[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
         HEARING ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

   SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                        THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023

                               __________

                            Serial No. 118-7

                               __________

         Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
         
         
       [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]  
         




               Available via: http://judiciary.house.gov
               
                                     ______
	    
	             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
    51-505                     WASHINGTON : 2023
 
               
               
               
                       COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             JERROLD NADLER, New York, Ranking 
KEN BUCK, Colorado                       Member
MATT GAETZ, Florida                  ZOE LOFGREN, California
MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana              SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas
ANDY BIGGS, Arizona                  STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
TOM McCLINTOCK, California           HENRY C. ``HANK'' JOHNSON, Jr., 
TOM TIFFANY, Wisconsin                   Georgia
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky              ADAM SCHIFF, California
CHIP ROY, Texas                      DAVID N. CICILLINE, Rhode Island
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           ERIC SWALWELL, California
VICTORIA SPARTZ, Indiana             TED LIEU, California
SCOTT FITZGERALD, Wisconsin          PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
CLIFF BENTZ, Oregon                  J. LUIS CORREA, California
BEN CLINE, Virginia                  MARY GAY SCANLON, Pennsylvania
LANCE GOODEN, Texas                  JOE NEGUSE, Colorado
JEFF VAN DREW, New Jersey            LUCY McBATH, Georgia
TROY NEHLS, Texas                    MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
BARRY MOORE, Alabama                 VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas
KEVIN KILEY, California              DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming             CORI BUSH, Missouri
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas               GLENN IVEY, Maryland
LAUREL LEE, Florida
WESLEY HUNT, Texas
RUSSELL FRY, South Carolina

                                 ------                                

   SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

                        JIM JORDAN, Ohio, Chair

DARRELL ISSA, California             STACEY PLASKETT, Virgin Islands, 
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky                  Ranking Member
CHRIS STEWART, Utah                  STEPHEN LYNCH, Massachusetts
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York          LINDA SANCHEZ, California
MATT GAETZ, Florida                  DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
MIKE JOHNSON, Louisiana              GERALD CONNOLLY, Virginia
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota        JOHN GARAMENDI, California
W. GREGORY STEUBE, Florida           COLIN ALLRED, Texas
DAN BISHOP, North Carolina           SYLVIA GARCIA, Texas
KAT CAMMACK, Florida                 DAN GOLDMAN, New York
HARRIET HAGEMAN, Wyoming

               CHRISTOPHER HIXON, Majority Staff Director
              CAROLINE NABITY, Chief Counsel for Oversight
          AMY RUTKIN, Minority Staff Director & Chief of Staff
           CHRISTINA CALCE, Minority Chief Oversight Counsel
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                        Thursday, March 9, 2023

                                                                   Page

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

The Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Select Subcommittee on the 
  Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of Ohio.     1
The Honorable Stacey Plaskett, Ranking Member of the Select 
  Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government 
  from the Virgin Islands........................................     2

                               WITNESSES

Mr. Michael Shellenberger, Journalist, Co-founder, Public, a 
  Substack publication
  Oral Testimony.................................................     7
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    10
Mr. Matthew Taibbi, Independent Journalist
  Oral Testimony.................................................    78
  Prepared Testimony.............................................    80

          LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC. SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING

All materials submitted for the record by the Select Subcommittee 
  on the Weaponization of the Federal Government are listed below   128

Materials submitted from the Honorable Stephen Lynch, the Select 
  Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government 
  from the State of Massachusetts, for the record
    An indictment in the U.S. v. The Internet Research Agency, 
        U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia
    The Executive Summary to Volume 1 of the Mueller Report
Materials submitted from the Honorable John Garamendi, a Member 
  of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal 
  Government from the State of California
    A report entitled, ``Trade-offs between reducing 
        misinformation and politically-balanced enforcement on 
        social media,'' Working paper, Mohsen Mosleh et al.
    An article entitled, ``False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim 
        that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives,'' 
        Center for Business and Human Rights, New York University
Tweets from Ye (Kanye West), submitted by the Honorable Colin 
  Allred, a Member of the Select Subcommittee on the 
  Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of Texas
A report entitled, ``The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry 
  Report,'' by the House Permanent Select Committee on 
  Intelligence, in coordination with the Committee on Oversight 
  and Reform and the Committee on Foreign Affairs, December 2019, 
  submitted by the Honorable Dan Goldman, a Member of the Select 
  Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government 
  from the State of New York
An email from Clark Humphrey, Executive Office of the Presidency, 
  White House Office, January 23, 2021, submitted by the 
  Honorable Jim Jordan, Chair of the Select Subcommittee on the 
  Weaponization of the Federal Government from the State of Ohio
A tweet, submitted by the Honorable Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a 
  Member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the 
  Federal Government from the State of Florida
Materials submitted by the Honorable Stacey Plaskett, Ranking 
  Member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the 
  Federal Government from the Virgin Islands
    A letter to Mark Zuckerberg from Chad Wolf, the Acting 
        Secretary of Homeland Security, June 25, 2020,
    An article entitled, ``Trade-offs between reducing 
        misinformation and politically-balanced enforcement on 
        social media,'' Working paper, Mohsen Mosleh et al.,
    A letter from David Salvo and Rachael Dean Wilson, Managing 
        Director, Alliance for Securing Democracy, March 10, 2023

                                APPENDIX

Statement submitted by the Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Member 
  of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal 
  Government from the State of Virginia


                  HEARING ON THE WEAPONIZATION OF THE



                           FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

                              ----------                              


                        Thursday, March 9, 2023

                        House of Representatives

   Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government

                       Committee on the Judiciary

                             Washington, DC

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:09 a.m., in 
Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jim Jordan 
[Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Jordan, Issa, Massie, Stewart, 
Stefanik, Johnson, Gaetz, Armstrong, Cammack, Hageman, 
Plaskett, Lynch, Sanchez, Wasserman Schultz, Connolly, 
Garamendi, Allred, Garcia, and Goldman.
    Chair Jordan. The Subcommittee will come to order. Without 
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any 
time.
    I would ask the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Bishop, 
to lead the Committee and those present for the hearing in the 
Pledge of Allegiance.
    All. I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States 
of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one 
Nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for 
all.
    Chair Jordan. Welcome, everyone, to the second hearing of 
the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal 
Government. The Chair now recognizes himself for an opening 
statement.
    In the run-up to the 2020 Presidential election, FBI 
Special Agent Elvis Chan, in his deposition in Missouri v. 
Biden, said that he repeatedly, repeatedly informed Twitter and 
other social media platforms of the likelihood of a hack-and-
leak operation in the run-up to that Presidential election. He 
did it even though there was no evidence. In fact, he said in 
his deposition, that we hadn't seen anything, no intrusions, no 
hack. That he repeatedly told him something was coming.
    Yoel Roth, head of trust and safety at Twitter testified 
that he had regular meetings with the Office of the Director of 
the National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security, 
the FBI, and other folks regarding election security. During 
these weekly meetings, Federal law enforcement agencies 
communicated that they expected a hack-and-leak operation. The 
expectations of the hack and leak operation were discussed 
throughout 2020. He was told they would occur at a period 
shortly before the 2020 Presidential election, likely in 
October. Finally, he said: ``I also learned in these meetings 
that there were rumors that a hack and leak operation would 
involve Hunter Biden.''
    So, what's the government telling? A hack and leak 
operation were coming. How often did the government tell him 
this? Repeatedly for a year. When did the government say it was 
going to happen? October 2020. Who did the government say it 
would involve? Hunter Biden.
    Now think about it. The government had no evidence of any 
intrusions, no evidence of hack and leak, yet for a year they 
tell Twitter that a hack and leak is coming, it's coming in 
October, and it will involve Hunter Biden. No evidence. The FBI 
knows what is going to happen, when it's going to happen, and 
who it's going to involve. Now, that's amazing. That is amazing 
to me.
    Maybe--I mean maybe they get the time right. We're kind of 
used to October surprises every four years. So, maybe they get 
the time right, but they got the time, they got the method, and 
they got the person. That's amazing. It's almost like these 
guys were clairvoyant. How did they know? How did they know?
    Maybe it's because they had the laptop, and they had it for 
a year. They had the laptop, they knew it wasn't hacked, but 
that's not what they told Twitter. They didn't tell Twitter 
that information. Twitter believed, frankly, everything they 
said. In those weekly meetings, the FBI had built a cozy 
relationship with this tech company and others as well, we 
believe. Emails between the FBI and Twitter began with the 
greetings. Hey, Twitter folks. Emails that asked Twitter to 
take down accounts and limit visibility of tweets.
    FBI handed out security clearances to folks at Twitter. 
They communicated with Twitter on this secret teleporter app 
where messages disappear after certain lengths of time. Of 
course, they paid Twitter $3.4 million.
    In addition, on August 6, 2020, the FBI briefed Senators 
Grassley and Johnson. According to the Senators' testimony last 
month in front of this Committee, the briefing was bogus and 
done, so someone could go leak that the briefing had happened 
and undermine the Senators' investigation.
    In September 2020, government-funded think tank gets 
involved. They do a tabletop exercise. The participants include 
The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other mainstream 
media outlets. Facebook is there. Mr. Roth of Twitter is there. 
The organizer was the former CEO of NPR and the former head of 
news at Twitter. Mock exercises hosted by the Aspen Institute. 
The Aspen Institute, which by the way, in 2020, their budget 
was $9.3 million; $5 million from the State Department; $4 
million from USAID. Almost all their budget. Guess the title. 
Guess the title of this exercise. The Aspen Digital Hack and 
Dump Working Group. Guess who the subject was? Guess who the 
subject was? Hunter Biden. That's amazing.
    On October 14, 2020, the New York Post runs a story on the 
Biden laptop, and Twitter takes it down, even though it was 
accurate, and even though it didn't violate Twitter's rules 
of--Twitter's rules. Other social media companies do the same. 
Mainstream press work to downplay and discredit the story.
    Finally, as if on cue, five days later on October 19, 51 
former intel officials signed a letter with the now famous 
sentence: ``The Biden laptop story has all the classic earmarks 
of a Russian information operation.'' Something that was 
absolutely false.
    Our government built a cozy relationship with Big Tech; 
they primed him for a hack-and-leak operation; they funded the 
think tank which further primed Big Tech and big media; they 
leaked information to undermine the good work of two United 
States Senators; and then 51 former intel officials closed the 
deal with their letter.
    Mr. Shellenberger pointed out in his reporting: ``The 
information op was run on us, run on We the People.'' If that's 
not the weaponization of government, I don't know what is. I 
really--I'll get to this in a second--but I want to thank our 
witnesses for being here today. I'll get to this after we allow 
the Ranking Member her opening statement. I'll yield to the 
Ranking Member for an opening statement.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Before my opening statement, Mr. 
Chair, as a point of order, it's been my understanding that one 
of the witnesses has, within the last half an hour, released 
additional information that the Republicans may, and you as the 
majority, may have been able to review and have information 
about--and if that information is, in fact, going to be used at 
this hearing, I just want the point of order to be recognized 
that the Democrats have not been able to review or see any of 
that information. Will you be using any of the information that 
has recently been released by--excuse me, will you be using any 
of that information?
    Chair Jordan. We'll be using whatever information that our 
staff has put together for us to use at this hearing.
    Ms. Plaskett. You have had that information before this 
hearing began before today?
    Chair Jordan. We use all information that is given to our 
staff, and we will use it to make sure we educate the American 
people on the weaponization--
    Ms. Plaskett. Information that you have not shared with us?
    Chair Jordan. Oh, we think it was posted online with--
    Ms. Plaskett. Within a half--just this half an hour, the 
last 20 minutes. It's not information you want to get to us?
    Chair Jordan. Well, do you want us to get you copy of it, 
because we can make a copy for you?
    Ms. Plaskett. I think we can go online and find a copy. We 
can look on our Twitter account and see it. I just want the 
point of order that you have not shared any of that with us. I 
understand that--
    Chair Jordan. Well.
    Ms. Plaskett. --you may have been looking at this long 
before today's hearing.
    Chair Jordan. We obtained it the same timeframe that was 
posted online.
    Ms. Plaskett. Excuse me, before we continue, is one of your 
colleagues trying to speak to me? Or I think this was a 
conversation between you and me.
    Mr. Issa. I was speaking to a parliamentarian, if you don't 
mind.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time--
    Ms. Plaskett. Oh, OK. OK. All right. Well--
    Chair Jordan. I recognize you for an opening statement.
    Ms. Plaskett. I had a point of order, which I was asking 
you to address.
    Chair Jordan. I answered your question.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Great. Now, I will get begin my point--my 
opening statement. Three weeks ago, House Oversight had this 
hearing with actual Twitter executives who had actual firsthand 
knowledge about what happened in 2020. That didn't go so well 
for the House Republicans because real evidence showed that 
there wasn't coordination between Twitter and the Federal 
Government as they liked the American people to believe, and 
that all the so-called Twitter files really showed was a 
discussion on content moderation, and that we only got a 
fraction of the discussion.
    So, now we're back again, no surprise. What else have they 
got to talk about? Not what's interested in the American people 
are interested, not what taxpayer dollars have brought us here 
to Washington to do. The Republicans have brought in two of 
Elon Musk's public scribes to release cherry-picked out-of-
context emails and screen shots designed to promote his chosen 
narrative, Elon Musk's chosen narrative that is now being 
parroted by the Republicans because the Republicans think that 
these witnesses will tell a story that's going to help them out 
politically.
    On Tuesday, the majority released an 18-page report 
claiming to show that the FTC is, quote, ``harassing Twitter.'' 
Oh my, poor Twitter, including by seeking information about its 
interactions with individuals before us today. How did the 
report reach this conclusion? By showing two--one, two, single 
paragraphs from a single demand letter, even though the report 
itself makes clear that there were numerous demand letters with 
numerous requests, none of which we've been able to see that 
are more demand letters and more requests of Twitter. In other 
words, the conclusions are based on a fraction of information 
out of context, cherry-picked, surprise, just like the Twitter 
files.
    The majority conveniently forgot to share with the public 
that in May 2022, well before Musk acquired Twitter, the FTC 
had already fined the company 150 million for failing to 
safeguard data, users' data, users, the American people, other 
individuals. It's 150 million users, Twitter had not safeguard 
them.
    Twitter entered into this consent agreement that required 
it to make regular reports to the FTC, and their previous 
consent decree between Twitter and the FTC was entered into in 
2011.
    Elon Musk might not like this requirement, but Twitter had 
issues with FTC long before Musk bought the company, and 
there's nothing political about that. We've asked for the full 
set of documents that Musk must have shared with the 
Republicans on the Committee, but we can draw some logical 
conclusions from what we have been given.
    You know what the Republican report actually shows? Two 
conclusions: First, the FTC has extraordinarily serious 
concerns about Twitter's handling of consumers' data, and that 
there's something going on between congressional Republicans 
and Elon Musk.
    Mr. Chair, Americans can see through this. Musk is helping 
you out politically, and you're going out of your way to 
promote and protect him and to praise him for his work. This 
isn't just a matter of what data was given to these so-called 
journalists before us now. There are many legitimate questions 
about where Musk got the financing to buy Twitter.
    We know for a fact that foreign countries like Qatar, Saudi 
Arabia, and possibly even Russia and China are investors 
presently in Twitter. Do these countries now have access to 
private Twitter user data? What agreements has Elon Musk 
reached with them?
    [Slide.]
    We know how Elon Musk funded the purchase, because it's 
public. Let's look at a slide here. Here's what it shows. Musk 
got $500 million in financing from Binance. That's in highlight 
for you. A crypto exchange platform run by a Chinese 
billionaire. That billionaire has described his funding as a 
small contribution to the cause. I don't know what that cause 
is.
    Musk got $1 billion from Larry Ellison, whose super packs 
spent millions on Republican candidates last cycle, including 
election deniers. Musk got $375 million, highlighted here, from 
Qatar, which has recently been questioned about his lobbying 
practices. Musk got $700 million from Vy Capital, a secretive 
investment fund based in Dubai. Very interesting, as you can 
see down below, the nephew of the Saudi King is Twitter's 
second largest investor at a much larger amount.
    The Chair wants us to think that Elon Musk is the victim. 
The Chair wants us to believe that the Republicans are 
concerned with the Federal Government unfairly going after 
Twitter, and Twitter unfairly taking down conservative posts. 
Just like we did several weeks ago, we're going to show that's 
not what the evidence shows.
    I want to underscore the very real threat posed by Twitter 
files and by the witnesses in front of us today. Here is Yoel 
Roth describing the harassment he and other former Twitter 
employees have faced because of the irresponsible way in which 
the witnesses in front of us and others have released this 
cherry-picked, out-of-context data.
    [Video shown.]
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I'm not exaggerating 
when I say that you have called before you two witnesses who 
pose a direct threat to people who oppose them. It's funny when 
people have to go through that.
    Chair Jordan. Crazy is what you're saying?
    Ms. Plaskett. Exactly. This is unacceptable. I'm ready for 
it. I don't know if a lot of other people are. Just as it was 
unacceptable for Kevin McCarthy to provide 41,000 hours of 
sensitive security footage to a biased talking head in an 
effort to rewrite what happened on January 6th. This is a new 
Republican playbook, apparently--
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Chair.
    Ms. Plaskett. --risking Americans' safety--
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Mr. Chair.
    Ms. Plaskett. --and security to score political points.
    Chair Jordan. Hang on. Hang on.
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. The gentlelady's words should be 
struck. We do not accuse witnesses of threatening others. That 
is out of line and outside the rules of this Committee.
    Ms. Plaskett. I'm not striking down that, and I can have an 
opinion about we can do.
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. You don't get to determine what's 
struck down.
    You don't get to determine what's struck down.
    Chair Jordan. Well, you do get an opening statement, and 
it's about over.
    Ms. Plaskett. So, let me finish. We know this is because of 
the first hearing the Chair claimed that big government and Big 
Tech colluded to shape and mold the narrative and suppress 
information and censor Americans. This is a false narrative. 
We're engaging in false narratives here, and we are going to 
tell the truth. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back. I would just 
point out the consent decree was in our report. We offered your 
staff also the opportunity to review the FTC letters. You have 
not come over to review those letters. Third, the idea that I 
believe both of these individuals who are getting ready to 
testify, I believe they're both Democrats. The idea that 
journalists who happened to be Democrats.
    Ms. Plaskett. Did you not get that offer at 8 o'clock last 
night?
    Chair Jordan. Your time was--
    Ms. Plaskett. Well, neither of us are in time.
    Chair Jordan. I don't think they're here to help us 
politically. I think they're here to tell us the truth. Oh, by 
the way, the first FTC letter to Twitter after the first set of 
Twitter files, the very first question was, ``Who are the 
journalists you're talking to?'' Who you guys don't care. You 
don't care. You don't want any of the 11 people to see--you 
don't want the American people to see what is happened? The 
full video, transparent--you don't want that, and you don't 
want two journalists who have been named personally by the 
Biden Administration, FTC, in a letter?
    Ms. Plaskett. The Biden Administration is not the FTC.
    Chair Jordan. You're saying they're here to help us. 
They're here to tell their story. Frankly, I think they're 
brave individuals for being willing to come after they've been 
named in a letter from the Biden FTC.
    Ms. Plaskett. Is this your question time now?
    Chair Jordan. No, I'm responding to your ridiculous 
statements you made in your opening statement.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Well, let's get on with it.
    Chair Jordan. Oh, now, you we want to get on with it--
    Ms. Plaskett. I can say--
    Chair Jordan. --so you can say all the things you want.
    Ms. Plaskett. I've given my opening statement as well as 
you had an opening statement. You said what you needed to say 
in your opening statement, and I as the Ranking Member have 
used my time.
    Chair Jordan. Without objection, all other opening 
statements will be included in the record. We will introduce 
today's witness.
    Matt Taibbi, he's a journalist and author. He's one of the 
authors of the Twitter files. He previously worked for Rolling 
Stone, that right-wing publication, Rolling Stone, where so 
many Republicans work at. He has also written several books 
about American politics and culture. Of course, as I pointed 
out, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday on the 
front page was named by the FTC.
    Michael Shellenberger is also a journalist, author, and one 
of the authors of the Twitter files. He's also co-founded 
several nonprofits, including Breakthrough Institute, 
Environmental Progress, and the California Peace Coalition, 
another right-wing Republican organization, I'm sure. His work 
often focuses on crime and drug policy, homelessness, and the 
climate. We welcome our witnesses and thank them for appearing 
today.
    We will begin by swearing you in. Will you please stand and 
raise your right hand.
    Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that 
testimony you are about to give is truth and correct to the 
best of your knowledge, information, and belief, so help you 
God?
    Let the record show both witnesses have answered in the 
affirmative. Thank you, and be seated, please.
    Chair Jordan. We will now start with Mr. Taibbi. You guys, 
I think, understand--you want to go, Mr. Shellenberger? We can 
go with Mr. Shellenberger. We'll start with Mr. Shellenberger. 
You understand how it works. You get five minutes. Make sure 
you hit the microphone so we can all hear. When it gets to 
yellow, it means just like you would expect time to start 
winding up. When it gets to red, it's time to stop. We'll be a 
little bit lenient on the time.
    Mr. Shellenberger, you are recognized for your opening 
statement.

               STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER

    Mr. Shellenberger. Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, 
Members of the Committee, thank you very much for inviting my 
testimony.
    In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower 
warned of, quote, ``The acquisition of unwarranted influence by 
the military industrial complex.'' Eisenhower feared that the 
size and power of the complex, or cluster of government 
contractors in the Defense Department would, quote, ``Endanger 
our liberties or democratic processes.''
    How did he mean that? Through, quote, ``domination of the 
Nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, 
and the power of money,'' he feared public policy would become 
the captive of a scientific technological elite. Eisenhower's 
fears were well-founded.
    Today American taxpayers are unwittingly financing the 
growth and power of a censorship industrial complex run by 
America's scientific and technological elite which endangers 
our liberties and democracy.
    I'm grateful for this opportunity to offer this testimony 
and sound the alarm over the shocking and disturbing emergence 
of State-sponsored censorship in the United States of America.
    The Twitter files, State attorneys general lawsuits, and 
investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing 
network of government agencies, academic institutions, and 
nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring 
American citizens, often without their knowledge on a range of 
issues.
    I do not know how much of the censorship is coordinated 
beyond what we have been able to document, and I will not 
speculate. I recognize that the law allows Facebook, Twitter, 
and other private companies to moderate content on their 
platforms. I support the right of government to communicate 
with the public, including to dispute inaccurate information.
    Government officials have been caught repeatedly pushing 
social media platforms to censor disfavored users and content. 
Often, these acts of censorship threaten the legal protection 
social media companies need to exist, Section 230.
    If government officials are directing or facilitating such 
censorship, this one law professor, it raises serious First 
Amendment questions. It is axiomatic that the government cannot 
do indirectly what it is prohibited from doing directly.
    Moreover, we know that the U.S. Government has funded 
organizations that pressure advisors to boycott news media 
organizations and social media platforms that refuse to censor 
and/or spread disinformation, including alleged conspiracy 
theories.
    The Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of 
Washington, the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research 
Lab, and Graphika have all inadequately disclosed ties to the 
Department of Defense, the CIA, and other intelligence 
agencies. They work with multiple U.S. Government agencies to 
institutionalize censorship research and advocacy within dozens 
of other universities and think thanks.
    It is important to understand how these groups function. 
They are not publicly engaging with their opponents in an open 
exchange of ideas. They aren't asking for national debate over 
the limits of the First Amendment. Rather, they are creating 
blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling, 
and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, 
and even ban the people on those lists.
    The Censorship Industrial Complex combines established 
methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the 
U.S. military during the Global War on Terror, with highly 
sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial 
intelligence. The complex's leaders are driven by the fear that 
the internet and social media platforms empower populist, 
alternative, and fringe personalities and views, which they 
regard as destabilizing. Federal Government officials, 
agencies, and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS 
recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and deplatforming 
ordinary Americans and disfavored public figures.
    Importantly, the bar for bringing in military-grade 
government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has 
moved from, quote, ``countering terrorism'' to, quote, 
``countering extremism'' to countering simple misinformation, 
otherwise known as being wrong on the internet. The government 
no longer needs a predicate of calling you a terrorist or an 
extremist to deploy government resources to counter your 
political activity. The only predicated it needs is simply the 
assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is 
wrong.
    These efforts extend to influencing and even directing 
conventional news media organizations. Since 1971, when The 
Washington Post and The New York Times elected to publish 
classified Pentagon papers about the war in Vietnam, 
journalists have understood that we have a professional 
obligation to report on leaked documents whose contents are in 
the public interest. Yet, in 2020, the Aspen Institute and 
Stanford's Cyber Policy Center urged journalists to, quote, 
``Break the Pentagon Papers principle,'' and not cover leaked 
information to prevent the spread of disinformation.
    Government-funded censors frequently invoke the prevention 
of real-world harm to justify their demands for censorship. The 
censors define harm far more expansively than the Supreme Court 
does.
    Increasingly, the censors say their goal is to restrict 
information that delegitimizes governmental, industrial, and 
news media organizations. That mandate is so sweeping that it 
could easily censor criticism from any part of the status quo 
from elected officials, to institutions, to laws.
    Congress should immediately cutoff funding to the censors 
and investigate their activities. It should mandate instant 
reporting of all conversations between social media executives, 
government employees, and government contractors concerning 
content moderation. Finally, Congress should limit the broad 
permission given to social media platforms to censor, 
deplatform, and spread propaganda. Thank you very much.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Shellenberger follows:]
    
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    Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman for his opening 
statement.
    Mr. Taibbi, you are now recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Taibbi. Chair Jordan.
    Chair Jordan. Hit that, Mr. Taibbi.

                  STATEMENT OF MATTHEW TAIBBI

    Mr. Taibbi. Chair Jordan, Ranking Member Plaskett, Members 
of the Select Committee, thank you for having me today. My name 
is Matt Taibbi. I've been a reporter for 30 years and a staunch 
advocate of the First Amendment. Much of that time was spent at 
Rolling Stone Magazine.
    Ranking Member Plaskett, I'm not a so-called journalist. I 
have won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for 
independent journalism, and I've written 10 books, including 
four The New York Times bestsellers. I'm now the editor of the 
online magazine Racket on the independent platform, Substack.
    I'm here today because of a series of events that began 
late last year when I received a note from a source online. It 
read: ``Are you interested in doing a deep dive into what 
censorship and manipulation was going on at Twitter?''
    A week later, the first of what became known as the Twitter 
files reports came out. To say these attracted intense public 
interest would be an understatement. My computer looked like a 
Vegas slot machine as just the first tweet about the blockage 
of the Hunter Biden laptop story registered 143 million 
impressions and 30 million engagements.
    It wasn't until a week after the first report, after 
Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, and other researchers joined 
the search of the files that we started to grasp the 
significance of this story.
    The original promise of the internet was that it might 
democratize the exchange of information globally. A free 
internet would overwhelm all attempts to control information 
flow, its very existence a threat to anti-democratic forms of 
government everywhere.
    What we found in the files was a sweeping effort to reverse 
that promise and use machine learning and other tools to turn 
the internet into an instrument of censorship and social 
control. Unfortunately, our own government appears to be 
playing a lead role.
    We saw the first hint of information communications between 
Twitter executives before the 2020 election, when we read 
things like, ``flagged by DHS,'' or, ``please see attached 
report from FBI for potential misinformation.'' This would be 
attached to an Excel spreadsheet with a long list of names, 
whose accounts were often suspended shortly after.
    Again, Ranking Member Plaskett, I would note that the 
evidence of Twitter-government relationship includes lists of 
tens of thousands of names on both the left and right. The 
people affected include Trump supporters, but also left-leaning 
sites like Consortium and Truth Out, the leftist South American 
Channel Telesur, the Yellow Vest Movement. That, in fact, is a 
key point of the Twitter files; that is neither a left nor 
right issue.
    Following the trail of communications between Twitter and 
the Federal Government across tens of thousands of emails led 
to a series of revelations.
    Mr. Chair, we summarized and submitted them to the 
Committee in the form of a new Twitter files spread which was 
also released to the public this morning.
    We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies 
developed a formal system for taking in moderation requests 
from every corner of government, from the FBI, the DHS, the 
HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. 
For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were 
perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same thing, 
including Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership, Newsguard, 
the Global Disin-
formation Index, and many others, many taxpayer-funded.
    A focus of this fast-growing network, as Mike noted, is 
making lists of people whose opinions, beliefs, associations, 
or sympathies are deemed misinformation, disinformation, or 
malinformation. That last term is just a euphemism for true but 
inconvenient. Undeniably, the making of such lists is a form of 
digital McCarthyism.
    Ordinary Americans are not just being reported to Twitter 
for deamplification or deplatforming, but to firms like PayPal, 
digital advertisers like Xandr, and crowdfunding sites like 
GoFundMe. These companies can and do refuse service to law-
abiding people and businesses whose only crime is falling afoul 
of a distant, faceless, unaccountable, and algorithmic judge.
    As someone who grew up a traditional ACLU liberal, this 
mechanism for punishment and deprivation without due process is 
horrifying.
    Another troubling aspect is the role of the press, which 
should be the people's last line of defense in such cases.
    Instead of investigating these groups, journalists 
partnered with them. If Twitter declined to remove an account 
right away, government agencies and NGO's would call reporters 
for The New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets, who 
in turn would call Twitter demanding to know why action had not 
yet been taken.
    Effectively, news media became an arm of a State-sponsored, 
thought-policing system.
    I'm running out of time, so I'll just sum up and say, it's 
just not possible to instantly arrive at truth. It is, however, 
possible becoming technologically possible to instantly define 
and enforce a political consensus online, which I believe is 
what we're looking at. This is a grave threat to people of all 
political persuasions.
    The First Amendment and American population accustomed to 
the right to speak is the best defense left against Censorship 
Industrial Complex. If the latter can knock over our first and 
most important constitutional guarantee, these groups will have 
no series opponent left anywhere.
    If there's anything that Twitter files show, it's that 
we're in danger of losing this most precious right, without 
which all democratic rights are impossible.
    Thank you for the opportunity to appear, and I'd be happy 
to answer any questions from the Committee.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Taibbi follows:]
    
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    Chair Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Taibbi. We appreciate both of 
your opening statements. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman 
from Louisiana, Mr. Johnson, for five minutes of questions.
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Gentlemen, thank you both for 
being here. It is not surprising that the minority is already 
attacking you in its opening statement. We apologize to both of 
you. You shouldn't be treated that way.
    Some of the defenders of Big Tech and the Biden 
Administration, as we know, have worked very hard to cast 
doubts on legitimacy of your reporting. Some have gone so far 
to State it's irrelevant if Twitter was suppressing speech in 
coordination with the Federal Government.
    This morning, we saw a stunning display of their attack of 
your character. We shouldn't be surprised. This is what the 
defenders of big government corruption do. This is the 
playbook. They destroy the messenger. We just saw it here on 
live television, and everybody can see it for themselves, and 
the whistleblowers, of course, as well.
    Look, that is what we know. What you've documented 
carefully in the Twitter files are a couple of key facts. You 
will hear--the people will hear a lot of things today, but this 
is what we need to know. The Federal Government from Democratic 
Members of Congress, to intelligence agencies, including the 
FBI, used Twitter and other social media companies to censor 
American's speech. If the alarm bells are not going off, then 
you're not paying attention.
    Over the past three years, documents show, they prove what 
you guys have uncovered here. There's communication between 
Twitter and the FBI. It was constant. It was persuasive. 
Twitter was basically an FBI subsidiary before Elon Musk took 
it over. the Twitter files revealed that by 2020, Twitter was 
engaged in open information sharing with the intelligence 
community. Now we know there were many intelligence agencies 
apparently involved in this. The FBI pressured Twitter to act 
on election-related tweets, leading up to the 2022 election. Of 
course, it did it in 2020. Twitter dutifully censored content 
as a result.
    Twitter executives restricted accounts, they censored 
speech, they conflicted with the left's narrative. Twitter has 
used its internal tools to control and manipulate--considered--
speech considered misinformation. Who was determining that? It 
was the government bureaucrats.
    Documents show that Twitter used visibility filtering to 
restrict certain accounts and posts and removed people from the 
platform altogether. the Twitter files should be a matter of 
bipartisan concern for every Member of Congress and every 
American citizen, because it is a bedrock principle of our 
constitutional system that the government does not get to 
decide what speech is acceptable or true.
    Under the First Amendment, Americans have a right to speak 
freely regardless of whether their speech upsets the preferred 
narrative. In fact, that's when it needs the most vigorous 
protection. Everybody on the left used to believe in that, or 
at least they purported to. Government and media fact checkers 
frequently get things wrong.
    The American people can't and shouldn't rely on so-called 
experts to be the arbiters of truth, disinformation boards, and 
the like. It doesn't what political party you're in, government 
should not suppress important debates and public discourse.
    Gentlemen, let me start with Mr. Taibbi. You have a long 
award-winning journalist career. You've just highlighted 
decades of experience reporting on some of the most complex and 
important issues of our time. Where do you rate your reporting 
on the Twitter files among your whole body of work throughout 
your career? How serious is this?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, first, Mr. Congressman, thank you for the 
question. I would say I spent 10 years covering the aftermath 
of the 2008 financial crisis. That was, obviously, a very 
serious issue. This Twitter files story and what we're looking 
at now and what we're investigating now, I don't think there's 
any comparison. This is by far the most serious thing that I've 
ever looked at, and it's certainly the mostly grave story that 
I have ever work on personally.
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. I want to ask you both the same 
question, and that is, first, has anyone from the Federal 
Government contacted you, during the course of this 
investigation or since you've reported on Twitter files? Now 
two, who do you think is the most egregious Federal Government 
agencies involved in this censorship exercise? Let's start with 
Mr. Shellenberger.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Congressman. I have not been 
contacted by anybody in the Biden Administration relating to 
this topic. I would like to echo what Matt just said. This is--
I've never worked on an issue where so frequently while doing 
it I just had chills go up my spine because of what I was 
seeing happening. I never thought in my own country that 
freedom of speech would be threatened in this way, and it's 
just frightening when you get into it.
    The most recent--our most recent discoveries--I mean, you 
understand the processes that we first raised a bunch of 
concerns around the way Twitter, pre-Elon Musk was censoring 
people and creating blacklists. Very quickly, we discovered 
that we had FBI agents basically--and other government 
officials demanding that Twitter take certain actions. We now 
know that the Department of Homeland Services which has had--
what's that?
    Mr. Taibbi. Security?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Security. Sorry. Department of Homeland 
Security had tried to create a disinformation board. That went 
away after public backlash. We now realize that they have this 
other enterprise, and they have been building out basically 
mechanisms to proliferate a Censorship Industrial Complex 
around the country to censor on a whole range of issues. So, 
you've seen this censorship industry go from, ``Well, we're 
just fighting ISIS,'' to ``Well, we're just fighting Russian 
disinformation bots,'' to, ``Well, now we need to fight 
domestic misinformation,'' which was just saying we need to 
fight against people who are saying things we disagree with 
online. That's all that means. I mean, it's not a slippery 
slope. It's an immediate leap into a terrifying mechanism that 
I--we only see in totalitarian societies of attempting to gain 
control over what the social media platforms are allowing. So, 
yes, for me it's just--it starts at DHS, but we basically see 
almost every government agency involved in this.
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. It's frightening. I'm out of 
time. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Lynch, 
is recognized.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I do need to correct the 
record. So, there's been the suggestion here that the FBI and 
other government agencies pressured employees at Twitter to 
validate these theories of foreign influence. When we had Mr. 
Roth, who was the--Yoel Roth, who is the former global head of 
trust and safety at Twitter, so we asked Twitter if there was 
pressure applied. Mr. Roth said, ``No, I would not agree with 
that.'' The FBI--this is his quote,

        The FBI was quite care`ful and quite consistent to request 
        review of the accounts, but not to cross the line into 
        advocating for Twitter to take any particular action.

