewsGuard aims to systematically defund

00:25:40sources of harmful misinformation, foreign and domestic.

00:25:44NewsGuard does so by raiding and reviewing

00:25:46thousands of outlets for reliability

00:25:48and creating exclusion lists, that is, blacklists,

00:25:51to feed advertisers for use in determining

00:25:54where not to place ads.

00:25:56GDI, likewise, seeks to reduce disinformation

00:25:59by removing the financial incentive, ad revenue.

00:26:02It says lurks behind it.

00:26:04GDI, too, arms advertisers with a dynamic exclusion list,

00:26:07reportedly containing 2,000 risky publications,

00:26:11including, again, American ones.

00:26:13Perversely, then, a foreign-facing interagency entity

00:26:16both funded and gave the federal government's imprimatur

00:26:19to non-governmental would-be destroyers

00:26:21of disfavored domestic outlets.

00:26:24Those outlets appear to be disfavored

00:26:25for ideological reasons.

00:26:27NewsGuard generally lavishes significantly higher scores

00:26:30on left-leaning sources over right-leaning ones.

00:26:33Its Kafka-esque correspondence

00:26:35with dissident outlets broadly,

00:26:36who have challenged seemingly unmerited scores,

00:26:39largely in vain, further suggests a bias.

00:26:42GDI's 2022 report on disinformation risk among U.S. sources

00:26:47betrays a similar bent.

00:26:48There, it lists among its 10 least risky publications

00:26:52nine liberal-to-progressive corporate media outlets

00:26:55and The Wall Street Journal.

00:26:56Its 10 riskiest publications include

00:26:58nine conservative or libertarian outlets

00:27:00and RealClearPolitics.

00:27:02Evidence suggests the risk raters' profiles

00:27:04grew substantially after receiving federal support.

00:27:07Their ubiquity in the ad marketplace

00:27:09reportedly drove declines of tens of millions of dollars

00:27:12in ad revenue annually for outlets

00:27:14on their de facto blacklists.

00:27:16Some disfavored sources report reduced traffic,

00:27:19diminished search visibility,

00:27:20and lost operational partners.

00:27:22RealClear's experience with the risk raters

00:27:24is uniquely perverse.

00:27:26RealClearPolitics' bread and butter

00:27:27is curating compelling analysis from sources left and right,

00:27:31corporate and independent, on key issues of the day

00:27:33so readers can weigh both sides.

00:27:35Consequently, media bias rater AllSides

00:27:38positions RCP in the ideological center

00:27:41alongside Reuters, The Hill, and The Wall Street Journal.

00:27:43Despite our pursuit of fairness and quality journalism,

00:27:46NewsGuard gives RCP a 62 on its 100-point scale

00:27:50as determined by their journalists

00:27:52rating a sample of our journalists' work.

00:27:54NewsGuard dings us in part for our purported

00:27:57undisclosed conservative bent.

00:27:59The implication is that it either

00:28:00dismisses viewpoint diversity as a feature

00:28:03or sees it as a bug.

00:28:05RealClear Investigations likewise curates deep dives

00:28:08and publishes original content from journalists

00:28:10with diverse perspectives.

00:28:12NewsGuard has branded us biased, too,

00:28:14albeit while giving RCI an 80 rating.

00:28:16Our bias is to pursue stories competitors miss

00:28:20or angles competitors ignore.

00:28:21Shouldn't that be celebrated?

00:28:23As for GDI, RCP may be on its secret blacklist, too.

00:28:27RealClear has thrived despite the risk raters' best efforts,

00:28:30but the censorship industrial complex

00:28:32the GEC helped foster has made a tough business

00:28:34tougher and disadvantaged us.

00:28:36Our ad revenue has declined materially.

00:28:38We've seen a meaningful drop in certain search rankings.

00:28:40And we've taken a reputational hit

00:28:42by being branded with the digital scarlet letter R

00:28:45for risky.

00:28:46Even if the risk raters were unobjectionable,

00:28:48the fact remains, through funding and supporting

00:28:50such entities, government abridged speech by proxy.

00:28:53The Trump administration and its State Department

00:28:55have indicated these efforts are over.

00:28:57But the speech police have neither laid down their arms

00:29:00nor recanted for past abuses, suggesting they will

00:29:02at best lie in wait during Trump II,

00:29:05only to come back with a vengeance thereafter.

00:29:07So the time to act is now.

00:29:09Congress should codify the president's

00:29:11first day executive order restoring freedom of speech

00:29:13and ending federal censorship to permanently starve

00:29:16the censorship industrial complex of the federal funding

00:29:19and erection that are its lifeblood.

00:29:20Congress should prohibit grants and contracts

00:29:22to institutions engaged in domestic censorship activities.

00:29:25And Congress should erect a strict firewall

00:29:28between the US government and our body politic,

00:29:30a la Smith-Munt.

00:29:31To overcome our adversaries, we must not emulate them

00:29:34by casting dissent from ruling class orthodoxy as dangerous

00:29:38and surveilling and silencing the dissenters.

00:29:40Instead, let us restore the free and open public square

00:29:44on which our republic rests.

00:29:47Thank you with that.

00:29:49We will return to questioning.

00:29:50I'm going to give myself three minutes

00:29:53and eating up some of that time in a very,

00:29:57I'm fortunately on my part, so again,

00:29:59my apologies to the panel for any confusion there.

00:30:04I was enthusiastic, yes, the ranking member reminds me.

00:30:07So I think it was your spirited opening

00:30:10that may have brought me along that path.

00:30:13Well, with that, I'm going to take three minutes

00:30:17and Mr. Taibbi, you had started to explain

00:30:20and did in your opening statement

00:30:22about the election integrity partnership.

00:30:24And I appreciate that.

00:30:25Mr. Weingarten, you were talking about an advertising

00:30:29blacklist, and the GDI News Guard

00:30:33used these blacklists to censor American speech.

00:30:37And I am curious, those blacklists,

00:30:40how did they treat the right-leaning outlets

00:30:42versus the left-leaning outlets?

00:30:44And were outlets punished for even attempting

00:30:47to provide ideological balance?

00:30:48I mean, you wrote RealClearPolitics was one of those

00:30:51that was on the list.

00:30:53I think the RealClearPolitics case study is instructive

00:30:57in that if you go to our website,

00:30:58you see sources left and right.

00:31:00And the whole purpose is let's provide a balanced diet

00:31:03of opinion and analysis and let the American people decide

00:31:06because we have faith in the American people,

00:31:08that they have agency and they can decide for themselves.

00:31:10And the fact of the matter is that RCP

00:31:13and then some on the right, Libertarian, Conservative,

00:31:16and even anti-establishment leftist publications

00:31:18have found themselves dinged by these so-called risk raters.

00:31:22And that risk, by the way, is that they may be brands

00:31:25who advertise on these sites,

00:31:27may be targeted for boycotts and attacks

00:31:29generally by progressive groups.

00:31:31So this whole sort of apparatus exists

00:31:34out of coercion, essentially, from the left.

00:31:36And as a consequence, ad revenue streams have died

00:31:39for many of these companies

00:31:40and it threatens their viability.

00:31:42Yeah.

00:31:42And how would these blacklists treat a publication

00:31:45that had the audacity of suggesting that COVID-19 virus

00:31:49may have originated from a lab leak,

00:31:51which actually turned out to be a legitimate

00:31:54and true theory?

00:31:57I don't know about the rest of my colleagues

00:31:59or the panelists, but I know people who were canceled

00:32:02over putting out such theories

00:32:04and even threatened with their job

00:32:06and their livelihood on that.

00:32:09So talk to me a little bit very quickly about COVID-19.

00:32:13In Real Clear's reporting,

00:32:15we saw that at least one source that put forth questions

00:32:18about all manner of issues from the origins of COVID

00:32:21to mitigation measures and beyond,

00:32:23they get attacked because, or they got attacked

00:32:26because they dissented from

00:32:28what was public health orthodoxy at the time.

