OAN’s Daniel Baldwin
9:38 AM – Thursday, November 30, 2023
The House Judiciary Committee announced it subpoenaed two former White House officials in its ongoing investigation into the Biden Administration’s alleged censorship of social media platforms.
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House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio.) revealed both Rob Flaherty, a deputy campaign manager for the Biden-Harris re-election campaign, and Andrew Slavitt, a former White House Senior COVID-19 Advisor. Flaherty previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy.
Jordan released part one of the YouTube files Thursday morning as well, highlighting an email Flaherty sent to Google on April 12, 2021. The email inquired about how Google could better “crack down on vaccine misinformation” and different “ways the White House (and our COVID experts) can partner in your product work.”
Flaherty pushed forward, requesting trends surrounding vaccine misinformation on the website and offering government assistance in the form of COVID experts at the White House to partner in product work with YouTube.
One week later, Jordan noted, an internal email from Google’s Government Affairs team revealed that Flaherty was interested in “what we’re seeing that is NOT coming down.”
Politico reported that Flaherty has been tabbed to help lead the Biden campaign’s battle against so-called misinformation.
“[Flaherty will] work with the campaign’s legal, communications and digital teams to fight false narratives during the race,” Politico reported in Sept. 2023.
Politico also noted that the Biden team “is expecting to combat a barrage of false claims by Trump and other GOP candidates about Biden’s past record; the White House’s COVID-19 vaccine push; and alleged efforts to suppress voter turnout.”
Both Flaherty and Slavitt were referenced in a federal injunction handed out by Louisiana District Court Judge Terry Doughty in Missouri v. Biden, a federal censorship lawsuit. That injunction, which has been indefinitely stayed by the U.S. Supreme Court, forbade multiple federal agencies and named officials from having any contact with social media companies with the intent to moderate content.
In the 155-page order on July 4th, Judge Doughty referenced numerous examples of communications that Flaherty held with social media companies in 2021.
On July 15, 2021, Doughty noted that Flaherty sent an email to Facebook regarding alleged COVID-19 misinformation that read, “Are you guys f*cking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.” On April 22, 2021, Flaherty, according to the court order, told YouTube that concern of misinformation on the social media platform was “shared at the highest (and I mean the highest) levels of the White House.”
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