So, that's what Twitter says about the actions of the FBI vis-
a-vis Twitter.
    Mr. Taibbi, in 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller 
unequivocally found that the Internet Research Agency, owned by 
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the same oligarch who runs the Wagner Group, 
carried out an extensive social media disinformation campaign 
to help then-candidate Donald Trump and to hurt Hillary 
Clinton. He also found that the Russian intelligence interfered 
with the 2016 election via a hack-and-release campaign, 
damaging to the Clinton campaign. These particular findings 
came on the heels of the unanimous assessment, on the part of 
United States' 18 intelligence agencies that Russian President 
Putin, quote, ``ordered an influenced campaign in 2016 aimed at 
the Presidential election,'' closed quote.
    They also followed the release of a bipartisan, Senate 
Intelligence Committee report, finding that Russia and Vladimir 
Putin engaged in, and I quote, ``aggressive, multifaceted 
effort to influence the U.S. Presidential election.''
    So, Mr. Taibbi, do you believe that the Russians and their 
oligarch-controlled Internet Research Agency interfered in the 
2016 election via this social media disinformation campaign? Do 
you believe that?
    Mr. Taibbi. Mr. Congressman, my disagreement with the 
issue--
    Mr. Lynch. Well, I think this is basically a yes-or-no 
question. Either you think so or you don't. I don't have a lot 
of time, so--
    Mr. Taibbi. OK. Well, then I'm going to answer not in the 
sense that you're putting it.
    Mr. Lynch. OK.
    Mr. Taibbi. I think all countries engaging in offensive 
information operations, the question is scale.
    Mr. Lynch. Do you believe that the Russians are engaging in 
hacking? Reclaiming my time. That's how it works on now. I'll 
ask the questions, and you try to provide an answer if you can.
    Voice. You have to allow him to answer.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The gentleman is out of question and 
should not be interrupting a Member asking a question on our 
side, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Lynch. Reclaiming my time from everyone. Do you believe 
that Russia engaged in a hack-and-release claim damaging to the 
Clinton campaign back in 2016? Again--
    Mr. Taibbi. I don't know, and I would say it's irrelevant.
    Mr. Lynch. Let me ask Mr. Shellenberger. These are pretty 
easy questions. It's just whether you believe it or not.
    Mr. Shellenberger, the same question, do you believe that 
the Russian oligarch-controlled internet research agency 
interfered in the 2016 election?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I think that they tried to.
    Mr. Lynch. OK. Fair enough.
    Mr. Shellenberger, do you believe that the Russians engaged 
in a hack-and-release campaign with respect to the damaging 
information they released regarding the Clinton campaign?
    Mr. Shellenberger. To the best of my awareness, that is 
what happened, yes.
    Mr. Lynch. OK. Fair enough. Thank you.
    Mr. Shellenberger. That's the not the same thing as 
influence.
    Mr. Lynch. I understand. I understand.
    Mr. Taibbi. Also, that material was true.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Lynch. I think--look, let me introduce a couple of 
documents just to reinforce that. We've got--
    Mr. Taibbi. That is not a legitimate predicate for 
censorship.
    Mr. Lynch. Reclaiming my time.
    Mr. Taibbi. Sure.
    Mr. Lynch. The gentleman is out of order.
    So, Mr. Chair, I will ask unanimous consent to enter the 
indictment in the U.S. v. The Internet Research Agency, U.S. 
District Court of the District of Columbia, No. 118-32. I would 
also ask to enter into the record the executive summary to 
volume 1 of the Mueller Report which states: In March 2016, the 
GRU began hacking--this is a Russian agency--began hacking the 
email accounts of the Clinton campaign, volunteers and 
employees, including campaign Chair John Podesta. GRU later 
released additional materials through the organization 
WikiLeaks. The Presidential campaign of Donald Trump showed 
interest in WikiLeaks releases of the document and welcomed 
their potential damage to candidate Clinton. So, I have 
introduced these documents.
    Chair Jordan. Without objection.
    Mr. Lynch. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've introduced these 
documents, but it's clear to me that Russia's use of social 
media to interfere in the 2016 election created abundant reason 
for social media platforms to be concerned--
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman's time has expired. Without 
objection, these documents are now entered into the record. We 
now recognize the gentleman from California, Mr. Issa, for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd to continue along in a 
sense the line we've been on just now. Mr. Taibbi, Mr. 
Shellenberger, I'll ask both of you, is it fair to say Russia 
is a bad actor who is trying to do everything they can to 
undermine confidence in the U.S. Government and in our form of 
democracy?
    Mr. Taibbi. I think that's a fair statement.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. OK. Are you familiar with the organization in 
Europe, the Global Engagement Center?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, it's an American--
    Mr. Issa. State Department, I'm sorry. Are you familiar 
with the Global Engagement Center's use of European and other 
sources--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. --to, in fact, determine where Twitter files 
should or shouldn't be, if you will, taken down thousands of 
names and Twitter files, correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. I'm not sure that Global Engagement Center is 
taking down Twitter files. I actually wasn't aware of that. I'm 
sorry.
    Mr. Issa. Well, Twitter and the FBI have used this 
organization and their funding--let me go on to another, 
another--stay on the path I was on.
    You commented that the scale mattered. OK. Would you 
elaborate on scale mattering in the attempt to undermine free 
speech?
    Mr. Taibbi. Absolutely. So, a great example of this is a 
report that the Global Engagement Center sent to Twitter and to 
members of the media and other platforms about what they called 
the pillars of Russian disinformation. Now, part of this report 
is what you would call traditional, hardcore, intelligence-
gathering where they made a reason evidence-based case that 
certain sites were linked to Russian influence or linked to the 
Russian Government.
    In addition to that, however, they also said that sites 
that, quote, ``generate their own momentum,'' and have opinions 
that are in line with those accounts are part of a propaganda 
ecosystem. Now, this is just another word for guilt by 
association. This is the problem with the whole idea of trying 
to identify which accounts are actually the Internet Research 
Agency and which ones are just people who follow those accounts 
or retweeted them.
    Twitter initially did not find more than a handful of IRA 
accounts. It wasn't until they got into an argument with Senate 
Select Intelligence Committee that they came back with a 
different answer.
    Mr. Issa. OK. So, scale matters, but let me go through a 
couple of quick questions that I think are part of the reason 
that we have this Select Committee. This country has political 
parties and people from the--what might call the extreme left 
and extreme right. Even Congress has people that might be 
considered outside the main street of Republican and Democratic 
thinking. Those people speak regularly, and they have since our 
founding. Is that correct?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. The ACLU and journalists almost always support 
their right to say what they believe, even if you disagree.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely.
    Mr. Issa. Our Constitution says we will make no law to 
restrain exactly that kind of free speech.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. That includes people who promote the idea that we 
should redistribute all wealth in a communist-type way. As a 
matter of fact, we still have a Communist Party in the United 
States. Isn't that correct?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It is.
    Mr. Issa. So, the limit of free speech historically has 
been incitement to violence or anarchy, the actual overthrow of 
a government. Anything other than that is historically covered 
by the First Amendment?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Issa. So, when we look at the very nature of these--the 
State Department funding to affect domestic U.S. speech, was 
that speech outside the legal bounds? Did it call for 
insurrection or other criminal activities that would destroy 
our government?
    Mr. Shellenberger. No. I mean, we did not--I mean, I'm not 
saying--we're not saying that didn't happen, but we're 
describing people having political arguments online.
    Mr. Issa. Right. So, let me just--because my time is 
limited like everyone. So, it suffices to say that every bit of 
the speech, or virtually every bit of the speech, whether 
foreign or domestic online, fell within the normal protections 
of the First Amendment, and the very act of Federal dollars 
being used to stifle that speech is, in fact, historically what 
we would consider an indictment against the First Amendment 
protection?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Correct.
    Mr. Issa. That is why we have this Subcommittee. That is 
why we're here today. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman. A great point. I now 
recognize the gentlelady from Florida for five minutes.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Taibbi, I want to ask about journalistic ethics and 
information sources. The Society of Professional Journalists 
Code of Ethics asserts that journalists should avoid political 
activities that can compromise integrity or credibility. Being 
a Republican witness today certainly cast a cloud over your 
objectivity.
    A deeper concern that I have relates to ethics of how 
journalists receive and present certain information. 
Journalists should avoid accepting spoon-fed and cherry-picked 
information if it's likely to be slanted, incomplete, or 
designed to reach a foregone, easily disputed, or invalid 
conclusion. Would you agree with that?
    Mr. Taibbi. I think it depends.
    [Slide.]
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Really? You wouldn't agree that a 
journalist should avoid spoon-fed, cherry-picked information if 
it's likely to be slanted, incomplete, or designed to reach a 
foregone, easily disputed, or invalid conclusion.
    Mr. Taibbi. Congresswoman, I've done probably a dozen 
stories involving whistleblowers. Every reported story that 
I've ever done across three decades involve sources who have 
motives. Every time you do a story, you're making a balancing 
test.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. Reclaiming my time. Thank you 
very much.
    Mr. Taibbi. OK.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. I ask you this because before you 
became Elon Musk's handpicked journalist--and pardon the 
oxymoron--you stated this on Joe Rogan's podcast about being 
spoon-fed information. I quote, ``I think that's true of any 
kind of journalism.'' You will see it behind me here.
    [Slide.]
    I think that's true of any kind of journalism. Once you 
start getting handed things, then you've lost. They have you at 
that point, and you got to get out of that habit. You just 
can't cross that line.
    Do you still believe what you told Mr. Rogan? Yes or no? 
Yes or no?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK. Now, you crossed that line with 
the Twitter files.
    Mr. Taibbi. No--
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Elon Musk--it's my time. Please do 
not interrupt me. Elon Musk spoon-fed you his cherry-picked 
information which you must have suspected promotes a slanted 
viewpoint, or at the very least, generates another right-wing 
conspiracy theory. You violated your own standard, and you 
appeared to have benefited from it.
    Before the release of the emails, in August of last year, 
you had 661,000 Twitter followers. After the Twitter files, 
your followers doubled, and now it's three times what it was 
last August. I imagine your Substack leadership, which is a 
subscription, increased significantly because of the work that 
you did for Elon Musk.
    Now, I'm not asking you to put a dollar figure on it, but 
it's quite obvious that you've profited from the Twitter files. 
You hit the jackpot on that Vegas slot machine to which you 
referred. That's true, isn't it?
    Mr. Taibbi. I've also reinvested a lot--
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. No, no, no, no. Is it true that you 
have profited since you were the recipient of the Twitter 
files; you've made money? Yes or no?
    Mr. Taibbi. I think it's probably a wash, honestly.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Nope. You have made money that you 
did not have before, correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. I've also spent money that I didn't have 
before.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. OK.
    Mr. Taibbi. I just hired a whole group of people.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Patently obvious answer. Reclaiming 
my time. Attention is a powerful drug: Eyeballs, money, 
prominence, attention, all of it appoints to problems with 
accuracy and credibility, and the larger points, which is 
social media companies are not biased against conservatives. If 
anything, they ignored their own policies by allowing Trump and 
other MAGA extremists to post incessant lies, endangering 
public safety, and even our democracy. Hypocrisy is the 
hangover of an addiction to attention.
    Now, I want to point out another alleged finding from the 
Twitter files. Mr. Shellenberger, you've referenced several 
times this $3.4 million that the FBI paid to Twitter in 2020 
that was referenced in general counsel Jim Baker's email. I 
first want to confirm that nowhere in the email does Baker say 
that the money was paid to censor information, take down posts, 
suspend accounts, or do anything relating to content 
moderation. Is that correct?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It is.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Thank you. Honest reporting would 
have explained that the $3.4 million was paid to release 
information, not censor it. One of my colleagues on this panel 
repeated your distortions and told Americans this reimbursement 
was used to, quote, ``censor certain stories.'' That's a flat-
out lie.
    Mr. Shellenberger, are you aware of Section 2706 under the 
Stored Communications Act. It says when social media companies 
comply with subpoenas, warrants, or court orders, it cost them 
money, so they get reimbursed. The FBI makes these requests and 
reimbursements to discover evidence that runs relevant to a 
criminal investigation. Let me repeat that. The FBI makes these 
requests to help catch the bad guys. That helps keep child 
predators off social media sites. It helps keep violent 
criminals off our streets.
    I support the FBI and our law enforcement agencies. It 
would be nice if our Republican colleagues did the same and not 
fabricate explanations for pavements that are designed for 
clear purposes in Federal law. My time is just about wrapped 
up.
    Mr. Shellenberger. May I respond?
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The truth is that social media 
companies are unregulated monoliths. They pose danger to 
individuals, they allow posts that bring harm, and that's the 
bottom line that this--the other side will not tell you. I 
yield back the balance of my time.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady had no time to yield back, but 
I will let the gentleman, Mr. Shellenberger, respond. I would 
also point out that I did not say what the FBI paid Twitter 
for.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I--
    Chair Jordan. All I said was they paid Twitter $3.4 
million.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, point of order, I didn't 
ask Mr. Shellenberger a question.
    Chair Jordan. Yes, but the witness wants to respond. The 
witness has been invited as our guest, and frankly they've been 
attacked by the Federal Government.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Well, please do that--
    Chair Jordan. I'm going to let Mr. Shellenberger answer 
that before recognizing Mr. Bishop.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. So, are you going to do that as we 
move down the line of questioners.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady has not been recognized. You 
had your five minutes. Frankly, I think that's at the 
discretion of the Chair.
    Mr. Shellenberger, you can respond briefly.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I'll be brief, which is that my 
understanding from those files is that Twitter had decided not 
to take that money until recently. So, if you read that email, 
what Stasha, I believe the person that sent it, is saying is 
that they started taking money after previously not taking it. 
I believe that the reason that they had not taken it earlier 
was because they did not want that financial conflict, clouding 
their relationship.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Chair, the money is payment under 
Federal law--
    Mr. Bishop. She's out of order.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. --so that they can cut costs--
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. 
Bishop, is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. --for material that they've been 
used asked for.
    Mr. Bishop. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Taibbi, would you 
care to--I'm down here on this end, sir. Would you care to 
respond to the attack on your ethics? You weren't really given 
an opportunity to answer. If you'd be brief. I've got a bunch 
of stuff I want to ask you as well.
    Mr. Taibbi. Sure, just quickly. That moment on the Joe 
Rogan show, I was actually recounting a section from Seymour 
Hersh's book, ``Reporter,'' where he described a scene where 
the CIA gave him a story, and he was very uncomfortable. He 
said that I who had always gotten the secrets was being handed 
the secrets.
    Look, again, I've done lots of whistleblower stories. 
There's always a balancing test that you make when you're given 
material, and you're always balancing newsworthiness versus the 
motives of your sources. In this case, the newsworthiness 
clearly outweighed any other considerations. I think everybody 
else who worked on the project agreed.
    Mr. Bishop. Doesn't it seem like any reporter who breaks a 
blockbuster story is going to get attention, and there may be 
even financial consequences that follow? It seems like as 
surely as the night follows the day, that's the case, right?
    Mr. Taibbi. That is true. Although, I would like to clear 
up some things that have been misrepresented. Not one of us has 
actually been paid to do any of this work. We've all traveled 
on our own. We've hired our personnel on our own. I've just 
hired a pretty large team to investigate this issue--
    Mr. Bishop. Yes.
    Mr. Taibbi. --out of my own pocket.
    Mr. Bishop. The fact that the attempt comes from the dais 
across the aisle to smear you, frankly, I think liberals, if I 
understand that--in your background, you're both good liberals, 
and come in and the Democrats' hostility to what you have 
undertaken is astonishing to behold, but it's part of the 
picture we're seeing.
    In Twitter files No. 15, Mr. Taibbi, you exposed Hamilton 
68, a website associated with a German Marshall Fund that 
purported in a dashboard to identify Russian bot networks and 
became ubiquitously cited by media to identify media stories or 
narratives that supposedly flowed from Russia, from Russia.
    You showed that the front man for Hamilton 68 was Clint 
Watts, a former FBI agent. At Twitter, the trust and safety 
executives were ridiculing Hamilton 68 for the ludicrous 
identifications that it was making, which they could reverse 
engineer and figure out who those accounts were. Then in 
Twitter files No. 17, after disclosing Mr. Watts identity, you 
disclosed that J.M. Berger is the creator of Hamilton 68. Guess 
what? He was a Federal contractor, right?
    Mr. Taibbi. He was, yes. He denies that he worked on it for 
the Global Engagement Center, but he was an employee of theirs 
until about a month before the dashboard's released.
    Mr. Bishop. Just a month before what he said, I believe 
publicly, that the dashboard was the product of three years' 
work.
    So, doesn't it beg sort of the intriguing question whether 
the creation of this fraudulent Hamilton 68 dashboard was 
effectively underwritten by government funding?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think that's a good question. Certainly, 
the German Marshall Fund, which is the NGO that is at the top 
of the chain in this organization, it's German Marshall Fund, 
then the Alliance for Securing Democracy, and then Hamilton 68. 
They're a Federal contractor. They received over $1 million 
from the Department of Defense. They're the board of the 
Alliance For Securing Democracy, has a former acting head of 
the CIA, former deputy head of the NSA, a Former Chief of the 
DHS on it.
    Mr. Bishop. I want to make it--and the bigger point is hard 
because the example sometimes starts making it.
    I want to introduce you to--or introduce to somebody else. 
I think you've mentioned it in some of your writings. Richard 
Stengel. Do you know who that is?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes. He's the former--the first head of the 
Global Engagement Center.
    Mr. Bishop. I want the American people to hear from him for 
30 seconds.
    [Audio recording played.]
    Mr. Bishop. Every country does it. Every country does 
propaganda, and they have to do it to their own people, is what 
Mr. Stengel said.
    If I understand correctly, he was the head of the Global 
Engagement Center at its creation, right?
    Mr. Taibbi. He was. In his book ``Information Wars,'' there 
are a number of passages where he talks about creating a whole-
of-government solution to the information problem. He hastened 
to say that he didn't want to create a, quote, ``information 
ministry.'' What he was describing roughly approximates that.
    Mr. Bishop. In the half minute I've got left, he also was 
associated with Hamilton 68, right?
    Mr. Taibbi. The Global Engagement Center certainly had ties 
to Hamilton 68, yes.
    Mr. Bishop. I think it's closer than that. That'll come 
out.
    Mr. Taibbi. OK. Well, I'd be anxious to hear that.
    Mr. Bishop. I hope I'll get yielded a minute or two from 
somebody else down the way.
    There's all sorts of stuff to disclose. This Committee has 
to uncover, not that single instance, but this system that you 
have described. This is the hope that Americans have to set 
this right, this Committee. That hostility shows what we're up 
against. It's not three pillars to the system; it is four. 
You're seeing the left move to crush you and anybody else who 
tries to expose this.
    I yield.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman for his great five 
minutes, and would now yield to the gentleman from Virginia, 
Mr. Connolly.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I don't know what to say after that last one.
    We're fellow Americans and we're elected officials. We're 
trying to get at the truth, and we're trying to participate in 
the process of getting at the truth.
    Mr. Taibbi, you have said that this isn't really a matter 
of right or left, that there are lots of different ideological 
colorations involved in the Twitter files. Is that roughly, 
correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Shellenberger, you would agree with that?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. So, when you release information, have you 
released any information of, for example, right-wing elements 
or the Trump White House attempting to moderate content at 
Twitter?
    Mr. Taibbi. No, not the Trump White House per se, although 
I did report initially in the first Twitter files that the 
Trump White House had made and requested and had been honored.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Shellenberger?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I did not find that.
    Mr. Connolly. You haven't found it.
    So, we had a hearing the other day on Twitter, and we had 
four witnesses, three for the majority, one for the minority. 
All four testified under oath they had never received a request 
for content moderation or takedown by the Biden White House, 
but they did from Donald Trump's White House.
    Specifically, the case brought up was an exchange between 
Donald Trump, then President of the United States, and Chrissy 
Teigen, where, he had called her something and she called him 
something back. I won't repeat it.
    This was under oath, confirmed, yes, that happened, and 
that the White House shortly thereafter, after Teigen had her 
email about the President, which was pejorative, that the White 
House called Twitter to try to take down the content.
    Are you aware of that, Mr. Taibbi?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes. I certainly heard that in the news, yes.
    Mr. Connolly. Did you see that email exchange?
    Mr. Taibbi. No, I have not seen an exchange from the Trump 
White House. I have seen one from Congressman Schiff and one 
from Senator Angus King.
    Mr. Connolly. Yes, nice try. We're talking about the Trump 
White House and people under oath confirming it. My question 
is, in the Twitter files, did Elon Musk or Twitter provide you 
with that exchange with Chrissy Teigen?
    Mr. Taibbi. No. That's probably because the searches that I 
was making--
    Mr. Connolly. Well, probably because it didn't confirm the 
bias that this is all about, as the gentleman from Texas would 
say, the left attempting to control content when, in fact, the 
evidence is the Trump White House most certainly attempted to 
control content on Twitter.
    Mr. Shellenberger, were you aware of that, or is this all 
news to you?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I already answered that question.
    Mr. Connolly. No. I mean specifically the Teigen exchange.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, the Teigen exchange was news to me.
    Mr. Connolly. I'm probably mispronouncing her name. I'm 
sorry.
    So, let me ask, have you, like, combed the so-called 
Twitter files to look at other examples that aren't about the 
Biden White House or the FBI that might, in fact, involve 
people from the right ideologically or from the Republican 
ranks, just to be fair?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, again, Mr. Congressman, I mentioned 
before we're focused not on the Biden Administration or the 
Trump Administration. In fact, just this morning we released an 
exchange where Twitter talked about vetting the accounts of 
both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. Really, we were looking at the 
intelligence agencies when we were doing this research. As I 
mentioned before, their conclusions targeted people on both the 
left and the right globally, again, including the Yellow Vests 
movement in France, the pro-Maduro accounts in South America, 
and leftist news organizations in America, like Truthout and 
Consortium. Some of those people are my friends actually.
    We found those in intelligence lists that were passed on to 
Twitter, just as we found lists that included ordinary Trump 
supporters.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Reclaiming my time. I appreciate 
that because, in some ways, what you just said undermines the 
premise of this Select Committee, which is that the Federal 
Government has been organized to weaponize against conservative 
voices. Of course, what you've just indicated in your testimony 
is, well, actually that's not the evidence you found.
    Mr. Taibbi. No. I think this Committee--my understanding is 
that they're concerned about the weaponization of the 
government against free speech, which is certainly what we're--
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. My time has expired, but I 
appreciate your understanding of our Committee. I have a 
different understanding.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. Well, you've got the wrong understanding. 
Last week in the Full Judiciary Committee hearing I introduced 
into the record a story of left-wing journalists who said 
that--talked about the FBI putting a paid informant, a felon, 
in the Black Lives Matter movement in Denver.
    I want to focus on the First Amendment, just like--
protecting the First Amendment just like these guys do.
    Ms. Plaskett. Point of order, Mr. Chair.
    Are you going to respond after every--
    Chair Jordan. No. I'm taking my five minutes.
    Ms. Plaskett. This is your--
    Mr. Jordan. I can take my five minutes.
    Ms. Plaskett. Oh, it's your five minutes now?
    Chair Jordan. I can take my five minutes when I want to, 
and I'm taking my five minutes now.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Great. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. Yes. Well, I would ask for an additional few 
seconds for being interrupted by the Ranking Member.
    The truth is we want to focus on protecting the First 
Amendment.
    Mr. Shellenberger, are you a Republican?
    Mr. Shellenberger. No, I'm not.
    Chair Jordan. You got any pro-Trump bumper stickers on your 
car?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I voted for Biden.
    Chair Jordan. Voted for Biden.
    You don't have any MAGA hats laying around your house, 
right?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I do not.
    Chair Jordan. Yes. You said earlier--both you and Mr. 
Taibbi said, ``this is the most chilling thing you have ever 
seen as journalists.''
    Mr. Taibbi, the same thing. You're not a Republican either, 
are you?
    Mr. Taibbi. No, I'm not.
    Chair Jordan. You didn't vote for Trump.
    I mean, like, this is about protecting the First Amendment.
    Mr. Taibbi, I want to read from your Twitter file No. 9. 
You say this:

        After weeks of Twitter files, the Bureau issued a statement 
        Wednesday, referring to the FBI.

Here's what the FBI said:

        It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are 
        feeding the American public misinformation with the sole 
        purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.

You then follow-up--and this is why I think you're an award-
winning author. You then follow-up:

        They must think we're unambitious if our sole aim is to 
        discredit the FBI; after all, a whole range of government 
        agencies discredit themselves in the Twitter files.

Then you go on to--and this particular Twitter file I'm talking 
about what Mr. Bishop was just talking about, the GEC at the 
State Department. You talk about the CIA. You talk about the 
DOD. You talk about the FBI. You talk about the DHS. You talk 
about the Foreign Intelligence Task Force, which is a 
combination of all these. There was one agency you didn't 
mention, because you didn't know at the time, one agency, one--
you got almost the whole alphabet, but you didn't mention one 
agency, the FTC. You know about them now.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, we do.
    Chair Jordan. You know about them now in an up close and 
personal way. You didn't know then, but you do know now.
    On December 2nd, as I said earlier, December 2nd the first 
Twitter file comes out, Mr. Taibbi. I think there are five 
others, including the ones from Mr. Shellenberger. December 
13th, the very first letter that the FTC sends to Twitter after 
the Twitter files, 11 days after the first Twitter file, there 
have been five of them come out. The FTC's first demand in that 
first letter after the Twitter files comes out is: ``Identify 
all journalists''--I'm quoting. ``Identify all journalists and 
other members of the media to whom Twitter worked with.''
    You find that scary, Mr. Taibbi, that you got a Federal 
Government agency asking a private company, who in the press 
are you talking with?
    Mr. Taibbi. I do find it scary. I think it's none of the 
government's business which journalists a private company talks 
to and why. I think every journalist should be concerned about 
that.
    The absence of interest in that issue by my fellow 
colleagues in the mainstream media is an indication of how low 
the business has sunk. There was once a real esprit de corps 
and a camaraderie within media. Whenever one of us was gone 
after, we all kind of rose to the challenge and supported--
    Chair Jordan. Used to be, used to be the case.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes. That is gone now. We don't protect one 
another.
    Chair Jordan. You know what else used to happen? Democrats 
used to care about protecting First Amendment free speech 
rights, too. Now, it's like, OK, if you're attacking--and I 
said this on the House floor. I said,

        Don't think they won't come for you. Oh, the big tech, big 
        media, the cancel culture, they may come for Republicans and 
        conservatives now, but they never--the mob is never satisfied. 
        They will keep coming.