00:32:30As we know, that public health orthodoxy,

00:32:32that consensus has shifted.

00:32:34But if you differed from consensus,

00:32:36you were dinged and you had essentially no recourse

00:32:38or real due process to get off a blacklist

00:32:41for just presenting an opinion or a substantiated analysis.

00:32:45I'm gonna move quickly here.

00:32:46And I know Mr. Taibbi,

00:32:47you're not the only controversial person here.

00:32:50Ms. Jankowicz, as we talked about some of her posts,

00:32:55some of this saying that the fairy tale

00:32:58about Hunter Biden's laptop is out there.

00:33:02And Chris Steele provides some great historical context

00:33:07about the evolution of disinformation.

00:33:08So without objection,

00:33:09I'm going to put those into the record as well.

00:33:13I find it ironic that something called

00:33:14the American Sunlight Project

00:33:16is actually a dark money group

00:33:17that won't release its donors.

00:33:23Certainly, that doesn't bode well.

00:33:26I'm gonna, Mr. Taibbi,

00:33:27I'm gonna give you a last moment here.

00:33:29Can you explain exactly how GECK colluded

00:33:32with social media companies specifically

00:33:34through the Election Integrity Partnership?

00:33:41Mr. Chairman, GECK's actual relationship

00:33:44to the Election Integrity Partnership was not clear.

00:33:47It was made plain in the EIP's own website.

00:33:53Secretary of State Blinken mentioned

00:33:57that it was cooperating with the EIP

00:34:00when he visited Stanford.

00:34:01Also, there is a story that it was actually interns

00:34:06from the State Department

00:34:08who came up with the idea for the EIP.

00:34:11But they were one of the two major government organizations

00:34:16that was working with the EIP.

00:34:18My time has expired with that.

00:34:19I give yield to the representative from California.

00:34:26So, a central claim of this hearing

00:34:30is that states GEC first set up

00:34:33under the Trump administration

00:34:35and championed by then Senator Marco Rubio,

00:34:37supported organizations that censored conservative speech

00:34:41and worked to discredit conservative outlets.

00:34:44Ms. Jankovic, to your knowledge,

00:34:46has State Department funding ever gone

00:34:49toward suppressing domestic speech?

00:34:53Thank you, Ranking Member.

00:34:55You know, Mr. Taibbi said when he was first searching

00:34:58through the so-called Twitter files,

00:34:59he didn't know what he was looking at.

00:35:01Well, he still doesn't.

00:35:02Everything looks like a conspiracy

00:35:03when you don't know how anything works.

00:35:05And let me tell you, there was no censorship going on

00:35:08at the Global Engagement Center or the State Department.

00:35:11You may have heard Mr. Weingarten kind of make the inference

00:35:15that all of these lists GDI and NewsGuard are making,

00:35:19you might have thought that they were funded

00:35:20by the State Department.

00:35:21They were not.

00:35:22Do you know what the State Department was funding

00:35:23for those two organizations?

00:35:25Something I think the Republicans on this committee

00:35:27would be very interested in,

00:35:28tracking and countering Chinese state propaganda

00:35:31targeting Americans.

00:35:33Now, I used to manage State Department grants

00:35:35early in my career.

00:35:36I know that that is a huge fiduciary responsibility.

00:35:40You have to account for every single penny

00:35:42that you're spending on travel, on staff time,

00:35:45on supplies, and you have to do it multiple times a year.

00:35:48So for folks to sit here and say that grants

00:35:50dedicated to countering CCP propaganda

00:35:53were somehow spent on conservative blacklists

00:35:56is just ridiculous.

00:35:57And I'll also add that that is those organizations' speech

00:36:01to be able to do research and categorize news sites

00:36:04as they see fit.

00:36:06A letter sent to the Senate last week

00:36:08shows that actually a lot of conservative organizations,

00:36:12including the Heritage Foundation,

00:36:13the Wall Street Journal, Reason,

00:36:16Cato Institute, and the Washington Free Beacon

00:36:18all received great ratings by NewsGuard

00:36:20while the Daily Coast only got a 45 out of 100.

00:36:23So this nonsense about bias is just frankly not true.

00:36:28And it also rings a little bit like a restaurateur

00:36:31who got a bad review in the Washington Post,

00:36:33mad that nobody wants to eat there anymore.

00:36:36So you brought up China.

00:36:39So let's stay there for a second.

00:36:40Can you give us a snapshot of the kinds

00:36:43of harmful information operations

00:36:46China and Russia wage against the United States?

00:36:50Maybe how this administration is dismantling

00:36:52our ability to protect Americans

00:36:55from foreign propaganda and manipulation.

00:36:58Absolutely, I'd love to, ranking member.

00:36:59So the Chinese Communist Party continues

00:37:02to be extraordinarily active in the information space,

00:37:05using all manner of influence operations

00:37:08to target Americans, including the famous

00:37:10spamouflage campaign, which is fake social media profiles,

00:37:14masquerading as Americans, exacerbating tensions,

00:37:17and there are certainly plenty of those

00:37:18to go around right now.

00:37:20The fact that we're here in such a polarized,

00:37:23politicized setting, I'm sure there's somebody

00:37:25in Beijing watching this hearing

00:37:26thinking about what they can tweet about it, right?

00:37:28We have to think about that.

00:37:29We are doing our adversary's work for them.

00:37:32And with Russia, I'd say something that we just discovered

00:37:36at the American Sunlight Project

00:37:38is that there's a large network, a growing network,

00:37:40of a content aggregation platform

00:37:43that is pushing out 3.6 million pieces

00:37:46of pro-Russia content a year.

00:37:47I'm not talking about, you know, Russia is great,

00:37:49I'm talking about the massacre in Bucha,

00:37:51it did not happen, that sort of thing, falsehoods, right?

00:37:54And they are doing that not to infect,

00:37:57you know, to get human readership,

00:38:00they're doing it to infect chatbots, ChatGPT,

00:38:03all of these chatbots that we're now using

00:38:05that we're being told are gonna be

00:38:06the next great frontier in research.

00:38:08And that's being shown to people who are asking questions

00:38:12about Russia and Ukraine.

00:38:14Our capacity to respond to these threats,

00:38:16the only office that was dedicated

00:38:18to looking at foreign state propaganda

00:38:19in the State Department, now doesn't exist anymore.

00:38:22And ARFIMI, it's, you know,

00:38:26organization that came after it,

00:38:28doesn't even have a website on the State Department.

00:38:30So I'm not worried, Chairman, you said,

00:38:31is this just a geck by a different name?

00:38:34I'm not worried about that

00:38:35because they're not even talking about what they're doing

00:38:37and our adversaries are absolutely taking notice.

00:38:39They think it's open season on the United States.

00:38:43Another falsehood the majority witnesses have perpetuated

00:38:47is that Democratic government officials and lawmakers

00:38:49colluded with social media companies

00:38:51to suppress content they disagreed with.

00:38:53Mr. Chair, I request unanimous consent

00:38:56to enter into the record a Rolling Stone article titled,

00:38:58"'Twitter Kept Entire Database of Republican Requests

00:39:02"'to Censor Posts.'"

00:39:05This article describes how the Trump administration

00:39:07and congressional Republicans routinely asked Twitter

00:39:09to take down posts they objected to.

00:39:12In the minutes we have left, Ms. Jankiewicz,

00:39:14what is the difference between

00:39:16content moderation and censorship?

00:39:18The difference between content moderation and censorship

00:39:20is that these platforms are private platforms.

00:39:22They have the right to enforce their terms of service,

00:39:26how they see fit.

00:39:27And Mr. Taibbi himself, you know,

00:39:30cited an email from Yoel Roth in which he was throwing shade

00:39:33on the Gex analysis.

00:39:34Sounds like he wasn't listening to them, to me.

00:39:37Thank you, Mr. Chair, I yield back.

00:39:39General lady yields back.

