Biden White House pushed Facebook to censor COVID posts: Report
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey joined 'Fox & Friends First' to discuss the report and broader concerns surrounding the allegations.
The Biden administration is facing intense scrutiny after Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, revealed a "smoking gun" Thursday indicating alleged collusion between the White House and Facebook to censor Americans.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued the documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show the Biden administration pushed Big Tech beyond its own censorship bounds during "Fox & Friends First."
"We knew that Joe Biden had coerced and colluded with Big Tech social media to silence American voices in violation of the First Amendment right to free speech," Bailey told Todd Piro on Friday. "And what this shows is that not only did he coerce and collude with Big Tech social media, but he actually pushed them further than their own internal censorship policies... this clearly establishes that they understood that Big Tech social media understood that the federal government was making demands and was pushing them beyond the bounds of their own internal policies and memorandum."
FEDERAL COURT RULES BIG TECH HAS NO ‘FREEWHEELING FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHT TO CENSOR’
President Biden speaks during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Earlier this month, a judge blocked key Biden agencies and departments from communicating with social media companies to avoid potential First Amendment violations in the Missouri v. Biden ruling.
"This is absolutely a smoking gun. It largely corroborates the evidence that we had discovered in our lawsuit. We're going to keep pushing forward. We can't let Joe Biden destroy free speech in America," Bailey continued.
"Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House," Jordan wrote Thursday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
"During the first half of 2021, social media companies like Facebook faced tremendous pressure from the Biden White House — both publicly and privately — to crack down on alleged ‘misinformation,’" he continued. "In April 2021, a Facebook employee circulated an email for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, writing: ‘We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House’ to remove posts."
Jordan then wrote that an April 2021 email revealed that a Facebook executive informed his team that a Biden administration senior adviser was "outraged" that Facebook did not remove a particular post. The post, according to Jordan, was a meme of actor Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at a TV with the caption, "10 years from now you will be watching TV and hear… Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled to…"
"They didn't actually care whether things was true or false to censor it. They just censored it. So, for instance, if you said that you had a pretty good immunity after COVID recovery, well, you could get censored. If you said that people could get vaccine injured, you were censored," Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford Medical said Friday.
Last year's "Twitter Files" revealed that Bhattacharya was allegedly on the platform's "blacklist" because he "argued that COVID lockdowns would harm children," according to information revealed by reporter Bari Weiss.
"You could even get censored for saying true things," Bhattacharya continued. "For instance, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was paused by the CDC. When the White House posted that on its Facebook page, it got censored. It got censored by its own censorship regime that it created. It's ironic and tragic that the White House violated the rights of American people for nothing."
But Jordan said Facebook knew what it was doing when it was succumbing to the administration's demands in order to maintain a "cozy" relationship.
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"They knew it was wrong. One of those Facebook executives said ‘this is a significant incursion into the boundaries of free expression.’ That is a fancy way of saying this violates the First Amendment, for goodness’ sake," he said during "The Ingraham Angle."
Bhattacharya echoed Jordan's sentiment, arguing the White House infringed on Americans' free speech rights, but also "harmed public health" in the process.
"It wasn't medically necessary. He could tell people the truth, and they would make their own choices about whether to take the vaccine," Bhattacharya said. "I was an advocate for the vaccine for older people especially… but I never forced anyone to take it. They really violated Americans' rights and as a result, harmed public health."
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion, and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media
Fox News' Ashley Carnahan and Brian Flood contributed to this report.
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