    Mr. Shellenberger, you know who the chair of the FTC is?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Not personally.
    Chair Jordan. Lina Khan. Lina Khan. You know who she used 
to work for?
    Mr. Shellenberger. My understanding is the Judiciary 
Committee.
    Chair Jordan. Yes, she's worked for these folks, the same 
folks that have been attacking you today, same folks, the chair 
of the FTC, worked for them.
    Here's what they said--here's what she said in a letter 
where they ask about who these journalists--again, they name 
four personally, four journalists by name. You were two of the 
four.
    As I said before, I think it's, frankly, courageous and 
brave of you to show up today when you know the Federal 
Government's got an eye on you personally.
    Here's what they asked for in that letter: ``Any 
credentialing or background check Twitter has done on 
journalists.''
    Now, think about that. The Federal Government is saying we 
want you to do a background check on members of the press. 
Freedom of the press mentioned in the First Amendment. They're 
doing back--they want Twitter to do a background check on you 
before they can talk to you, in America? The FTC led by Lina 
Khan, who used to work for these guys, is asking that question?
    Now we know. Now we all know why. You guys said at the 
outset, this is the most chilling story, and you guys are The 
New York Times best sellers, award-winning journalists. In all 
your time in the journalism field, this issue, most important. 
How this--I think--what did you call it, Mr. Shellenberger, 
this complex? What did you call it?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Censorship industrial complex.
    Chair Jordan. Totally this web of censorship, big 
government, big tech, NGO's, all this web of censorship that 
Mr. Bishop was getting into in his line of questioning, that's 
what this Committee is going to get to. That's not right or 
left. That's not--this is just right of wrong. This is wrong. 
We know it's wrong, and it's about protecting the First 
Amendment.
    I yield back.
    I now recognize the Ranking Member for her five minutes.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Taibbi, the emails and documents you've produced all 
date to around 2020. Is that correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. No. There's a significant portion of them from 
2017 and 2018 as well.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
    Mr. Shellenberger, what dates do you have?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I believe that we had emails including 
2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019.
    Mr. Taibbi. That's also true.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Taibbi, you said 2018. Do you have 2018 
as well?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I can't remember.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Thank you.
    Mr. Taibbi, how many employees did Twitter employ in 
approximately the time period of 2020-2021? Do you know?
    Mr. Taibbi. I don't.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. It was 7,500.
    Do you know how many were in its legal team during that 
time period?
    Mr. Taibbi. I don't. I'm sorry.
    Ms. Plaskett. Do you know how many were in its public 
policy team?
    Mr. Taibbi. I don't.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Shellenberger, do you know how many were 
employed in content moderation during that time?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I do not know.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. So, we're looking at thousands of 
employees overall and hundreds in offices were the focus of 
emails and documents you released.
    I will ask you, Mr. Shellenberger, how many emails did Mr. 
Musk give you access to?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I mean, we went through thousands of 
emails.
    Ms. Plaskett. Did he give you access to all the emails for 
the time period in which--
    Mr. Shellenberger. We never had a single--I never had a 
single request denied. Not only that, but the amount of files 
that we were given were so voluminous that there was no way 
that anybody could have gone through them beforehand. We never 
found an instance where anything--there was any evidence that 
anything had been taken out.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. So, you would believe that you have 
probably millions of emails and documents, right? That's 
correct, would you say?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I don't--millions sound too high.
    Mr. Taibbi. No, I think the number is less.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. A hundred thousand?
    Mr. Taibbi. That's probably closer.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Probably, yes.
    Ms. Plaskett. Probably close to a hundred thousand that 
both of you are seeing. Yet, in the Twitter files, Mr. Taibbi, 
you've produced only 338 of those 100,000 emails. Is that 
correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. That's correct, yes.
    Ms. Plaskett. Then, who gave you access to these emails? 
Who was the individual that gave you permission to access the 
emails?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, the attribution from my story is sources 
at Twitter, and that's what I'm going to refer to.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Did Mr. Musk contact you, Mr. Taibbi?
    Mr. Taibbi. Again, the attribution from my story is sources 
at Twitter.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Shellenberger, did Mr. Musk contact you?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Actually, no. I was brought in by my 
friend, Bari Weiss. So, the story, there's been a lot of 
misinformation--
    Ms. Plaskett. So, Mr. Weiss brought you in.
    Mr. Shellenberger. --or disinformation about that.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Taibbi--Ms. Weiss. Thank you.
    Mr. Taibbi, have you had conversations with Elon Musk?
    Mr. Taibbi. I have.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Mr. Taibbi, did Mr. Musk place any 
conditions on the use of the--
    Chair Jordan. Would the gentlelady yield for a second?
    Ms. Plaskett. As long as my time is not used for it.
    Chair Jordan. Are you trying to get journalists to disclose 
their sources?
    Ms. Plaskett. No, I'm not trying to get--no, I'm not. I am 
asking--
    Chair Jordan. Well, it sure sounds like it.
    Ms. Plaskett. Well, if you would let me finish.
    Are you--and you had conversations with him? Not where--you 
said you weren't going to agree to who your sources were. I'm 
not asking you your source. I'm asking you if you had 
conversations with the owner of Twitter. Did Mr. Musk place any 
conditions on your use of the emails or documents?
    Mr. Taibbi. No. In fact, I was told explicitly that we were 
given license to look at present day Twitter as well as past 
Twitter.
    Ms. Plaskett. So, you had unfiltered access to Twitter's 
internal communications and systems?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Ms. Plaskett. Would those include H.R. files?
    Mr. Taibbi. No, no, no, no. We did not have access to 
personal information of any kind. In fact, we signed a waiver 
foregoing--
    Ms. Plaskett. Have you produced that waiver to the Members 
of anyone on this Committee or any staff?
    Mr. Taibbi. I'd be happy to produce it.
    Ms. Plaskett. Have you?
    Mr. Taibbi. I haven't, but I'd be happy to.
    Ms. Plaskett. Have you given all the access to what you 
were given by your source to this Committee?
    Mr. Taibbi. No. I would never do that.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. I didn't ask if you had given the 
Committee, the individuals, all the files. No, you have not?
    Mr. Taibbi. No.
    Ms. Plaskett. So, what we're getting is your dissemination, 
your decision as to what was important and not important in 
that, correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. Which is true in every news story.
    Ms. Plaskett. In every story. You have files that you say 
you're sharing, but those files are just a smaller period of 
the files. Is that correct?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, but there's--
    Ms. Plaskett. Yes? OK. Thank you.
    The FTC investigation of Twitter, you knew that they were 
investigating Twitter before the time period that Mr. Musk came 
on?
    Mr. Taibbi. I was aware of it, yes.
    Ms. Plaskett. The FTC was concerned with user data being 
hacked or used. Is that correct, that they didn't have enough 
checks and balances on that data?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, I wasn't privy to that part.
    Ms. Plaskett. Have you seen the consent decree?
    Mr. Taibbi. No, I have not.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. Well, the consent decree is concerned 
with user data, which would be probably the reason that they 
were concerned, if they're giving files to journalists, that 
potentially data about users as well as data about individuals 
and employees would be given to them.
    Mr. Taibbi. My understanding is that they--
    Ms. Plaskett. I didn't ask a question. I didn't ask you a 
question, sir. OK.
    So, do you know that Elon Musk paid $44 billion for 
Twitter? Is that correct, Mr. Shellenberger? Were you aware of 
that?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I read that.
    Ms. Plaskett. Did you know that he received part of the 
funding from Saudi Arabia as well as Qatar?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I heard that.
    Ms. Plaskett. Did you know that one of those individuals 
who owns Biance was the company Binance--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Binance.
    Ms. Plaskett. --while he has Canadian citizenship, he is a 
Chinese national? Were you aware of that?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I did not know that.
    Ms. Plaskett. OK. That he stated that this was for the 
cause.
    Thank you very much for answering my questions.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from 
Wyoming for five minutes.
    Will the gentlelady yield for 20 seconds?
    Ms. Hageman. Yes.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
    I just think this is interesting. First, the FTC is asking 
for your backgrounds, and now the Ranking Member of the 
Committee on the Weaponization of Government is asking for your 
sources. If that doesn't raise--
    Ms. Plaskett. I never asked them for their sources.
    Chair Jordan. Yes, you did.
    Ms. Plaskett. I did not ask for sources.
    Chair Jordan. You know what--
    Ms. Plaskett. I asked if they were talking to Elon Musk.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady is not recognized.
    Ms. Plaskett. They said that they were not talking--well, 
you are not going to say I've asked--
    Chair Jordan. I will yield back to the gentlelady. I thank 
her for yielding.
    Mr. Taibbi. With respect, you asked me who gave me the 
files.
    Ms. Plaskett. I asked you who gave it to you, and once you 
said they were your sources, I then asked you if you had spoken 
with Elon Musk. I did not ask you who those sources were, for 
the record, so the record is correct.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady from Wyoming is recognized, 
and she will receive an additional 20 seconds. The gentlelady 
is recognized for five minutes of questioning.
    Ms. Hageman. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Thank you to our witnesses for being here today and all of 
your important work that you have put into writing the Twitter 
files.
    Thank you for your willingness to come here and be 
subjected to the kind of abuse that we've observed, when all 
you're trying to do is talk about the importance of the First 
Amendment and why the Federal Government should not be doing 
what they did and what has been evidenced in the Twitter files.
    I often say that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Boy, 
after listening to you and reading the reports that I have, 
does our Federal Government need to be fumigated.
    Mr. Taibbi, I would like to focus on Twitter files' Part 9. 
Twitter and other government agencies, as I think a lot of the 
evidence you present in this section, touches on the major 
takeaways that are so important for Americans to understand 
about the seriousness of what was found in the Twitter files.
    In your testimony describing the cooperation between the 
Federal Government and tech companies like Twitter, you stated, 
quote,

        A focus of this growing network is making lists of people whose 
        opinions, beliefs, associations, or sympathies are deemed to be 
        misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.

    What's interesting to me is that what is missing from that 
list is the word ``unlawful.''
    Mr. Taibbi. That's true, yes.
    Ms. Hageman. So, it notably seems to be missing from the 
FBI's lexicon. In Part 9 of the Twitter files, Mr. Taibbi notes 
that the main conduit sending requests to Twitter would 
routinely label these flags as violations of Twitter's terms of 
service. Even Jim Baker, a Twitter employee at the time and 
someone who was allegedly a former general counsel of the FBI, 
stated, quote, ``But also odd that they are searching for 
violations of our policies.''
    Mr. Taibbi, what was the approximate percentage of the FBI 
requests to Twitter being based on the justification that the 
tweet violated the company's terms of service?
    Mr. Taibbi. Ms. Congresswoman, I would say that was a 
standard disclosure or a standard disclaimer in almost all the 
communications from the FBI to Twitter. There would usually be 
a line in there saying something like, for your consideration, 
we believe the following 207 accounts may have violated your 
terms of service.
    Notably, they very rarely focused on words like ``truth'' 
or ``inaccuracy.'' Very often they used the words 
``malinformation,'' ``misinformation,'' or ``disinformation.'' 
So, I think they were trying to shift the focus from one idea 
to the other.
    Ms. Hageman. OK. I think that's interesting as well.
    What do you make of the finding that the FBI found that its 
responsibility to police violation of a private company's terms 
of service is a priority over policing violations of U.S. 
Federal law?
    Mr. Taibbi. We've--there were a couple of very telling 
emails that we published. One was by a lawyer named Sasha 
Cardeel (ph), where the company was being so overwhelmed by 
requests from the FBI--and, in fact, they gave each other a 
sort of digital high-five after one batch saying that was a 
monumental undertaking to clear all of these. She noted that 
she believed that the FBI was essentially creating--doing word 
searches keyed to Twitter's terms of service, looking for 
violations of terms of service specifically so that they could 
make recommendations along those lines, which we found 
interesting.
    Ms. Hageman. Do you believe it's the FBI's responsibility 
to police the terms of service for a private company?
    Mr. Taibbi. I do not. I think you cannot have a State-
sponsored antidisinformation effort without directly striking 
at the whole concept of free speech. I think the two ideas are 
in direct conflict. This is a fundamental misunderstanding, I 
think of a lot of the people who get into this world. Some of 
them, I believe, in a well-meaning way, I think they're 
actually trying to accomplish something positive. What they 
don't understand, what free speech means and what happens when 
you do this, it undermines the whole concept that truth doesn't 
come from--isn't mandated, that we arrive at it through debate 
and discussion.
    Ms. Hageman. Well, in fact, wouldn't you agree with me that 
the First Amendment is broader than Twitter's terms of service?
    Mr. Taibbi. Absolutely, yes, yes.
    Ms. Hageman. Wouldn't you also agree with me that the FBI 
is responsible for complying with the First Amendment, not 
Twitter's terms of service?
    Mr. Taibbi. I would hope so, yes, yes.
    Ms. Hageman. You also highlighted the presence of people 
like Jim Baker at Twitter. Again, I've noted that he is 
allegedly a former FBI employee. Part 9 also speaks of former 
other government association employees working at Twitter.
    What was the extent to which you found former FBI or other 
intelligence community employees working at Twitter, and did 
you find it odd?
    Mr. Taibbi. There was a significant quantity of people who 
had come from the intelligence world or who had worked at State 
agencies. In fact, that was a very common method by which 
members of--people who were currently working in government 
would reach out to Twitter. For instance, we found an email by 
a current State Department official who reached out to a former 
State Department official asking that 14 ordinary Americans 
have their accounts deleted. That was in a recent Twitter files 
release.
    So, yes, there's an extraordinary number of these people. A 
lot of them come from the intelligence world, which we did find 
unusual.
    Ms. Hageman. OK. Thank you very much.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired. I thank 
her.
    The gentleman from California is recognized for five 
minutes.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I still try to figure out where all this is going to go. 
We've heard a lot from our Republican colleagues claiming that 
somehow all this interaction has led to Twitter censoring 
conservative voices. I really want to look at what the evidence 
is that has or has not happened.
    In 2020, Twitter commissioned an objective study to examine 
whether its algorithms disproportionately promote conservative 
or liberal voices. This was a massive study by researchers from 
the University of Cambridge and Berkeley. The analysis examined 
millions of Twitter accounts and 6.2 million news articles that 
were shared within the United States. The study results were 
quite clear. Twitter's algorithms actually amplified 
conservative voices far more than liberal voices.
    So, whatever comes of this question about pressure from the 
Federal Government, at least up until 2020, it didn't have an 
effect.
    A separate study, this one from the Indiana University, 
found that partisan accounts, especially conservative accounts, 
tend to receive more, more followers and follow more automated 
accounts.
    So, Mr. Taibbi and Mr. Shellenberger, are you familiar with 
these studies?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I am.
    Mr. Taibbi. I am, yes.
    Mr. Garamendi. Very good. Then you know that whatever you 
may be trying to tell us, the effect on Twitter didn't happen.
    Mr. Taibbi. No, I don't agree.
    Mr. Garamendi. Excuse me. It's my time. Thank you.
    I can also give you many real analytical studies based on 
actual evidence. Since I have only five minutes, Mr. Chair, if 
I might enter into the record these studies of what actually is 
going on at Twitter with regard to censorship or not 
censorship.
    Mr. Chair, may I enter those into the file?
    Thank you, Mr. Chair. I take that silence as a yes.
    Chair Jordan. Did you identify the document? I'm sorry.
    Mr. Garamendi. Certainly. Two documents--these documents.
    Chair Jordan. What?
    Mr. Garamendi. The studies that were done by universities--
    Chair Jordan. Usually, it takes a little bit more for 
unanimous consent than ``these documents,'' but without 
objection, we'll accept them into the record.
    Mr. Garamendi. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    These studies found that to the extent that far right 
accounts are being suspended, it's not because of their 
ideology, but because they are spreading conspiracy theories, 
like QAnon. You can see those up on the board. Talk about 
nonsense. QAnons, are you really ready for these dots? Where in 
the country has gone, the rest of the world will go. Q is real, 
on and on.
    They're up there, and they're now part of the file also.
    This type of speech that perhaps our Republican colleagues 
believe social media platforms, all whom, by the way, are 
private companies, not government, are somehow obligated to 
post, no matter how crazy, how offensive a post might be. These 
private companies presumably must advance the lies, conspiracy 
theories, and personal attacks promoted by radicals.
    Now, I'm pretty sure that if the Democrats held a hearing 
today to force FOX News to post certain content, my Republican 
colleagues would be up in arms. This is particularly ironic 
because we know for a fact that FOX News does spread 
disinformation and does so while knowing that the material is 
false.
    We've learned from the Dominion lawsuit that FOX hosts lied 
about the 2020 election. Its executives knew they were lying, 
and yet they were allowed to continue peddling their lies.
    Now, here's a reporter speaking to this issue, a FOX News 
reporter. He said, dangerously insane.

        There's two FOX executives describing FOX's decision to push 
        forward election lies as chasing the nuts off the cliff.