00:39:41The representative from Pennsylvania

00:39:43is recognized for five minutes.

00:39:44Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:39:46Ms. Jankiewicz, since you brought it up,

00:39:49have you read the Venona intercepts?

00:39:52Again, sir?

00:39:53Venona, are you familiar?

00:39:55I'm not, sir.

00:39:56You brought up McCarthy and I just encourage you

00:39:58to go ahead and read through that.

00:40:00You might, as many people, disagree with his methods,

00:40:05but you can't disagree with the facts

00:40:08that the people that he listed

00:40:10turned out to all be subversive communists

00:40:12working in our government.

00:40:14With that, I'll turn to Mr. Weingarten.

00:40:18Your statement notes that GEC's $100 million

00:40:22in grants since 2016 funded 400 plus projects,

00:40:27including NewsGuard and GDI,

00:40:29which blacklisted 2,000 U.S. outlets,

00:40:33costing $128 million in ad revenue by 2022.

00:40:38You have any other concrete,

00:40:40well, before we get into the other concrete examples,

00:40:42because we've got a difference of opinion

00:40:44on both sides of the dais here,

00:40:47you said 2,000 U.S. outlets.

00:40:51Are those U.S. outlets Chinese?

00:40:53Maybe they are, so I'm just asking.

00:40:54Are they owned by the Communist Party of China,

00:40:57Iran, Russia, or are they U.S. information purveyors?

00:41:04As a factual matter, to my knowledge,

00:41:05none of those are foreign-owned publications,

00:41:09and certainly not by our adversaries.

00:41:10So this is 2,000 U.S. outlets, $100 million in grants.

00:41:15Where do you suspect that grant money came from?

00:41:20Well, the grant money came from taxpayers.

00:41:23Oh my goodness, really?

00:41:24Taxpayers?

00:41:26Taxpayers paying $100 million

00:41:30to blacklist 2,000 U.S. outlets.

00:41:33Is that fiction?

00:41:35I've heard it's fiction.

00:41:36Is it fiction or not fiction?

00:41:38It's not fiction.

00:41:39I want to be clear, the 2,000 is the total list.

00:41:41I'm not sure if it's all U.S.,

00:41:43but certainly a substantial percentage of them.

00:41:45Okay.

00:41:47Is that a conspiracy theory?

00:41:49No, sir.

00:41:50I didn't think so.

00:41:53Can you give us any concrete examples?

00:41:56$100 million in grants, 2,000 U.S. outlets

00:41:59costing $128 million, by your account, in ad revenue.

00:42:06Can you give us any concrete examples

00:42:07how the GEC funding directly hit American outlets'

00:42:11speech or revenue, other than the ones you already have?

00:42:15Well, as the lawsuit against the State Department

00:42:17from The Federalist and Daily Wire indicates,

00:42:20their businesses, the viability was dramatically

00:42:25damaged after GDI and NewsGuard ended up targeting them.

00:42:32And it's obvious why, because if all of the advertisers

00:42:35say, don't put your ads on our websites,

00:42:38it saps a revenue stream.

00:42:40And let's also note, by the way,

00:42:41that beyond NewsGuard and GDI,

00:42:43there was funding for dozens of other organizations

00:42:46that were involved in things like

00:42:48misdisc and malinformation detection and such.

00:42:50And all of this was fueling an ecosystem

00:42:53that existed ultimately to clamp down on speech,

00:42:56whether from individuals or outlets.

00:42:58And that's U.S. tax dollars ultimately funding

00:43:01the silencing of ourselves, and that's on American.

00:43:03Yeah, U.S. tax dollars through grant programs

00:43:07to create a censorship empire on American citizens

00:43:12under the guise of this Global Engagement Center,

00:43:14which was meant to, look, I agree with Ms. Jankowicz,

00:43:17we wanna be dealing with China, Russia, Iran,

00:43:20foreign adversaries, but that's not what this was.

00:43:23Mr. Taibbi, your Twitter files analyze 3.8 billion

00:43:27U.S. tweets, and the metrics expose GEC's ties

00:43:32to the Election Integrity Project,

00:43:34which flagged 22 million election posts in 2020.

00:43:38Can you highlight the information you found

00:43:40that exposes GEC's efforts to push platforms

00:43:44to censor Americans, and how many accounts were affected?

00:43:50Certainly, first I'd like to respond

00:43:52to something that Ms. Jankowicz said.

00:43:54Feel free.

00:43:55She mentioned that Yoel Roth,

00:43:57who was the head of trust and safety at Twitter,

00:44:01threw some shade at GEC, and indeed,

00:44:05that was actually a chief narrative

00:44:09that we found in the Twitter files,

00:44:12which was that Twitter's chief content moderation officers

00:44:17had too many government officials

00:44:19trying to call them on the phone,

00:44:21and they did not wanna add another group,

00:44:23particularly one that they felt was incompetent

00:44:25and didn't understand what they were doing,

00:44:28to the trust tree.

00:44:31Ultimately, however, after a year

00:44:34of very fevered interactions within the company,

00:44:41they were forced to allow GEC into their weekly

00:44:45or monthly discussions with the government,

00:44:48what they called the industry meetings,

00:44:50and there is an email that we found in the Twitter files

00:44:53from a former CIA officer who went to work at Twitter

00:44:58who was explaining that there was once a time

00:45:02when Twitter would have been able to say no

00:45:04to that kind of request, but our window on that is closing.

00:45:08Thank you, sir.

00:45:09My time has expired.

00:45:09I yield.

00:45:10Gentleman's time has expired.

00:45:12With that, the representative from California

00:45:15is recognized for five minutes.

00:45:17Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:45:19I've been in Congress for a while now,

00:45:21so I was in Congress during the time

00:45:24that the Global Engagement Center was formed,

00:45:26and part of the rationale for forming it,

00:45:30and you mentioned it in your opening statement,

00:45:32Mr. Chayibi, to counter the messaging

00:45:36and diminish the influence

00:45:37of international terrorist organizations,

00:45:39including ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and other violent extremists,

00:45:43and the reason it was created was we saw how effective

00:45:47ISIL or ISIS was at recruiting folks,

00:45:51using their messaging, using the internet,

00:45:55the threat that it was to our homeland

00:45:56in terms of creating homegrown threats as well,

00:45:58and we saw some domestic terror attacks.

00:46:02So just a yes or no question,

00:46:04outside of what it may or may not have morphed into,

00:46:09we still need a tool like that.

00:46:11Would you agree with that, Mr. Weingartner,

00:46:14to counter that messaging?

00:46:16I believe we should use every means

00:46:17to counter our adversaries lawfully.

00:46:19And that would include China and Russia.

00:46:21Same thing, Mr. Chayibi,

00:46:23that we do need an effective tool

00:46:26to counter messaging, recruitment,

00:46:28terrorism, domestic terrorism.

00:46:30Whether that's the GEC or not,

00:46:32we do need to be able to counter

00:46:35misinformation, disinformation.

00:46:37I don't think that's a yes or no answer, Mr. Congressman.

00:46:40For instance, we talk about counterterrorism

00:46:43with Anwar al-Awlaki.

00:46:45Was it appropriate for the United States

00:46:46to assassinate a foreign citizen without due process,

00:46:50even an American citizen?

00:46:54In this case, what became the GEC

00:46:58started off as a counterterrorism program,

00:47:00but as was explained to me, excuse me, sir,

00:47:03by a former GEC employee,

00:47:06this mission switched from CP to CP,

00:47:09counterterrorism to counterpopulism.

00:47:11Ms. Jackowitz?

00:47:12Absolutely, this should be a bipartisan issue,

00:47:16and it's crazy that you even have to ask

00:47:17the question, Congressman.

00:47:19Ms. Jackowitz, is this threat gonna get worse

00:47:22with the evolution of AI?

00:47:24Oh, absolutely.

00:47:25We are seeing this threat get worse

00:47:27with the evolution of AI already,

00:47:28not just the poisoning or grooming of LLM chatbots

00:47:32like I've already mentioned,

00:47:33but there's evidence from OpenAI and their threat team

00:47:36that China is using AI models

00:47:38in order to more effectively translate

00:47:41Chinese propaganda from Chinese into English

00:47:43and other languages as well.

00:47:45So this shouldn't be a partisan issue.

00:47:46I mean, when we get sworn into Congress,

00:47:49our most important duty is to protect our homeland,

00:47:52protect against domestic risk,

00:47:54and with the advent of internet, social media,

00:47:57now AI, information and misinformation,

00:48:04radicalization, self-radicalization,

00:48:06those are gonna be hugely important issues,

00:48:09and how we do that within protecting First Amendment rights

00:48:13is not gonna be very easy.

00:48:14And again, I would urge Democrats and Republicans

00:48:17in a nonpartisan way to protect our homeland,

00:48:20to try to figure this out,

00:48:21inviting in the private sector as well,

00:48:23inviting in those social media companies

00:48:25to try to get this right.

00:48:26I don't disagree that we saw a lot of politicization

00:48:31around COVID.

00:48:32I'm a doctor, and I'm agnostic on COVID origins.

00:48:36I can make the case that it was a lab leak.

00:48:39I can make the case that it was,

00:48:41and that's legitimate debate,

00:48:42and we shouldn't censor any of that debate.

00:48:44We should have that debate.

00:48:46Obviously, it was a novel virus.

00:48:48We're still fighting those fights,

00:48:51and I think it's kind of productive for us as a nation,

00:48:54and us as an institution in Congress.

00:48:56I think we do have to put that aside

00:48:58because these threats are very real,

00:49:00and I do worry about what's gonna happen with AI.

00:49:04Ms. Chank, what's in the final minute that I have?

00:49:06What would your recommendation be

00:49:08taking politics out of this,

00:49:09and how we would structure something?

00:49:11You know, it's really interesting, Congressman,

00:49:13because a lot of the functionalities

00:49:14that you've just described,

00:49:16coordination within the government,

00:49:18following these threats, making sure that we're abreast

00:49:21of them, coordinating with industry,

00:49:23that was the job that I was brought in to do

00:49:25at the Disinformation Governance Board and DHS,

00:49:28despite it being widely lied about.

00:49:30So I think we do need some sort of coordinating function,

00:49:32and if Congress is concerned about the way

00:49:34that social media companies are moderating

00:49:37and implementing their policies,

00:49:39the solution is not to bandy about conspiracy theories,

00:49:43it's to pass some oversight and transparency regulation,

00:49:46which I think we've been a little bit late on

00:49:48here in the United States.

00:49:50I would love to see that happen.

00:49:51Great, so I would hope, you know,

00:49:52if we are gonna do a State Department authorization bill,

00:49:56that we as Democrats and Republicans on this subcommittee

00:49:59would actually take a thoughtful approach,

00:50:00invite folks in, and maybe if we get it done

00:50:03under a Republican administration,

00:50:04we can take some of the politics out of it.

00:50:06But let's do our job.

00:50:07This is about protecting our country.

00:50:09This is about protecting our influence around the world

00:50:11and fighting against our adversaries.

00:50:13And with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back.

00:50:15Chairman, when he yields back,

00:50:17the representative from Texas, Mr. Self,

00:50:19is recognized for five minutes.

00:50:22Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:50:26You really have to admire the opposition here,

00:50:31diverting our attention from the issue at hand

00:50:39to the current days,

00:50:40because we are trying to do oversight

00:50:43on the Biden administration that did do the work

00:50:46of our adversaries for four years,

00:50:49and ruined our credibility around the world.

00:50:54So, given your recent testimony, Ms. Jankiewicz,

00:51:01so should, and you were in the government.

00:51:05For 11 weeks.

00:51:06So should the government have a part

00:51:11in enforcing free speech, law enforcement?

00:51:15Should the government have some role in it?

00:51:18Congressman, I believe the First Amendment is sacrosanct.

00:51:21I am the granddaughter of a man that was in a gulag,

00:51:24deported to a gulag by the Soviet Union.

00:51:27So I am pretty intimate with these things,

00:51:29and they're a part of my bread and butter.

00:51:32I don't think that we should be arresting people

00:51:35for exercising their speech,

00:51:38and I think that's something that you all

00:51:40should be exercising your oversight over.

00:51:42So on April the 16th, 2022,

00:51:45you said we need platforms to do more,

00:51:48and we frankly need law enforcement

00:51:50and our legislatures to do more as well.

00:51:55So, if we move past that to the right of the state,

00:52:00the mission of the state,

00:52:02the state to form public opinion,

00:52:06where would you stand on that,

00:52:09given your role in what you've been involved in?

00:52:14Thank you, Congressman.

00:52:14I believe that quote, judging by the timeframe,

00:52:17was about responses to online harms,

00:52:20which I'm happy to talk about here today,

00:52:22not the subject of the hearing,

00:52:24but a lot of people for expressing

00:52:25their First Amendment-protected speech online

00:52:28deal with threats.

00:52:29I've dealt with them myself.

00:52:30My family and I were doxed.

00:52:32We were threatened.

00:52:33I was advised to leave my home,

00:52:35and you know what,

00:52:36that's why I was talking about law enforcement, Congressman.

00:52:38That is a quote from you.

00:52:40Yes, talking about online harms and threats

00:52:43against people online for exercising their speech.

00:52:46Would you answer my next question,

00:52:47because I have a limited time.

00:52:47Please answer my next question.

00:52:51Your next question is?

00:52:52You haven't addressed it yet.

00:52:54Please repeat it, sir.

00:52:55What is the mission of the state,

00:52:57the right of the state to form public opinion?

00:53:00Because we're talking about our government

00:53:02has been involved in doing that for the last few years.

00:53:07In my opinion, the government has a First Amendment right

00:53:11to free speech as well,

00:53:12and SCOTUS has just affirmed that with a case last June.

00:53:14We just heard a case that came in federal court in New York

00:53:18that actually showed that NewsGuard was not acting

00:53:21as an envoy of the state as well.

00:53:23So what is the role of the government?

00:53:25The role of the government can express its free speech,

00:53:27right, and citizens have a right

00:53:29to their free speech as well.

00:53:30I don't really understand your question, sir.

00:53:33I'm not sure of the point.

00:53:37I'm asking you what is the role of government

00:53:39in public opinion,

00:53:40because we're talking about actions here

00:53:44that have tried to form public opinion.

00:53:46On the Hunter laptop, on the Russia disinformation,

00:53:50all of that, I'm asking you,

00:53:51what is the role of government in that matter?

00:53:55Absolutely, Congressman.

00:53:56So the government is allowed to express its own opinions,

00:53:59its viewpoints, as we're seeing this administration do,

00:54:02as we saw the previous administration do.

00:54:04What is their role when it is absolutely wrong?

00:54:07The Hunter laptop is probably the best example

00:54:09we could roll out here.

00:54:10I actually disagree with that,

00:54:12because when Twitter decided to add friction

00:54:15to the Hunter Biden laptop case, it actually got more views.

00:54:18You've also heard Mr. Taibbi talk about 22 million tweets,

00:54:22millions of things censored through the GEC

00:54:25to the Election Integrity Partnership.

00:54:27You know how many emails went between the GEC and the EIP?

00:54:3115, you can look it up in Chairman Jordan's documents

00:54:34that he released at the end of last year, 15 emails.

00:54:37I've sent more text messages to my husband

00:54:39about our toddlers' potty training in the last week

00:54:41than emails went from the GEC to the EIP,

00:54:44and those were all about overt Russian propaganda,

00:54:47RT, and Sputnik, except for one,

00:54:49when the GEC analyst said to the folks there,

00:54:52I can't comment on this one,

00:54:53because I'm a government employee,

00:54:55but I think you should check it out.