    There are two other quotes--two other tweets that I think 
we ought to be aware of, and FOX News was promoting it. They 
were promoting Trump's lies. The quote up there: ``Big protest 
in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.'' A call to 
arms, and all us in this building know the result of that call.
    A second one: ``Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do 
what needed to be done to protect our country.''
    This is the speech that my Republican colleagues would have 
us to believe is being wrongly, quote, ``censored by social 
media companies.'' It's offensive. It's absurd. No private 
company has an obligation to amplify anything and especially 
not messages that strike at the heart of our democracy.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Utah is recognized for five minutes.
    Mr. Stewart. Thank you, Chair.
    Thank you, witnesses, for being here.
    I suppose this is maybe a little bit outside your comfort 
zone. You didn't find yourself with this kind of attention when 
you began this endeavor, but I appreciate the courage and the 
commitment you've made to doing that.
    We may not agree on a lot of things when it comes to policy 
and politics, but I think we agree on our concern regarding the 
topic today.
    I'll actually follow on from my Democratic friend and 
colleague and the things that he has said, because I agree with 
him. Private companies, I mean, Twitter, Facebook, they can ban 
whoever they want. They can mute. They can deplatform. They can 
set up whatever policy they want, and they have the ability to 
do that.
    I don't care about that. I agree with that. They should 
have that authority. The thing that we're concerned about is 
when the Federal Government by proxy essentially contracts this 
out, because the Federal Government can't ban speech. They can 
define time and place, but they cannot ban content. Anyone 
would be foolish to think that when the FBI comes to a private 
company and highlights speech and then would expect them to do 
nothing, of course, they would respond to that. The FBI knew 
they would respond to that. The FBI expected them to respond to 
that.
    I could use a couple of analogies, if I could, and they 
sound dramatic, but they're exactly right. It's illegal for the 
United States to assassinate a foreign leader. It would be 
illegal for the United States to pay $3.2 million to someone to 
go assassinate a foreign leader. It's illegal in some cases for 
the United States--or not illegal, but we would have to have a 
policy debate whether we would invade another country. It would 
be illegal for the United States to pay a private company like 
the Wagner Group in Russia to go and fight their battles for 
them.
    That's exactly what the FBI did here. They said, well, we 
can't do this ourselves. We'll contract it out. We'll launder 
this effort through another company.
    I would just ask you to respond to that. Do you think I'm 
overly dramatic or do you think I'm wrong in my 
characterization of what we see here?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I don't. I think that's absolutely 
correct. Freedom of speech is the foundation for our democracy. 
What we have seen here is Federal Government putting 
extraordinary amounts of pressure both on Twitter and Facebook. 
We haven't talked about Facebook, but we now know that we have 
the White House demanding that Facebook take down factual 
information on Facebook doing that. With Matt's thread this 
morning, we saw the government contractors demanding the same 
thing of Twitter, accurate information they said that needed to 
be taken down to advance a narrative.
    Mr. Stewart. I have to interrupt just to agree with you. 
For heaven's sake, again, we've heard over here, well, they 
have FOX News lies. There's a reason that 20 percent of the 
people trust media. Oh, my gosh, if you want to have a 
conversation about lies and deception in the media, I would 
love to engage in that, because we've seen plenty of it over 
the last six years. It's not coming from just FOX News. The New 
York Times, CBS, NBC, every single one of them were saying 
things that they knew was not true. They didn't say it once; 
they said it for years.
    The White House, again, trying to stifle things that they 
know is true, but it doesn't fit their narrative.
    I've got to give one illustration in the few minute--or 
minute I have left. When you have an agent, Mr. Chan, who goes 
to Twitter and says, ``Please see below a list of Twitter 
accounts which we believe violate your terms of service.'' I 
mean, how do you respond to that and defend that? Yes, the FBI 
should be looking at other private companies' policies and then 
highlighting, hey, these people might be violating your 
policies.
    Either one of you. Mr. Taibbi.
    Mr. Taibbi. If I could. No, I think there's--thank you, Mr. 
Congressman.
    There's an important point. In conjunction with our own 
research, there's the foundation, the Foundation For Freedom 
Online which , there's a very telling video that they uncovered 
where the director of Stanford's Election Integrity Partnership 
talks about how CISA, the DHS agency, didn't have the 
capability to do election monitoring, and so that they kind of 
stepped in to, quote, ``fill the gaps legally before that 
capability could be amped up.''
    What we see in the Twitter files is that Twitter executives 
did not distinguish between DHS or CISA and this group EIP. For 
instance, we would see a communication that said, ``From CISA 
escalated by EIP.'' So, they were essentially identical in the 
eyes of the company.
    EIP, by its own data--and this is in reference to what you 
brought up, Mr. Congressman. According to their own data, they 
significantly targeted more what they called disinformation on 
the right than on the left by a factor, I think of about 10 : 
1.
    So, I say that as not a Republican at all. It's just the 
fact of what we're looking at.
    So, yes, we have come to the realization that this bright 
line that we imagine that exists between, say, the FBI, DHS, or 
GEC and these private companies is illusory and that what's 
more important is this constellation of quasi-private 
organizations that do this work.
    Mr. Stewart. Well, and we're over time, so I'll conclude 
reemphasizing this. By a factor of 10 : 1, they tried to mute 
conservative thought, and the Federal Government cannot 
contract out suppression of free expression.
    Mr. Taibbi. No.
    Mr. Stewart. Chair, thank you.
    Chair Jordan. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The gentlelady from Texas is recognized for five minutes.
    Ms. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Speaker--I didn't get that last 
time. I apologize, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Taibbi, I want to follow-up a little bit on the Ranking 
Member's questions.
    When was the first time that Mr. Musk approached you about 
writing the Twitter files?
    Mr. Taibbi. Again, Congresswoman, that would--
    Ms. Garcia. I just need a date, sir.
    Mr. Taibbi. I can't give it to you, unfortunately, because 
this is a question of sourcing, and I don't give up--I'm a 
journalist. I don't reveal my sources.
    Ms. Garcia. It's not a question of sources. It's a question 
of chronology.
    Mr. Taibbi. No. That's a question of sources.
    Ms. Garcia. Because you earlier said that someone had sent 
you to the internet, some message about whether you would be 
interested in some information.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes. I refer to that person as a source.
    Ms. Garcia. So, you're not going to tell us when Musk first 
approached you?
    Mr. Taibbi. Again, Congresswoman, you're asking me to--
    Ms. Garcia. You can answer yes or no.
    Mr. Taibbi. You're asking a journalist to reveal a source.
    Ms. Garcia. So, do you consider Mr. Musk to be the direct 
source of all this?
    Mr. Taibbi. No. Now, you're trying to get me to say that he 
is the source. I just can't answer your question about sources.
    Ms. Garcia. Well, he either is or he isn't. If you're 
telling me you can't answer because it's your source, well, 
then, the only logical conclusion is that he is, in fact, your 
source.
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, you're free to conclude that.
    Ms. Garcia. Well, sir, I just don't understand. You can't 
have it both ways, but let's move on because--
    Chair Jordan. No, he can. He's a journalist.
    Ms. Plaskett. No, he can't, because either Musk is the 
source, and he can't talk about it, or Musk is not the source. 
If Musk is not the source, then he can discuss his 
conversations with Musk.
    Mr. Johnson. No one has yielded. The gentlelady is out of 
order. You don't get to speak every time--
    Ms. Plaskett. She's out of order because he's interrupted.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady is not recognized.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair, you're not recognized.
    Ms. Garcia. Mr. Chair, I'd like to reclaim my time.
    Chair Jordan. He has not said that. What he has said is 
he's not going to reveal his source. The fact that Democrats 
are pressuring him to do so is such a violation of the First 
Amendment.
    Ms. Plaskett. We're not. We're asking him about his 
conversations with Musk.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. The gentlelady has not yielded you 
time. You don't get to talk over her.
    Ms. Garcia. I have not yielded time to anybody. I want to 
reclaim my time, and I would ask the Chair to give me back some 
of the time because of the interruption.
    Chair Jordan. We can do that.
    Ms. Garcia. Mr. Chair, I'm asking you if you will give me 
the seconds that I lost.
    Chair Jordan. We will give you that 10 seconds.
    Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
    Now, let's talk about another item when you responded to 
the Ranking Member. You said that you had free license to look 
at everything, but, yet, you, yourself, posted on your--I guess 
it's kind of like a web page--I don't quite understand what 
Substack is--but that: What I can say is that in exchange for 
the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to 
agree to certain conditions.
    What were those conditions? She asked you that question, 
and you said you had none. You, yourself, posted that you had 
conditions.
    Mr. Taibbi. No. The conditions, as I've explained multiple 
times--
    Ms. Garcia. No, sir. You've not explained. You told her in 
response to her question that you had no conditions. In fact, 
you kind of used the word ``license,'' that you were free to 
look at all them, all 100,000 emails.
    Mr. Taibbi. The question was posed was I free to write 
about--
    Ms. Garcia. Sir, did you have any conditions?
    Mr. Taibbi. The condition was that we published on Twitter.
    Ms. Garcia. Sir, did you have any conditions? Yes or no? A 
simple question.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Ms. Garcia. All right. Could you tell us what conditions 
those were?
    Mr. Taibbi. The conditions were an attribution, sources at 
Twitter, and that we break any news on Twitter.
    Ms. Garcia. You didn't break it on Twitter. Did you send 
the file that you released today to Twitter first?
    Mr. Taibbi. Did I send--actually I did, yes.
    Ms. Garcia. Sir, I'm asking you today, did you send it to 
Twitter first?
    Mr. Taibbi. The Twitter files thread?
    Ms. Garcia. That was one of the conditions. Yes or no, sir?
    Mr. Taibbi. The Twitter files thread actually did come out 
first.
    Ms. Garcia. Sir, you said earlier that you had to attribute 
all the sources to Twitter first. What you released today, did 
you send that to Twitter first?
    Mr. Taibbi. No, no, no. I posted it on Twitter.
    Ms. Garcia. First? First, sir, or did you give it to the 
Chair of the Committee or the staff of the Committee first?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, that's not breaking the story. That's 
giving--yes, I did. I did give--
    Ms. Garcia. So, you gave all the information that you did 
not give to the Democrats, you gave it to the Republicans 
first, then you put it on Twitter?
    Mr. Taibbi. Actually, no. The chronology is a little bit 
confused. It's more or less at the same time.
    Ms. Garcia. Well, then, tell us what the chronology was.
    Mr. Taibbi. I believe the thread came out first.
    Ms. Garcia. Where?
    Mr. Taibbi. On Twitter.
    Ms. Garcia. On Twitter. So, then you afterwards gave it to 
the Republicans and not the Democrats?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, because I'm submitting it for the record 
as my statement.
    Ms. Garcia. Did you give it to them in advance?
    Mr. Taibbi. I gave it to them today.
    Ms. Garcia. You gave it to them today, but you still have 
not given anything to the Democrats.
    Well, again, I'll move on.
    I wanted to ask, Mr. Shellenberger, the same questions, 
sir. When did you first visit with or get contacted by Mr. 
Musk?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I'm not going to reveal my sources. Like 
I said, I was invited by Bari Weiss, and it was--
    Ms. Garcia. I'm not asking for sources, sir. I'm just 
asking for chronology.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I was--
    Ms. Garcia. When did you first make contact with Mr. Musk?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I don't know the exact date.
    Ms. Garcia. Was it 2020?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It was December. It was December.
    Ms. Garcia. December of--well, there's a lot of Decembers 
in history.
    Mr. Shellenberger. December of last year.
    Ms. Garcia. Which December?
    Mr. Shellenberger. December of last year, ma'am.
    Ms. Garcia. Last year, 2022?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Ms. Garcia. All right. Now, in your discussion--in your 
answer you also said that you were invited by a friend, Bari 
Weiss?
    Mr. Shellenberger. My friend, Bari Weiss.
    Ms. Garcia. So, this friend works for Twitter, or what is 
her--
    Mr. Taibbi. She's a journalist.
    Ms. Garcia. Sir, I didn't ask you a question. I'm now 
asking Mr. Shellenberger a question.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, ma'am, Bari Weiss is a journalist.
    Ms. Garcia. I'm sorry, sir?
    Mr. Shellenberger. She's a journalist.
    Ms. Garcia. She's a journalist. So, you work in concert 
with her?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Ms. Garcia. Do you know when she first was contacted by Mr. 
Musk?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I don't know.
    Ms. Garcia. You don't know. So, you're in this as a 
threesome?
    Mr. Shellenberger. There were many more people involved 
than that.
    Ms. Garcia. There were many more people involved with it.
    Are you being paid to be here today, either through 
consulting fees--
    Mr. Shellenberger. No.
    Ms. Garcia. --campaign contributions to your next run?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has--
    Ms. Garcia. Do you have an interview scheduled after this 
hearing?
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely not.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired.
    Ms. Garcia. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. I don't know what to say other than I'll 
recognize the gentleman from North Dakota for five minutes.
    Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll yield my five 
minutes to you.
    Chair Jordan. Oh, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
    I do think it's worth pointing out that I have cosponsored, 
I think some of my colleagues have cosponsored The Shield Act 
in previous Congresses, with Democrats, to protect what we see 
them trying to do today, protect journalists from having to 
reveal their sources to government. That used to be a shared 
position in the Congress. Unfortunately, as we're seeing now 
multiple occasions, it's not the position anymore.
    Mr. Shellenberger, I want to go to Twitter files' Part 7. I 
related a lot of what you put in there in my opening statement. 
I want to give you as much time as you want, because I'm going 
to read the very first sentence, because something jumped out 
at me when I read the first sentence.
    In Twitter files No. 7, the FBI and the Biden laptop. You 
say this:

        How the FBI and the intelligence community discredited factual 
        information about the Biden foreign business dealings both 
        after and before the New York Post revealed the contents of his 
        laptop on October 14, 2020.