00:54:56That's all that happened, sir.

00:54:58So I'm going to leave you,

00:54:59and I'll yield back a little bit of my time,

00:55:01a direct quote from Joseph Goebbels.

00:55:05It is the absolute right of the state

00:55:07to supervise the formation of public opinion,

00:55:10and I think that may be what we're discussing here,

00:55:12and yield back.

00:55:14Gentleman yields back.

00:55:15With that, the representative from Texas, Ms. Johnson,

00:55:19is recognized for five minutes.

00:55:22Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.

00:55:25I want to respond to what my colleague from Texas just said.

00:55:30When you're quoting Joseph Goebbels about state,

00:55:35the role of state in the public debate,

00:55:37we have a big problem.

00:55:39Isn't that right, Ms. Jacobs?

00:55:40I mean, that's alarming as hell to me,

00:55:42when that becomes the gold standard of Hitler

00:55:46and all that was going on in Russia,

00:55:50I mean, in German atrocities during World War II,

00:55:52when that becomes the quote of this hearing.

00:55:55I also want to respond to another comment

00:55:58where it said that Biden ruined our credibility

00:56:02around the world.

00:56:02I would argue that Mr. Trump is doing that right now,

00:56:05canceling USAID contracts,

00:56:07breaching our promises and our agreements

00:56:09to our friends and allies across the world,

00:56:12making our country less safe.

00:56:14That is why we find us in this role.

00:56:18I'm really disappointed that we're devoting

00:56:20this first hearing to a conspiracy theory

00:56:24that the State Department,

00:56:25out of some larger sinister motive,

00:56:27routinely censors free speech.

00:56:29Today's Republican Hot Topic Roulette

00:56:31has us talking about an agency

00:56:33that the Republicans let this Congress expire.

00:56:37It's my understanding that the GEC's mandate

00:56:39is to address foreign propaganda,

00:56:41misinformation and disinformation.

00:56:44Ms. Jenkin, I would think that that would be

00:56:46a fundamental priority for the United States,

00:56:49that we should not want our adversaries

00:56:53putting misinformation into our public discord

00:56:56in order to adversely affect elections and other things.

00:56:59Wouldn't you agree?

00:57:00I would absolutely agree.

00:57:02And I'll note also that the GEC

00:57:05was created through a bipartisan bill,

00:57:08the Portman-Murphy Counter Disinformation Bill.

00:57:10And many of the actions that have been referenced so far

00:57:14in this hearing took place under the Trump administration,

00:57:16under a Trump appointee, Leah Gabriel,

00:57:19who was an intelligence analyst, a fighter pilot

00:57:21and a former Fox News host as well.

00:57:23Right, exactly.

00:57:25You know, I think that this whole notion

00:57:29that we want to try to regulate the speech

00:57:32of people in our country

00:57:33and online social media companies.

00:57:36Did I understand your testimony correctly

00:57:38that you do believe that private businesses

00:57:42have a right to regulate the content on their platform?

00:57:45Absolutely, we sign up to terms of service

00:57:48when we share our cat pictures or our kid pictures

00:57:51or whatever it is that my co-witnesses share online.

00:57:54We sign up to those terms of service

00:57:56and sometimes those terms of service say things like,

00:57:58you can't share terrorist content,

00:58:00you can't share child sexual abuse material

00:58:02and if we decide it,

00:58:03you can't share what we deem disinformation also

00:58:06and we being the social media platforms there.

00:58:08Right, and they have a right to do that.

00:58:10But what's Genesis, this problem is,

00:58:12is that so many on the far right just made shit up

00:58:15in the electoral context, put stuff out there

00:58:18and then the social media platform said,

00:58:20you know, we're not gonna tolerate just blatant lies,

00:58:24blatant falsehoods on our platforms.

00:58:26There has to be some basis of reality.

00:58:30And now the Republicans are pushing back

00:58:32because they got their hand in the cookie jar on that,

00:58:34right?

00:58:34Well, the scientific research from universities

00:58:37like New York, Indiana University and Yale

00:58:40all points to the fact that Republicans

00:58:42share more content that is more likely to be moderated.

00:58:45It's not that they're being censored,

00:58:47it is that they're breaking the rules

00:58:49that they can read if they read the fine print.

00:58:52Right.

00:58:53Thank you so much for your testimony today.

00:58:55I yield back.

00:58:56General lady yields back and the chair will remind people

00:59:00to direct their comments,

00:59:03especially curse words at the chair

00:59:04rather than at our witnesses.

00:59:07Mr. Chair, given the fact that we just heard a quote

00:59:14from Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist for the Nazi party,

00:59:18I request unanimous consent to enter into the record

00:59:22my letter urging Secretary Rubio to fire Darren Beattie

00:59:25for his dangerous anti-American pro-CCP

00:59:29white nationalist ideology.

00:59:32Without objection.

00:59:34I will note that I believe Mr. Self's comment

00:59:38and quote was his assertion that this government

00:59:43has been doing that and following,

00:59:45or the last administration.

00:59:46So not as a admiration, but as a rebuke.

00:59:51So with that, the congressman from Indiana, Mr. Shreve,

00:59:56is recognized for five minutes.

00:59:58Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:59:59Thank you to the witnesses

01:00:00for this very interesting hearing.

01:00:03This is my first subcommittee hearing on free speech,

01:00:09not my fifth, and I don't come to the table

01:00:12having this all figured out.

01:00:14And part of these hearings is an opportunity

01:00:17to listen, learn, to ask questions.

01:00:20And I appreciate this opportunity.

01:00:23We agree broadly, both sides of the aisle,

01:00:27that the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy.

01:00:33That censorship runs contrary to the first.

01:00:36That when it's wielded by private individual groups,

01:00:39it's inappropriate.

01:00:42When a government entity is tasked

01:00:44with upholding the Constitution

01:00:46and may in some fashion weaponize censorship,

01:00:49it's a problem.

01:00:51The GEC played a role in facilitating censorship

01:00:55and protected speech by Americans prior to its authority

01:00:59sunsetting at the end of this past year.

01:01:02An example, under investigations of GEC's involvement

01:01:05in suppressing dissenting voices

01:01:07in the lead up to the 2020 election.

01:01:09We've established that.

01:01:11Mr. Taibbi noted that it was established

01:01:15under EO by Mr. Obama.

01:01:19Its mission was to counter the messaging

01:01:21and reduce the influence

01:01:22of international terrorist organizations.

01:01:26Its scope expanded,

01:01:30countering foreign state and non-state propaganda

01:01:32and disinformation efforts.

01:01:34Leading up to the 2020 election,

01:01:36some within the GEC exploited its mission

01:01:41to target our American citizens rather than foreign threats.

01:01:47These efforts were part of the GEC's collaboration

01:01:49with the Election Integrity Project,

01:01:51a consortium of academic, named a few,

01:01:55think tanks formed shortly prior to that election.

01:02:00The IEP's stated goal was to monitor and correct

01:02:04election-related misinformation and disinformation

01:02:07originating from the United States.

01:02:09Leading up to that election,

01:02:10the IEP would contact social media companies

01:02:14identifying specific posts that they,

01:02:17some within the organization,

01:02:18believed spread election misinformation.

01:02:22These posts were then removed from those platforms.

01:02:26And after the 2020 election,

01:02:29IEP officials acknowledged that the GEC

01:02:31had reported such cases to them

01:02:34and was one of the most frequently tagged organizations

01:02:38in the IEP's system, their software system.

01:02:43The GEC's mission creep from countering

01:02:45international terrorist organizations

01:02:47to censoring the voices of our citizens

01:02:51before a presidential election is a problem.

01:02:55My question for Mr. Taibbi,

01:02:59as part of your Twitter files investigation,

01:03:02you uncovered that the GEC had provided

01:03:05over 5,000 account names to Twitter,

01:03:09stating that they were Chinese accounts

01:03:11engaged in state-backed coordinated manipulation.

01:03:17How long did it take you to find out

01:03:19that this was not the case?

01:03:22Thank you, Mr. Congressman.

01:03:24We rather quickly found that there was

01:03:27a heated discussion within Twitter

01:03:30about the so-called China list.

01:03:33First of all, what GEC did was actually par for the course.

01:03:38They didn't contact Twitter first

01:03:42when they made up that list.

01:03:43They went straight to the media,

01:03:44which is why you will find numerous stories

01:03:48about an enormous quantity of Chinese misinformation agents

01:03:53that came out in March,

01:03:57roughly late February and March of 2020.

01:04:02When Twitter did an analysis of those names,

01:04:05they quickly discovered that a lot of them

01:04:07were not, in fact, Chinese misinformation agents.

01:04:10There were even three employees of CNN,

01:04:14if I remember correctly, that were on the list,

01:04:16and there was a heated back and forth

01:04:19between GEC and Twitter about that issue.

01:04:24In fact, that was one of the reasons

01:04:25why the Trust and Safety Department

01:04:27did not want to allow GEC to participate

01:04:31in its regular industry meetings with other platforms.

01:04:35So that was a big issue.

01:04:39Mr. Chairman, I yield my last 15 seconds.

01:04:43The gentleman yields back.

01:04:46With that, the gentleman from Maryland,

01:04:48Mr. Mfume, is recognized for five minutes.

01:04:52Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

01:04:54To you and the ranking member,

01:04:55I want to also thank and welcome our witnesses

01:04:59for appearing here today.

01:05:01Mr. Chairman, I have to admit that I'm quite disappointed

01:05:05that we're using the first hearing of this subcommittee

01:05:08to talk about conspiracy theories

01:05:10alleging that the U.S. government

01:05:12was targeting conservative media outlets

01:05:15and their free speech.

01:05:17In fact, I find the hearing particularly ironic

01:05:20given the distinct lack of interest in the First Amendment

01:05:24displayed by the current administration

01:05:26in much more serious ways.

01:05:28My colleagues on the other side of the aisle,

01:05:30I don't think, are in a real position

01:05:31to allege free speech violations

01:05:34when the leader of their party

01:05:37has decided unilaterally to revoke

01:05:39the privileges of the Associated Press

01:05:42from the White House briefing room.

01:05:44And that's simply because that outlet

01:05:45did not cite Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

01:05:51That is sort of hypocritical, to say the least.

01:05:54Far worse than that,

01:05:56the mass deportation of foreign students

01:05:59that have expressed their First Amendment freedom of speech

01:06:03find themselves also in that unfortunate position.

01:06:07You don't even have to be a student

01:06:10or a foreign national or someone visiting.

01:06:13You can just be in the wrong party

01:06:15at the wrong time in the wrong place

01:06:17and you somehow or another are deemed to be anti-American.

01:06:22So I have real concerns about the allegations

01:06:25raised in this hearing

01:06:27because they lack any real basis.

01:06:30So let's start with some of the facts,

01:06:32which are always tricky little things.

01:06:35First of all, first and false allegations

01:06:38against the State Department's effort

01:06:40to fight misinformation and disinformation

01:06:43really has a real impact on our national security

01:06:47and our ability to counteract, malign,

01:06:50influence, disrupt campaigns from our adversaries.

01:06:54We really don't have the time, quite frankly,

01:06:56to entertain conspiracy theorists

01:06:59who are oftentimes our domestic adversaries

01:07:02when we should, I think,

01:07:03be focused more on combating the real threat

01:07:06to our foreign adversaries

01:07:08and the threats that they pose every day.

01:07:11Ms. Jankiewicz, could you take a couple of minutes

01:07:14and give us a brief listing of the misinformation campaigns

01:07:20that have been carried out by foreign countries

01:07:22against Americans in the past few years?

01:07:25Absolutely, Congressman, I'd be happy to.

01:07:27So at the American Sunlight Project,

01:07:29we've identified a couple campaigns,

01:07:31which I've talked about earlier.

01:07:33The one that is targeting chatbots I've already mentioned.

01:07:35We also identified what we call the Sleeper Agent Network.

01:07:38This is a network of over 1,100 accounts on X,

01:07:42some of which have existed for over a decade to 15 years.

01:07:46They are automated accounts.

01:07:48They are AI-enabled, so masquerading as citizens,

01:07:51often with AI-generated profile pictures.

01:07:54And these accounts repeatedly retweet

01:07:57overt Russian propaganda

01:07:58within 60 seconds of it being posted.

01:08:01They have generated over 100 million tweets

01:08:04over their lifetime.

01:08:05And the only reason we have access to this data

01:08:07is because we used a dataset that was available

01:08:11to the public before Elon Musk turned off

01:08:14our ability to research Twitter

01:08:16without paying him $40,000 a month.

01:08:17And why would he do that?

01:08:18Yeah, I think Mr. Musk doesn't like having scrutiny

01:08:21of his platform.

01:08:22You know, he had an avowed interest

01:08:24in getting rid of bots on the platform.

01:08:26We found some that had existed for over a decade

01:08:28and were clearly overt propaganda.

01:08:30When this story ran in Agence France-Presse, AFP,

01:08:34Mr. Musk did not take those bots down.

01:08:37That's just one example.

01:08:39We've also looked at a network

01:08:40that is targeting left-leaning environmental groups

01:08:43at a mass scale.

01:08:44Of course, there are lots of instances

01:08:47of Chinese and Iranian propaganda as well.

01:08:49Iran very famously hacked the Trump campaign

01:08:52ahead of the election last year.

01:08:53So this is a continuous threat

01:08:56that we need to be coordinating at all cylinders

01:08:59at once on, because our adversaries are certainly doing it.

01:09:01This is more of a threat than the Associated Press,

01:09:04I take it.

01:09:04Is that correct to assume?

01:09:06I would say so, Congressman.

01:09:06And would it be more of a threat than a student

01:09:08that happens to be at a university

01:09:10that has a position that the president does not like?

01:09:13Certainly more of a threat than a student

01:09:15publishing an op-ed in a campus newspaper, yes.

01:09:17Yeah, so when I talked about hypocrisy,

01:09:19I don't mind having a debate.

01:09:22We can debate anytime, any day, anywhere.

01:09:24But in that debate, we've got to be equal.

01:09:27We've got to have some semblance of fairness.

01:09:29In other words, if it's good for the goose,

01:09:31it ought to be still good for the gander.

01:09:34But we've gotten into this slot, this slice of a slot,

01:09:38where we just point, point, point and hurl accusations.

01:09:42So I hope that as we move forward,

01:09:46the committee will spend a great deal more time

01:09:50focusing on the real issues and give us an opportunity

01:09:54to deal with those things in South and Central Asia

01:09:56and in that region that are just as much of a threat.

01:09:59And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

01:10:00Gentleman's time has expired.

01:10:02The gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. King,

01:10:05is recognized for five minutes.

01:10:07Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you

01:10:10to all of our witnesses for being here today.

01:10:14Mr. Weingarten and Mr. Taibbi,

01:10:17what is the clearest evidence

01:10:19that each of you can cite to show

01:10:21that the censorship industrial complex

01:10:24was an attack on the First Amendment

01:10:26by the Biden administration?

01:10:30The discovery in Missouri v. Biden,

01:10:33which has been dismissed here,

01:10:36both at the district court level,

01:10:37the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals level,

01:10:39and among three Supreme Court justices,

01:10:42showed massive pressure from the federal government

01:10:45for social media companies to censor American speech,

01:10:47whether it's the Hunter Biden laptop story,

01:10:49COVID-19, election integrity matters, or beyond.

01:10:52District court judge said this was arguably

01:10:55the most massive attack on free speech in U.S. history.

01:10:57Again, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had that same view.

01:11:01Three Supreme Court justices did as well.

01:11:02And while it's been dismissed, that case,

01:11:06the fact of the matter is that the Supreme Court

01:11:07specifically did not rule on the underlying merits

01:11:10to thousands of pages of discovery,

01:11:12which blew the lid open on this entire regime.

01:11:17Mr. Taibbi?

01:11:18Thank you, Mr. Congressman.

01:11:19I would do two quickly.

01:11:21There's another case after Murphy v. Missouri

01:11:26involving former New York Times reporter, Alex Berenson,

01:11:30Berenson v. Biden, who was removed from Twitter

01:11:33after repeated pressure from White House officials

01:11:37for a tweet that was true.

01:11:39He said that the COVID vaccine

01:11:41does not stop infection or transmission.

01:11:43And for that tweet, he was summarily removed

01:11:47from the platform after pressure from White House officials.

01:11:51The other one was an instance in which a friend of mine,

01:11:54Aaron Maté, who is no Republican,

01:11:58the Ukrainian Secret Services passed on a request

01:12:03to the FBI to have him removed from Twitter,

01:12:06and the FBI did it.

01:12:07They passed that request on to Twitter,

01:12:09and we found that ask in Twitter's files.

01:12:17Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Weingarten,

01:12:19can you please explain how the Global Engagement Center

01:12:22and the federal government as a whole

01:12:24use coercive power to censor Americans?

01:12:30Well, Mr. Congressman, first of all,

01:12:32I would say that the Global Engagement Center

01:12:36and this entire effort is based on a fundamental

01:12:39misunderstanding of the American system

01:12:43and the First Amendment.

01:12:44The American government has no role

01:12:47in protecting citizens from speech.

01:12:50The whole idea of the system that was designed

01:12:52by Jefferson and Madison is that the American people

01:12:56view each other as adults who are capable

01:12:58of sorting out the truth for themselves.

01:13:00They do not need a nanny state or a guardian

01:13:03or a law enforcement agency to decide for them what's true.

01:13:06We don't need a truth squad,

01:13:08and that's exactly what GEC was designed for.

01:13:11It was designed to suppress any information

01:13:17that countered national policy,

01:13:20and to identify people who may have had opinions

01:13:26that were controversial or unwanted as foreign-inspired

01:13:34when in fact they had no connection whatsoever

01:13:36to foreign governments, which is both slanderous

01:13:40and detrimental to the First Amendment.

01:13:44Mr. Weingarten.

01:13:45I would simply say that when the government comes to you,

01:13:49pressures you directly using the bully pulpit,

01:13:52the government has its awesome resources,

01:13:54obviously, in terms of its funding streams,

01:13:57its regulatory powers when it comes

01:13:59to the social media companies specifically,

01:14:01Section 230, antitrust enforcement, et cetera.

01:14:05When the government comes to you and says,

01:14:06please take down this American speech,

01:14:09we'd really like you to do so,

01:14:11or in the case of some of the Biden administration,

01:14:13actually browbeats people, curses them out,

01:14:15and a president goes on camera and says,

01:14:18your social media platform is killing people.

01:14:21The government does so

01:14:22with the most awesome power possible.

01:14:25Government, at the end of the day, ultimately is force,

01:14:28and that force should not be turned

01:14:29on Americans in our speech.

01:14:32Thank you to all of our witnesses.

01:14:34I yield back my time.

01:14:35Will the gentleman yield?

01:14:36I yield back my time.

01:14:38As vice chair of the Financial Services Committee,

01:14:40I can tell you, Mr. Weingarten,

01:14:42you are hitting on the exact thing

01:14:43that regulators do repeatedly.

01:14:47You can go and do whatever you want,

01:14:49but here's what we would like to see you do,

01:14:53and it's that threat, it's that cudgel that they have

01:14:57that's over those that they are making the, quote,

01:15:00request to that compels them

01:15:03to follow the government request.

01:15:05With that, I yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey,

01:15:09and time has expired.

01:15:10With that, Representative Jayapal

01:15:12is recognized for five minutes.

01:15:14Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

01:15:15It is the height of hypocrisy

01:15:17for Republicans to hold a hearing

01:15:19on the so-called censorship industrial complex

01:15:23and the need to, quote, First Amendment,

01:15:26need for, quote, First Amendment safeguards

01:15:28at the State Department.

01:15:29When President Trump and Elon Musk

01:15:31are launching the largest attack

01:15:34on free speech in America in decades,

01:15:37let's be clear, the administration is right now

01:15:41stripping people of the constitutional protection

01:15:44to free speech, to the right to dissent,

01:15:46to express their views if they're counter to Trump and Musk,

01:15:49to use Cold War-era statutes and ignore judicial rulings,

01:15:54all to suit their purpose

01:15:56of squashing fundamental American freedoms,

01:15:59and they have said they are bending institutions

01:16:02to their will.

01:16:03The Trump administration is using that awesome power

01:16:06of government that was just spoken about,

01:16:09of the federal government,

01:16:10to intimidate and neuter any opposition

01:16:13from the legal establishment, academia,

01:16:16prominent cultural institutions,

01:16:18the media, the judiciary.

01:16:20Essentially, they want to strip your American freedoms

01:16:24for their right to have absolute power.

01:16:27Instead of focusing on the fabricated censorship

01:16:29of conservatives, let's talk about real threats

01:16:32to free speech.

01:16:33This month, Secretary Rubio launched, quote,

01:16:35Catch and Revoke, a horrifying program fueled by AI

01:16:40to monitor student visa holders' social media accounts

01:16:44for pro-Palestinian views and mark them for deportation,

01:16:47saying, quote, every time I find one of these lunatics,

01:16:50I take away their visas.

01:16:52Like many Americans, I have watched in horror

01:16:54as students with legal status, legal permanent residence,

01:16:58have been detained for exercising their right

01:17:01to free speech, like Mahmoud Khalil,

01:17:03who was snatched from his home

01:17:05in front of his pregnant U.S. citizen wife.

01:17:08This is the playbook of authoritarians and dictators,

01:17:12and no matter how you feel about this issue,

01:17:15we should all be horrified

01:17:17by this violation of free speech protections.

01:17:20Ms. Cenkowicz, to clarify for my Republican colleagues,

01:17:23just a yes or no is fine,

01:17:24is it true that the Constitution guarantees

01:17:26lawful permanent residence, the right to free speech?

01:17:29Yes, ma'am, it's true.

01:17:30And is it true that engaging in peaceful protests

01:17:33is protected by the First Amendment?

01:17:34That's right, Congresswoman.

01:17:36The Trump administration is relying on Cold War-era language

01:17:39in the Immigration and Nationality Act

01:17:41to strip students of green cards

01:17:43by claiming that their speech has somehow had ambiguous,

01:17:46quote, foreign policy consequences for the United States.

01:17:49This law has been on the books since 1952,

01:17:53and to my knowledge, it has never been used in this way.

01:17:57Since then, we've seen students exercise their right

01:17:59to protest against the Vietnam War,

01:18:02for the Civil Rights Movement, against apartheid.

01:18:05Ms. Cenkowicz, is there anything

01:18:07that makes this moment substantively different

01:18:09than other protests that we've seen on campuses

01:18:12when the authority has not been used?

01:18:14No, ma'am, it does not,

01:18:15and in fact, there's Supreme Court precedent

01:18:17that extends First Amendment rights

01:18:18to legal residents of the United States

01:18:21that I think was decided in 1953.

01:18:25And in addition to weaponizing the immigration system

01:18:28to silence protective free speech,

01:18:30reports indicate that the Trump administration

01:18:32is planning to block colleges

01:18:33from accepting any foreign students

01:18:35if the school is deemed to, quote, pro-Hamas

01:18:39simply for allowing legal protest

01:18:41and freedom of expression on their grounds.

01:18:43As an expert that you are on authoritarian regimes,

01:18:46how do these attacks on higher education

01:18:49mirror the repression that you have observed

01:18:52by authoritarian dictators,

01:18:53and why should all Americans be concerned about this?

01:18:56Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.

01:18:57This is exactly the sort of thing that I've observed

01:18:59when I was studying in Russia.

01:19:01I'm now banned from going to Russia.

01:19:03When you look at the Hungarian regime

01:19:06and authoritarian regime,

01:19:07which has also cracked down on dissent,

01:19:10it's closed universities.

01:19:12Belarus also closed a university

01:19:14that was somewhere where dissidents

01:19:17and civil society figures studied.

01:19:20The right to free speech is the right to free speech,

01:19:22no matter if people are expressing opinions

01:19:24you don't like or not.

01:19:26That right extends to legal residents,

01:19:27and I certainly hope it extends to the folks

01:19:29we are inviting here, Fulbright students and others,

01:19:32to come study in our country to understand our values.

01:19:35How can we project those values

01:19:36if we're turning them on their heads

01:19:38and arresting people for using them themselves?

01:19:41And what happens when a president, an executive,

01:19:44uses his or her authority

01:19:47to literally destroy all of the institutions

01:19:50that are supposed to be checks and balances on total power?

01:19:54What effect does that have on U.S. citizens

01:19:57who may not be legal permanent residents

01:19:59or obviously not legal permanent residents

01:20:01or not visa holders?

01:20:02What effect does that have on the regular American

01:20:05that's out there listening?

01:20:06Congresswoman, I think there's a chilling effect.

01:20:08I myself have spoken with people, students,

01:20:12people of color, women who are now afraid to speak up

01:20:15and voice their opinions online and off

01:20:18because of what's happening on campuses today.

01:20:20This is a slippery slope,

01:20:21and we all should be calling it out.

01:20:23I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

01:20:24Gentlelady's time has expired.

01:20:25With that, the gentleman from Washington,

01:20:27Mr. Baumgartner, is recognized for five minutes.

01:20:33Well, thank you, Mr. Chair,

01:20:34and thanks to all assembled for this important hearing.

01:20:39I think the core interest here

01:20:41is trust with the American people.

01:20:44There are real issues with terrorists

01:20:46using propaganda and social media

01:20:50to spread their nefarious aims,

01:20:52but what we've seen happen in the last,

01:20:56particularly in the last four years,

01:20:57has very much eroded the trust of the American people

01:21:01with the use of big government to censor dissent

01:21:05and truth here in the United States.

01:21:09So to start, Ms. Jankiewicz,

01:21:12your organization, the American Sunlight Project,

01:21:15claims to have a commitment to transparency

01:21:17and apparently does not extend to disclosing its donors.

01:21:21Has the American Sunlight Project received funding

01:21:23either directly or indirectly from the George Soros

01:21:26or his foundations, including the Open Society Foundation?

01:21:29Thank you, Congressman.

01:21:31I've received a lot of threats for speaking out,

01:21:33and so I've decided that we are gonna abide by the rules

01:21:36that other 501c4s in our country abide by,

01:21:39and we are not required to disclose our donors,

01:21:41small or large, because I frankly don't want them

01:21:43to be threatened the way that I have been.

01:21:45So sunlight for other people, but not for your donors.

01:21:48If you're interested in more sunlight,

01:21:49I welcome you to introduce some legislation

01:21:51to overturn Citizens United, sir.

01:21:54So this year, in the past year,

01:21:57the American people knew there was something wrong

01:22:00with President Biden in the White House.

01:22:03They could see it before their very eyes.

01:22:06When White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

01:22:10said that videos of President Biden looking lost

01:22:12or being disoriented and senile

01:22:16were disinformation and cheap fakes,

01:22:18should the government flag those videos

01:22:20for social media companies or have those videos taken down?

01:22:23Congressman, I actually don't believe

01:22:25that the government should flag those videos

01:22:27or have those videos taken down.

01:22:28Thanks for the ability to correct the record on this idea

01:22:31that I'm some sort of disinformation czar,

01:22:34as the chair referred to me as.

01:22:36Should taxpayer-funded organizations have flagged

01:22:38those videos for social medias to take them down?

01:22:41Taxpayer-funded organizations have a right to free speech.

01:22:45If they want to talk about their research

01:22:47and flag those videos,

01:22:48that's in their right to free speech, sir.

01:22:49But you do acknowledge that there was a loss of trust

01:22:52to the American people

01:22:52when you had the White House Press Secretary

01:22:54calling them cheap fakes and the American people

01:22:56could see between their very eyes

01:22:58that President Biden was disoriented.

01:23:00Sir, I think in those cases,

01:23:03there were nefarious editing techniques being used

01:23:06to make the effect seem worse than it actually was.

01:23:09And actually, I've talked to a lot of American citizens

01:23:12who are really disturbed about the propaganda

01:23:13coming out of the White House today.

01:23:15So I think we should focus on that in this hearing.

01:23:17It should be a bipartisan interest.

01:23:18But do you acknowledge that there was a change in tone

01:23:21after President Biden's disastrous debate performance,

01:23:24almost as if there was an organized campaign?

01:23:27Congressman, I'm interested in the threats

01:23:28facing our country today, not what happened last,

01:23:31what was it, even September, June?

01:23:32I can't remember.

01:23:33And this gets to the very root interest here,

01:23:36which is you have U.S. government officials

01:23:39in a coordinated fashion working with the media

01:23:41to accelerate a narrative

01:23:44to the benefit of one political party,

01:23:46and it destroys trust in the American people

01:23:49to have folks be able to fight terrorism.

01:23:52I mean, if we don't have trust and transparency

01:23:55and understanding this core issue,

01:23:56then how can we get after the terrorists?

01:23:58Well, I would agree with that, sir.

01:23:59And I think that if you're interested

01:24:00in trust and transparency, again,

01:24:02it is the duty of Congress to pass regulations

01:24:05of the social media platforms that would enable that.

01:24:08I would love to have my hands on some more data

01:24:10from the social media platforms

01:24:11so we can talk about the facts of what's going on

01:24:13instead of the cherry-picked emails

01:24:15that Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Weingarten

01:24:17have been referencing throughout this hearing.

01:24:20Also, I think it's a great time

01:24:21to bring up the Supreme Court case

01:24:23that was referenced earlier.

01:24:26I think Mr. Weingarten said

01:24:27that the justices didn't rule on the facts.

01:24:29Actually, Amy Coney Barrett wrote,

01:24:30the plaintiff cannot rest on mere allegations

01:24:33but must instead point to factual evidence.

01:24:35The plaintiffs didn't find factual evidence

01:24:37of government coercion or censorship

01:24:39in the Murthy v. Missouri case, sir.

01:24:42Do you believe that the 51 former intelligence officials

01:24:45who said that Hunter Biden's laptop

01:24:48were a product of Russian disinformation,

01:24:49do you think they impacted the trust of the American people

01:24:52in the intelligence establishment

01:24:54to successfully use social media to go after terrorists?

01:24:57Sir, does free speech only apply

01:25:00when you like what's being said?

01:25:01Those guys were exercising their right to free speech

01:25:03and actually what they said

01:25:04was that it bore the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign,

01:25:07which, based on the evidence at the time, was true.

01:25:09And I'd just like to give you one more opportunity

01:25:11to disclose the donors that fund you.

01:25:13I'd like to give you another opportunity

01:25:15to overturn Citizens United, sir.

01:25:17Thank you, Mr. Chair.

01:25:20Gentleman yields back.

01:25:22With that, I would like to thank the witnesses

01:25:25for their testimony today

01:25:26and the members for their questions.

01:25:27Members of the subcommittee

01:25:29may have some additional questions for the witnesses,

01:25:31and we ask that you respond to those in writing

01:25:34in a timely manner pursuant to committee rules.

01:25:37All members may have five days to submit questions,

01:25:41extraneous materials, and statements for the record

01:25:43subject to the length of limitations.

01:25:45And without objection, the committee stands adjourned.

'Censorship Industrial Complex' Goes Under Microscope At Hearing Featuring Matt Taibbi

Category

Transcript

Recommended