    What stuck--kind of jumped out at me was the way you framed 
it. Because you did it backward from what it's normally said. 
Normally, you would say--the sentence would read: Foreign 
business dealings both before and after.
    I assume you did that for a reason because, in fact, I 
think the next sentence you say: ``Social media companies 
discredit leaked information about Hunter Biden before and 
after.'' You used the normal customary way in the second 
sentence, but the first sentence strikes me as you were trying 
to emphasize the before component of that statement.
    Now, I want you to just walk us through why you said that, 
because when I read it, it certainly was an operation both 
before and after, as you said, after and before.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Reading through 
the whole sweep of events, I do not know the extent to which 
the influence operation aimed at prebunking the Hunter Biden 
laptop was coordinated. I don't know who all was involved. What 
we saw was--you saw Aspen and Stanford many months before then 
saying, ``Don't cover the material in the hack and leak without 
emphasizing the fact that it could be disinformation.'' OK. So, 
they're priming journalists to not cover a future hack and leak 
in the way that journalists have long been trained to in the 
tradition of the Pentagon Papers made famous by the Steven 
Spielberg movie. They were saying cover the fact that it 
probably came from the Russians.
    Then you have the former general counsel to the FBI, Jim 
Baker, the former deputy chief of staff to the FBI both 
arriving at Twitter in the summer of 2020, which I find what an 
interesting coincidence.
    Then, when the New York Post publishes its first article on 
October 14, it's Jim Baker who makes the most strenuous 
argument within Twitter, multiple emails, multiple messages 
saying, ``This doesn't look real.'' There's people--there's 
intelligence experts saying that this could be Russian 
disinformation. He is the most strenuous person inside Twitter 
arguing that it's probably Russian disinformation.
    The internal evaluation by Yoel Roth, who testified in 
front of this Committee, was that it was what it looked to be, 
which was that it was not a result of a hack-and-leak 
operation. Why did he think that? Because the New York Post had 
published the FBI's subpoena, taking the laptop in December 
2019, and they published the agreement that the laptop computer 
store owner--the computer store owner, rather, had with Hunter 
Biden that gave him permission after he abandoned the laptop to 
use it however he wanted.
    So, there really wasn't much doubt about the providence of 
that laptop, but you had Jim Baker making a strenuous argument. 
Then, of course, you get to--a few days after the October 14 
release, you have the President of the United States echoing 
what these former intelligence community officials were saying, 
which is that it looked like a Russian influence operation.
    Chair Jordan. Yes.
    Mr. Shellenberger. So, they were claiming that the laptop 
was made public by a conspiracy theory and the conspiracy 
theory that somehow the Russians got it, and they--
    Chair Jordan. Right.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Basically, they convinced Yoel Roth that 
it was--they convinced him it was this wild hack-and-leak story 
that somehow the Russians stole it, got the information, gave 
it to the computer store, and it was bizarre.
    So, you read that chain of events, and it appears as though 
there is an organized influence operation to prebunk--
    Chair Jordan. Why? Why do you think they could predict the 
time, the method, and the person? Why could the FBI predict it?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I'm--
    Chair Jordan. Not only did they predict it--they predicted 
it, so did the Aspen Institute.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Chair Jordan. Seemed like everyone was in the know saying, 
here's what's going to happen. We can read the future.
    Why do you think--how do you think they were able to do 
that?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I think the most important fact to know 
is the FBI had that laptop in December 2019. They were also 
spying on Rudy Giuliani when he got the laptop and when he gave 
it to the New York Post.
    Now, maybe the FBI agents who were going to Mark Zuckerberg 
at Facebook and to Twitter executives and warning of a hack and 
leak potentially involving Hunter Biden, maybe those guys 
didn't have anything to do with the guys that had the laptop.
    Chair Jordan. Maybe.
    Mr. Shellenberger. We don't know that.
    Chair Jordan. I know.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I have to say, as a newcomer to this, as 
somebody that thought it was Russian disinformation in 2020--
everybody I knew thought it was Russian--I was shocked to see 
that series of events going on. It looked to me like a 
deliberate influence operation. I don't have the proof of it, 
but the circumstantial evidence is pretty disturbing.
    Chair Jordan. It's pretty overwhelming. Thank you, Mr. 
Shellenberger.
    I now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Goldman, 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Goldman. Oh, I think it's Mr. Allred first.
    Chair Jordan. Oh, I'm sorry. You just walked in.
    I recognize the gentleman from Texas. Go right ahead.
    Mr. Allred. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair.
    I'd like to ask unanimous consent to enter a few tweets 
into the record.
    Chair Jordan. Sure. Can you identify the tweets?
    Mr. Allred. Let's see, I think staff should have them. Can 
we put the tweets up on the screen?
    Let's take a look at a couple of tweets from Kanye West, 
who now goes by Ye, at the time of these tweets had 32 million 
followers.
    Mr. Taibbi, can you read the tweet on the left? Do you see 
the text there?
    Mr. Taibbi. I actually can't. My eyesight is not so that 
great.
    Mr. Allred. I'll read it to you. It says: ``I'M A BIT 
SLEEPY TONIGHT, BUT WHEN I WAKE UP I'M GOING DEATH CON 3 ON 
JEWISH PEOPLE,'' in all caps. The funny thing is I actually 
can't be anti-Semitic because Black people are actually Jew. 
Also, you guys have toyed with me and tried to blackball anyone 
whoever opposes your agenda.
    Can you see the tweet next to it?
    Mr. Taibbi. I can, yes.
    Mr. Allred. It's a--would you describe it as a Star of 
David with a swastika in the middle of it?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Mr. Allred. Should those tweets have been taken down by 
Twitter?
    Mr. Taibbi. I think it's a difficult question. Hate speech 
is protected in the United States.
    One of my heroes growing up was the Ukraine-born author 
Isaac Babel. He gave a speech at the first Soviet Writers 
Congress, and he was asked if any important rights had been 
taken away. He sarcastically answered, No. The only rights that 
have been taken away are the right to be wrong.
    The crowd laughed, but he was making an important point, 
which is that in a free country you can't have freedom without 
the freedom to be wrong.
    Mr. Allred. Let's move on to a couple of other tweets not 
from somebody with 32 million followers.
    This one says: ``Elon now controls Twitter. Unleash the 
racial slurs, K word and N word.''
    The other one says: ``I can freely express how much I hate 
N words now. Thank you, Elon.''
    See, these tweets were taken down, even by Elon Musk 
Twitter, and they should have been because they're hate speech, 
and they lead to real world reactions. In fact, in the 12 hours 
after Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter, hate speech of all 
kinds spiked on Twitter, including a 500 percent increase in 
the use of the N word.
    It's not just online. From 2020-2021, hate crimes rose 
almost 44 percent in major cities. So, hate speech online has 
real impacts in life. So, does election misinformation and 
propaganda online.
    Mr. Taibbi, I've read a lot of your work. I respect some of 
it, but you've cast a lot of doubt on Russian interference in 
our elections. Today, you have virtually alleged a vast 
government conspiracy to censor speech. I can tell you that the 
threat to our democracy--
    Mr. Taibbi. Not allegedly.
    Mr. Allred. I'm not asking you a question. I'll let you 
know when I do.
    I can tell you that the threat to our democracy is very 
real, and it's not just the elections that get all the 
headlines. In 2018, in a congressional race, two Kremlin-
maligned foreign nationals named Lev Parnas and Igor Freeman 
succeeded in funneling illegal Russian money to a Trump-aligned 
super-PAC that spent $1.3 million to support the Republican 
candidate.
    That was my election. My neighbors in east Dallas saw 
advertisements online, in their mailbox, and on their TV, paid 
with Russian money. That's not my opinion. That's a fact proven 
in the Southern District of New York. Both Parnas and Freeman 
were convicted to 21 months and one year, respectively, for 
conspiring to make political contributions by a foreign 
national, along with other campaign finance-related violations.
    We live in an information age where malign actors do want 
to use social media to influence our elections, both big, the 
ones you spend a lot of time talking about, and small like 
mine.
    Mr. Taibbi. Mr. Congressman, may I ask a question?
    Mr. Allred. It should be a bipartisan goal--no, you don't 
get to ask questions here.
    Mr. Taibbi. OK.
    Mr. Allred. It should be a bipartisan goal to ensure that 
Americans, and only Americans, determine the outcome of our 
elections, not fear mongering.
    I think--I hope that you can actually take this with you, 
because I honestly hope that you will grapple with this: That 
it may be possible that if we can take off the tin foil hat 
that there's not a vast conspiracy, but that ordinary folks and 
national security agencies responsible for our security are 
trying their best to find a way to make sure that our online 
discourse doesn't get people hurt or see our democracy 
undermined, and that the very rights that you think they're 
trying to undermine, they may be trying to protect.
    I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back.
    The gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Massie, is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Mr. Massie. I want to talk about the weaponization of the 
CDC against the American people. This overlaps with one of the 
Twitter files, No. 13 by my count, actually by Alex Berenson, 
not one of our two witnesses, but I would like your comment on 
it.
    A week before Christmas 2020, the vaccines came out. The 
FDA curated the Pfizer trial results, and then the CDC curated 
the FDA's opinion. The CDC said in their MMWR, which is never 
peer-reviewed--they're very proud it's not peer-reviewed. They 
treat it like science. It's not science. They said that the 
vaccine was 92 percent efficacious for people who had already 
had COVID. The Pfizer trial data said no such thing. In fact, 
there was no support for that claim.
    So, I called up the head of CDC, recorded the conversation, 
the head in Washington, DC. She said she'd get the top 
scientists on the line. There was a snowstorm that day, so I 
was impressed; she got this top scientist on the line. They 
said I was eagle eye Massie. They couldn't believe how that 
statement had made it into their report and that I was 
absolutely correct there was no support for it.
    So, I said ``How are you going to fix it? Are you going to 
redact it? Are you going to change it? What are you going to 
do?'' They said, ``We'll do all of that.'' I said, ``Great.''
    A month later, it was still on their website. I made some 
more phone calls. They brought in an old hand, an old fixer, 
Dr. Schuchat. These are her notes of her phone call with me 
about natural immunity in January when I called them out on it 
again. These are the entirety of her notes that were obtained 
in the FOIA from somebody--a third party.
    I took all my recordings, released them to Sharyl 
Attkisson. She blew the whistle on this. A lot of people have 
forgotten about it.
    Here's why I find it interesting, and I'm going to tie it 
into the Twitter files. By the way, I told them I was not an 
anti-vax. I said the problem with your story is there's a 
misallocation of vaccines which are not available for all the 
old people in Kentucky, but you've got young people in Kentucky 
taking them, because you're telling them on the website, even 
if you've had COVID, go get it. So, that was my complaint.
    On May 10, 2021, Todd O'Boyle--this name will come up in 
the Twitter file later. He is the top lobbyist in Twitter's 
Washington office, who was also Twitter's point of contact in 
the White House. He encouraged the CDC to enroll in the partner 
support program. Oh, OK. The CDC is now a partner with Twitter 
because they're in the partner support program. He said, ``In 
the future, that's the best way to get a spreadsheet like this 
reviewed.''
    Now, this is an email from--between Todd O'Boyle and the 
folks at CDC.
    By the way, let me talk to this, too. These are more of my 
conversations with the CDC, completely redacted, the subject 
thereof.
    Next one, please.
    I also found as a result of the FOIA, CDC tracks every 
tweet that a Congressman puts out, not just Republican, but 
Democrat. They keep the spreadsheet. They make it every week. 
This showed up in the FOIA for me because I'm in their 
spreadsheet that they track.
    Why is this interesting? OK. So, they're tracking 
Congressmen's tweets at CDC. They're enrolled in the partner 
support portal at Twitter. Then I found--this is why--I found 
Alex Berenson's report very interesting, because what he found 
out is that Scott Gottlieb worked hard, and Twitter complied, 
it looks like, to censor a tweet from a doctor about natural 
immunity.
    Guess what? On the same day, that doctor's tweet was 
censored, so were my tweets on natural immunity. Why is this 
important? What is consequential about the date? This is three 
days after the military vaccine mandate came out and a week 
before the Federal vaccine mandates came out.
    This truth was toxic to a narrative that Pfizer was 
spreading that Joe Biden wanted out there so that he could 
force the vaccine on everybody, whether you had natural 
immunity or not.
    Now, I actually--you guys might not agree with me on this. 
I don't think the press gets special privileges on the First 
Amendment. I don't think Congress does. I think every American, 
by virtue of being an American, has the right to free speech 
enshrined in the Constitution.
    So, I'm not so much worried that they censored a 
Congressman, but they disabled all of the comments from my 
constituents. Those are the voices they squelched. My beef is 
not with Twitter, but my beef is with the CDC and these Federal 
agencies.
    I encourage you all, if you can, to find more about this. 
Do you have any--either of you have any comments on this topic?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, absolutely.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman's time has expired, but the 
gentleman may--
    Mr. Massie. I still had three seconds.
    Chair Jordan. --the witnesses may respond. OK.
    Mr. Taibbi. Just quickly, we found just yesterday a tweet 
from the Virality Project at Stanford, which is partnered with 
a number of government agencies and Twitter where they talked 
explicitly about censoring stories of true vaccine side effects 
and other true stories that they felt encouraged hesitancy.
    Mr. Massie. This isn't true.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, so they used the word ``true'' three times 
in this email. What's notable about this is that it reflects 
the fundamental misunderstanding of this whole disinformation 
complex--and disinformation complex. They believe that ordinary 
people can't handle difficult truths. So, they think that they 
need minders to separate out things that are controversial or 
difficult for them. Again, that's totally contrary to what 
America is all about, I think.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I will just briefly add, this is very 
disturbing because what they're doing when they're putting 
these labels on there is they're actually also trying to 
discredit you. So, it's not just--it's a form of censorship, 
but it's also a disinformation campaign. I think what Matt says 
is really important to understand--now, we went from--you go 
from a situation where we were fighting ISIS recruiting. Then 
it was Russian disinformation. Now they're in a situation where 
they're wanting to censor true information, accurate facts 
because they're worried that people might behave in ways that 
they don't want them to. That involves mind reading at a level 
that is grossly inappropriate.
    I worry even about making this defense, because let's 
remember, the First Amendment protects our right to be wrong. 
It protects our right to lie. It's bizarre to me that we would 
need to make a defense of the First Amendment and remind people 
that we have a right to be wrong--and being wrong, as Matt was 
explaining, is a big part of being a human being and having a 
democracy.
    So, this is disturbing and showing, and you're absolutely 
right to be outraged by it. There needs to be a full truth and 
reconciliation that I hope everybody would appreciate having on 
this issue, because a lot of bad behavior has come out about 
what they've done.
    Mr. Massie. Thank you. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. Good job. The gentleman's time has expired. 
We now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Gomez.
    Ms. Plaskett. Actually, excuse me, it's Ms. Sanchez.
    Chair Jordan. Oh, I'm sorry.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair, since that went over two minutes 
with them responding, will you give an additional time?
    Chair Jordan. There's a question at the end of someone--
it's customary if there's a question at the end of someone's 
five minutes and the witnesses haven't responded, we'll give 
them time to do. Many times, you go over, and then don't, 
there's no question.
    Ms. Plaskett. I understand that, but two minutes. OK. Thank 
you.
    Chair Jordan. That's customary, so we'll certainly do that. 
The gentlelady from California is recognized, excuse me.
    Ms. Sanchez. I would like to yield my time to Mr. Goldman.
    Mr. Goldman. Thank you, Ms. Sanchez.
    Mr. Shellenberger, first, I'd just like to compliment you 
on your choice of tie today. It seems like we're on the same 
page. I would also just like to respond to your last point and 
just remind everyone that, of course, we all believe in the 
First Amendment. The First Amendment applies to government 
prohibition of speech, not to private companies.
    I want to talk about your Twitter files No. 7, Mr. 
Shellenberger. Are you aware that Rudy Giuliani was the sole 
source of the hard drive obtained by the New York Post.
    Mr. Shellenberger. That is my understanding.
    Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that Rudy Giuliani had been 
openly cavorting with agents of Russian intelligence throughout 
2020?
    Mr. Shellenberger. That is also my understanding.
    Mr. Goldman. Now, this is the same Russian agent who had 
been feeding information to Senators Johnson and Grassley, I 
might add. Also, are you aware that Rudy Giuliani told The New 
York Times that he did not want anyone to do an analysis of the 
hard drive until it was published?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I was not aware of that exactly, but--
    Mr. Goldman. You don't dispute it?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I don't dispute it.
    Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that one of the New York Post 
reporters for the Hunter Biden story refused to put his byline 
on the story?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that Fox News called this story, 
quote, ``very sketchy,'' unquote?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I'm aware that somebody at Fox News said 
that, yes.
    Mr. Goldman. Correct. Bret Baier at Fox News said that.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. Are you aware that the FBI had nothing to do 
Twitter's decision to pause the New York Post story?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I am not aware of that.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. Well, let me read you the testimony from 
Yoel Roth at the hearing we had on February 8. Quote,

        The FBI was quite careful and consistent to request review of 
        the accounts, but not to cross the line into advocating for 
        Twitter to take any particular action.

Then Jim Baker said, in response to the Chair's question, when 
he asked, ``Did you talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden 
story?'' He said, ``To the best of my recollection, I did not 
talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story before that day.'' 
In other testimony, Yoel Roth said that the information that he 
received from the FBI had nothing to do with the Hunter Biden 
story.
    Now, are you aware that there was an analysis of the hard 
drive that was done by The Washington Post at a later date?
    Mr. Shellenberger. My awareness is that multiple media 
organizations have done analyses and found the--including CBS, 
and found that it was, indeed--the laptop was authentic, and 
that nothing had been changed on it.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. So, let's just get something clear, the 
laptop that the FBI had is different than the hard drive that 
Rudy Giuliani gave to the New York Post? A hard drive, you 
agree with this, is a copy from a laptop, right?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. You are aware that hard drives can be altered, 
are you not?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Of course.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. So, are you aware that The Washington Post 
analysis of the hard drive showed that it had been altered?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I haven't heard that, but I'm also 
saying CBS verified--
    Mr. Taibbi. Politico.
    Mr. Shellenberger. --and other media organizations have 
verified.
    Mr. Goldman. We're not talking about authenticity. We're 
not talking about authenticity.
    Mr. Shellenberger. You're not really making this argument. 
OK.
    Mr. Goldman. We're not talking about authenticity.
    Mr. Shellenberger. OK.
    Mr. Goldman. We're talking about whether it's been altered.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. There's no question there's some material 
on the hard drive that is authentic and accurate. Are you aware 
that there's some material that is not?
    Mr. Shellenberger. My understanding is there are copies of 
the hard drive that have been tampered with. That media 
organizations, including CBS, have verified that the laptop in 
question was not tampered with.
    Mr. Goldman. I don't know what the laptop in question, but 
let's move on. Because you said in your Twitter files, am I 
correct, that every single fact in the New York Post story was 
accurate?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. Do you recall that the first paragraph of 
that Post story said that then-Vice President Joe Biden 
pressured Ukraine to fire its prosecutor general because he was 
investigating Burisma where Hunter Biden was on the board?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. I have here, which I'd like to enter into the 
record, the Trump Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report--300 pages 
by the House Intelligence Committee. Did you review this report 
before you said that every fact in this story was accurate?
    Chair Jordan. Without objection, the material will be 
entered in the record.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Did I read that before I wrote the 
Twitter files? No. Aware of the contents--
    Mr. Goldman. If you read this you would have known that 
every single State Department and Trump Administration expert 
on Ukraine said that Vice-President Joe Biden, in concert with 
the European Union and the IMF, was executing official U.S. 
policy by encouraging Ukraine to fire the prosecutor general 
because he was not prosecuting corruption and was not 
prosecuting companies like Burisma. So, that story, 
notwithstanding your allegations, was false. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman yields back. I now recognize--
the Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Gaetz, 
for five minutes.
    Mr. Gaetz. Impeachment nostalgia always warms my heart, but 
we are here focused on a weaponized government, a whole-of-
government approach that has been turned against the American 
people. While Rudy Giuliani may have been running around with 
the laptop in 2020, what is an indisputable fact is that the 
FBI had the laptop in 2019. It appears that the last round of 
questioning misses the boat, that it's true. The information is 
authentic. The pictures, the videos, the emails--there hasn't 
been a single allegation that there is a single doctored email. 
Unlike what we saw before the FISA courts, where the FBI itself 
was doctoring emails to try to smear President Trump.
    I have to get to a question I'm amazed hasn't been asked of 
the two of you. This FTC consent decree, where it is government 
action subject to rigorous scrutiny under First Amendment 
standards, government action demanding that your names be 
listed. How did it feel when you found out that you were being 
expressly targeted by a government document based on your 
reporting?
    Mr. Shellenberger. It was chilling--I mean, it's 
disturbing. I never thought that would happen in the United 
States of America to be perfectly honest. I've lived in a bunch 
of authoritarian countries. I visited a lot of authoritarian 
countries. I never thought this kind of thing would be going on 
here.
    Mr. Gaetz. The nexus to authoritarianism is the desire to 
control the nature of truth itself. Our understandings change 
about things. We learn new changes. We challenge prior 
assumptions. If a bunch of people in Washington, DC, get to 
decide what the truth is and then enforce it on the country and 
then punish and target those who report on their conduct, we 
are drifting more toward that. How did you feel, Mr. Taibbi, 
when you saw your name?
    Mr. Taibbi. I was upset, obviously. I lived in Russia 
during the nineties and early 2000's, so I was there when Putin 
took power. I was friends with a group of very brave muckraking 
reporters in Russia, many of whom didn't make it. A few of them 
were murdered after Putin came to power.
    So, I've always been conscious of how the risks that other 
reporters take in other countries are inconsiderably severe. 
That's one of the reasons why I'm motivated to protect the 
First Amendment, because our country has the best protections 
for reporters in the world. This kind of thing where the 
government is looking for information about reporters, it's 
usually a canary in the coal mine that something worse is 
coming in terms of an effort to exercise control over the 
press. So, on that level, it's absolutely disturbing.
    Also, the Aspen Institute report that we published today, 
talked about today in the Twitter files thread, one of their 
recommendations was that the FTC be empowered to have unlimited 
power to search all data of private companies so that they 
could more freely and more accurately search the speech of 
ordinary citizens.
    Mr. Gaetz. So, as we're trying to put downward pressure on 
the government's expanding authority to be able to engage in 
what we see mostly from dictatorships, what you're reporting, 
and what you're observing is that, actually, they view this as 
a growth industry, the information business, right?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Mr. Gaetz. This Censorship Industrial Complex is a growth 
industry to the government.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I think the key thing to also--yes, and 
the thing to understand is that NSS--
    Mr. Gaetz. What is NewsGuard, and how are they part of the 
Censorship Industrial Complex?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, and by the way, we talk about 
Richard Stengel, he is on the board of NewsGuard. NewsGuard and 
the disinformation index are both U.S. Government funded 
entities who are working to drive advertiser revenue away from 
disfavored publications and toward the ones that they favor. 
This is totally inappropriate.
    Mr. Gaetz. Now, what I'm used to in this town is government 
officials pick their favorite outlets, and they give them the 
best scoops, and they give them the best stories. There's a 
fusion of media and government that has long made me 
uncomfortable. What you're describing now is literally the 
directing of revenue to certain media companies over other 
media companies designed and implemented with the U.S. 
Government funding and support.
    Mr. Shellenberger. That's right.
    Mr. Gaetz. That is an astonishing--if we do not take a look 
at NewsGuard, we have failed. You talked about the brave 
reporting that occurs and what it subjects you to. I would 
suggest there's also political bravery that I have observed. 
While we've only heard from Democrats on this panel, attacking 
you, discrediting you, a lot like they've tried to attack and 
discredit FBI whistleblowers who are truth tellers, there are 
brave Democrats who still believe in free speech. I would 
advise my colleagues to look at the comments of Ro Khanna who 
has been deeply, deeply concerned about this weaponization of 
government. He believes these Twitter files are indeed worthy 
of our focus and our energy, and that is exactly what we are 
going to do. I yield back.
    Chair Jordan. I thank the gentleman. I would now recognize 
the gentlelady from New York.
    Mr. Goldman. I still have my five minutes, Mr. Chair.
    Chair Jordan. Oh, that's right. I forgot.
    Mr. Goldman. I understand why you may not want to.
    Chair Jordan. The gentleman from New York is recognized for 
five minute.
    Mr. Goldman. Mr. Shellenberger, I may have misheard 
earlier, but is it your testimony here today that you disagree 
with the two indictments by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that 
definitively established that Russia interfered in our 2016 
election through social media disinformation and the hack-and-
leak operation.
    Mr. Shellenberger. No, I don't disagree.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. Mr. Taibbi, do you disagree with those two 
indictments?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, indictments aren't a thing to do--
    Mr. Goldman. Do you disagree--there are about 40 or 50 
pages. Do you disagree with the evidence outlined in those 
indictments?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, indictments are just charges.
    Mr. Goldman. I just asked you: Do you disagree with the 
evidence included in those indictments, yes or no?
    Mr. Taibbi. I'm not on the jury of that case. I couldn't 
possibly say yes or no.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. Because you said earlier, I believe, that 
you did not see Russia--that could not confirm that Russia 
interfered in our election in 2016, that you don't believe 
that. Is that your testimony here today, you don't believe that 
they did?
    Mr. Taibbi. I think it's possible that they may have on a 
small scale, but certainly not to what's been reported.
    Mr. Goldman. What's been reported or what's been included 
in the indictments?
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, again, indictments are allegations. 
They're not proof.
    Mr. Goldman. I understand. It's pretty detailed 
allegations.
    Mr. Taibbi. In the Mueller indictment, by the way--
    Mr. Goldman. You should go read the indictment and then 
come back and tell us if you actually think there's no proof of 
it.
    Mr. Taibbi. Well--
    Mr. Goldman. Let me move on, please.
    Mr. Taibbi. Well, some of those things happened by the way 
when the--
    Mr. Goldman. Please, let me move on. That's how this works. 
You should know this by now.
    So, do you disagree with the Special Counsel Mueller's 
conclusion in his report, Mr. Taibbi, that the Trump campaign 
knew about Russia's interference, they welcomed it, and they 
used it for their benefit? You have no reason to disagree with 
that, don't you? You have no information.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. So, after that foreign interference in our 
2016 election, Twitter and other social media companies 
naturally wanted to work with the intelligence community to 
stop Vladimir Putin from interfering in our elections again.
    Mr. Taibbi, do you think it's a legitimate pursuit of the 
FBI to try to stop foreign interference in our elections?
    Mr. Taibbi. Again, sir, will I be allowed to answer this 
question, or--
    Mr. Goldman. It's a yes-or-no question. Do you think it's a 
legitimate pursuit of the FBI to--
    Mr. Taibbi. It's not a yes-or-no answer. It depends.
    Mr. Goldman. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not asking how. I'm 
saying, as an objective, do you think it's a legitimate 
objective of the FBI to stop foreign interference in our 
elections?
    Mr. Taibbi. I think it's a legitimate objective to stop 
actual foreign interference.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. I don't know what the difference is, but 
that's fine. So, since Russia used social media disinformation, 
according to Special Counsel Mueller, I understand you may 
disagree with the allegations to interfere in our 2016 
elections, are you trying to say that the FBI had no basis to 
inform social media companies about efforts to potentially 
interfere in our elections after 2016?
    Mr. Taibbi. I can tell you that I read internal Twitter 
emails where Twitter expressly talked about the fact that the 
FBI couldn't possibly know more than they did about whether or 
not there was Russian interference, and that, in fact, even 
they couldn't determine which accounts were actually IRA and 
which ones weren't.
    Mr. Goldman. OK. I understand you like to filibuster. That 
was not an answer to my question, but I'll move on.
    Mr. Shellenberger, in all the emails that you reviewed, did 
the FBI ever direct Twitter to take down any accounts or remove 
any posts?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. They directed Twitter to remove them, or they 
said these may violate your terms and services?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. Which.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I think that's an accurate use of the 
word ``direct.''
    Mr. Goldman. They said these may violate--you think that 
saying that--saying that these may violate your terms and 
conditions is the same--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I do.
    Mr. Goldman. --as directing them to take an account down.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, I think if a police officer says, 
all right, well, you broke the law.
    Mr. Goldman. That's very helpful. That's very helpful. I'm 
glad to know that you think flagging--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. --something for a private company to make a 
decision about what they should do is a direction.
    Now, Mr. Chair--
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Goldman. --you have repeatedly said that this Committee 
is all about protecting the First Amendment.
    Chair Jordan. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Goldman. What is unfortunate here is that we are 
talking about Twitter, and that we were not talking about 
Republican government officials around the country who are 
banning books. We are not talking about--
    Chair Jordan. Will the gentleman yield?
    Mr. Goldman. No, I will not. We are not talking about 
Donald Trump jailing his former counsel to prohibit him from 
publishing a book that the President did not want. The former 
President literally jailed his enemy, and we're here talking 
about Twitter. Twitter. Even with Twitter, you cannot find 
actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any 
lawful speech. When I say ``lawful,'' I mean noncriminal 
speech. Because plenty of speech is noncriminal.
    Chair Jordan. I'll give you one. The gentleman's times has 
expired. I'd unanimous consent to enter into the record the 
following email from Clark Humphrey, Executive Office of the 
Presidency White House Office. On January 23, 2021, that's the 
Biden Administration, 4:39 a.m.:

        Hey, folks--this goes to Twitter--Hey, folks, I wanted to use 
        the term--they used the term Mr. Goldman just used--wanted to 
        flag the below tweet and then wondering if we can get moving on 
        the process for having it removed ASAP.

That is--
    Mr. Goldman. Could you read the below tweet.
    Chair Jordan. Then, if we can keep an eye out for tweets 
that fall in this same genre, that would be great. This is a 
tweet on various--the various--you see the Thomas--
    Mr. Goldman. Can you just--for the fullness of the record, 
can you read the--because I have not seen this--can you read 
the tweet that it's referencing?
    Chair Jordan. I don't have the tweet here with me--
    Mr. Goldman. Oh, shocking.
    Chair Jordan. --but the gentleman's point was--tell us--you 
said, no time did government try to tell Twitter to take that--
to explicitly remove something.
    Mr. Goldman. No, I said explicitly remove lawful speech. 
Lawful speech. We're going to conflate. The First Amendment 
does not--is not absolute.
    Chair Jordan. This is something from Robert Kennedy, Jr.
    Ms. Plaskett. For the record--
    Chair Jordan. I assume that's lawful speech.
    Ms. Plaskett. --as a point of order, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Goldman. Because Robert Kennedy, Jr., said it, that's 
why it's lawful speech?
    Ms. Plaskett. Just a minute. Just a minute, Mr. Goldman.
    Chair Jordan. All I'm saying is you said, ``at no time did 
the government explicitly say to take a tweet down.'' Here we 
have it right here from the White House.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair?
    Chair Jordan. They couldn't even wait two days. Two days 
into this administration they were asking Twitter to take 
something down. We will get you the underlying tweet.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. With that I recognize the gentlelady from New 
York.
    Ms. Plaskett. Will you place it into the record as well, 
sir, the underlying tweet?
    Chair Jordan. Robert Kennedy, Jr., is talking about--he's 
talking about Hank Aaron's death after he received the vaccine. 
That's what the tweet is about. We'll give you a copy.
    Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
    Chair Jordan. I think that's--and I would say one thing, 
that's.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I--
    Chair Jordan. I would say one thing, that's--
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent--
    Chair Jordan. --that's certainly lawful speech.
    Ms. Wasserman Schultz. Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent 
to enter the tweet that you referenced into the record of the 
Committee.
    Chair Jordan. Without objection, we'll enter that into the 
record, along with the statement from the White House, the 
Biden White House two days into the administration when they're 
directly attacking the people's First Amendment liberties.
    Chair Jordan. With that I recognize the gentlelady from New 
York for five minutes.
    Ms. Stefanik. I want to yield to Mr. Johnson.
    Mr. Johnson of Louisiana. Thank you. Just to point out, 
quickly, that Mr. Goldman is proving himself to be a master of 
obfuscation. He said, the First Amendment applied to government 
censorship of speech and not private companies. What we're 
talking about and what the Chair just illustrated is that what 
we have here and what your Twitter files show is the Federal 
Government has partnered with private companies to censor and 
silence the speech of American citizens. I yield back to the 
gentlelady.
    Ms. Stefanik. I just came from an open hearing with FBI 
Director Chris Wray. He said under oath that no one from the 
FBI communicated with Twitter regarding the Hunter Biden laptop 
story. Based upon both of your courageous reporting, can you 
address that?
    Mr. Shellenberger. I mean, we saw--like I said, we don't 
know. It's at this point we just have to take his word on it. 
What we saw was a huge amount of FBI communications to Twitter. 
We saw the former deputy Chief of Staff, the former general 
counsel showing up at Twitter, right at the critical period. 
So, I find a lot of suspicious activity. I would like to ask 
him a bunch of questions about that because I find it very 
suspicious and unresolved.
    Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Taibbi, do you have comments on that?
    Mr. Taibbi. We do know that there was a teleporter 
communication that had 10 documents in it just before the story 
broke, but we don't know what those documents were, and so we 
can't suppose.
    Ms. Stefanik. Well, I don't take his word for it. We have 
lots of examples where it has not been--they've not been 
accurate from that particular agency when it comes to 
testifying before Congress. So, it is our job in this Committee 
to get to the truth, to shine sunlight and transparency for the 
American people.
    I want to ask you both about the Aspen Digital Hack and 
Dump Working Group, which involved an 11-day scenario in 
October 2020, that began with the imaginary release of 
falsified record, that's what they claim, related to Hunter 
Biden's controversial employment by the Ukrainian energy 
company, Burisma.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Right.
    Ms. Stefanik. This was if they knew, because they did know. 
So, I would like your comments, Mr. Shellenberger, these were 
the files that you did extensive reporting on about how 
concerning this is, and how this is truly the definition of the 
weaponization against free speech and suppressing accurate 
reporting.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes, so there's actually two things, and 
one of them we just discovered recently, which is there was a 
Stanford Cyber Policy Institute Report which said that--which 
was, in menacing terms, telling journalists that they should 
abandon the Pentagon principle. Again, this is the Pentagon 
paper's principle. This the idea that--if Daniel Ellsberg 
brings you materials he's taken from the Pentagon, about how 
the war in Vietnam is going. The New York Times and The 
Washington Post publish those, that was considered one of the 
greatest moments of American journalism. Here you have Stanford 
Cyber Policy Center saying, you should abandon that principle. 
You should have instead made the issue about, frankly the 
theories about where it might have come from.
    Then you had the Aspen workshop, which was attended, by the 
way The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, Wikipedia, 
Facebook, Twitter, many other journalists where they 
basically--you read it, it's like a kind of programming of the 
journalists that they should not follow this longstanding 
journalistic principle of taking materials from a hack and 
leak, or any other situation and take them seriously. So, I 
mean, you read this, and it feels like a kind of brainwashing 
exercise that Aspen and Stanford were running against American 
journalists in the social media companies.
    Ms. Stefanik. Mr. Taibbi, any comments?
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, I think there were a couple of moments in 
the Twitter files that really speak to a kind of larger 
problem. In the first Twitter files we saw an exchange between 
Representative Ro Khanna and Vijaya Gadde where he's trying to 
explain the basics of speech law in America. She's seems 
completely unaware of what, for instance, New York Times v. 
Sullivan is. There are other cases like Bartnicki v. Vopper 
which legalized the publication of stolen material. That's very 
important for any journalist to know.
    I think most of these people are tech executives, and they 
don't know what the law is around speech and around reporting. 
In this case, and in 2016, you are dealing with true material. 
There is no basis to restrict the publication of true material 
no matter who the source is and how you get it. Journalists 
have always understood that. This has never been an issue or a 
controversial issue until very recently.
    Mr. Shellenberger. By the way, just one quick thing I'll 
add. That's the exact same strategy of the malinformation, 
misleading--in other words, they were saying, they were saying, 
even if the material you think is true, it could lead people to 
have conclusions that we don't want them to have, and, 
therefore, you should change your journalism because of that.
    So, we're so far down the slippery slope. You've crashed at 
that point. I mean, it's a disturbing trend in journalism and 
social media and in the relationship from the intelligence 
community to these organizations.
    Ms. Stefanik. How have you been targeted since the 
publication of the Twitter files?
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady's time has expired. We'll give 
a quick answer, if we can.
    Mr. Taibbi. Again, I have known journalists who have 
suffered real brutal harms in my career. So, they've said a lot 
of nasty things about me upon Twitter, but it hasn't been so 
bad, I would say. The FTC thing is the only thing that's 
legitimately concerning, and that's not really for my sake, 
it's more because it's a general problem for journalists 
everywhere.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I've been censored on Facebook since the 
year 2020 for writing accurate information in an article that 
went viral. I remain censored. They continue to flag warnings 
on post that I write that have nothing to do with the 
environment. We now know that one of the U.S. Government's 
funded organizations has put out a report that specifically 
targets me and presents disinformation about my own position on 
climate change. So, I've got a lot at stake here.
    Ms. Stefanik. I yield back.
    Ms. Plaskett. Mr. Chair, may I ask unanimous consent to 
enter into the record a letter dated June 25, 2020, to Mark 
Zuckerberg from Chad Wolf, the Acting Secretary of Homeland 
Security, in which he asks Twitter--asks Facebook to keep 
Americans safe by taking appropriate action, consistent with 
your terms of service against content that promotes, incites, 
or assists the commission of imminent legal activities. Those 
committed to protecting free exchange of ideas should not turn 
a blind eye to illegal activity and violence fermenting in your 
platform. This is after the summer in which Black Lives Matter 
protests took place.
    Chair Jordan. Without objection.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady from Florida is recognized for 
five minutes.
    Ms. Cammack. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our 
witnesses for appearing here today. I know it doesn't feel 
exactly warm and fuzzy, but believe me, I think what you guys 
are doing is very important.
    [Slide.]
    Ms. Cammack. We're here to discuss the weaponization of 
government. I want to follow-up on my colleague Representative 
Massie's comments on the CDC. Up on the screen, you can see an 
email from October 2020. This is from then-NIH Director Francis 
Collins to Dr. Anthony Fauci. It goes on in to say this 
proposal, talking about the Great Barrington Declaration, is 
from three fringe epidemiologists who met with the Secretary. 
It seems to be getting a lot of attention. Even a signature, a 
co-signature from a Nobel Prize winner.
    A key line in here that I would like to point out. There 
needs to be a, quote,

         . . . quick and devastating published takedown of its 
        premises. I don't see anything like that online yet. Is it 
        underway? Signed Francis

    Now, what I find interesting is if you fast forward into 
June 2021, the Biden Administration was raging at social media 
companies. There are communications that we can produce, for 
the record, that State we would like you to come combat quote, 
``misinformation.'' Now, we think, so the Twitter files know, 
that Twitter executives were using the term visibility 
filtering, and that really to the best of the American general 
public was shadow banning, correct?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Yes.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Ms. Cammack. So, all of a sudden, we saw a rash of 
blacklists created by Twitter at the highest levels that were 
taking down some of the signatories and creators of this very 
Barrington Declaration, correct? This is to both of you.
    Mr. Taibbi. I haven't seen that.
    Mr. Shellenberger. I haven't seen that either.
    Ms. Cammack. So, would you agree that there was a blacklist 
created in 2021.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Oh. Sorry. Yes. Jay Bhattacharya--
    Ms. Cammack. Yes.
    Mr. Shellenberger. --the Stanford professor who I don't 
think anybody considers a fringe epidemiologist was indeed--I'm 
sorry, I didn't piece it together--he was indeed fringe 
visibility filters.
    Ms. Cammack. Correct. So, this blacklist that was created 
that really was used to deplatform a reduced visibility--
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes.
    Ms. Cammack. --create lists internally where people 
couldn't even see their profiles, that was used against doctors 
and scientists who produced information that was contrary to 
what the CDC was putting out, despite the fact that we now know 
that what they were publishing had scientific basis and, in 
fact, was valid?
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely. Not only that, but these are 
secret blacklists. So, Professor Bhattacharya had no idea he 
was on it. I mean, this is East Germany Stasi kind of behavior. 
That's what this is. The Great Barrington Declaration, by the 
way, I was skeptical at the time, but it actually now looks 
pretty good in terms of how response to COVID. Even if it was 
totally wrong, it still deserved--this is the whole point of 
the First Amendment is that--
    Ms. Cammack. Absolutely.
    Mr. Shellenberger. --I think, we all have the experience of 
you're not right until you're wrong a lot. You actually have to 
have that debate and that conversation. So, by repressing that, 
we actually stifled a much broader conversation we could have 
had about how to effectively respond to COVID because they were 
secretly blacklisting people like Jay Bhattacharya.
    Ms. Cammack. I think to the bigger point that Americans are 
concerned about when it comes to the weaponization of 
government, this isn't Republican or a Democrat issue, this is 
an American issue. You had individuals, millions of Americans 
who, in many cases, were being mandated to take an experimental 
vaccine. When those that wanted to consider taking it were 
trying to make an informed decision, you had opinions that were 
being silenced because it didn't fit a specific narrative 
pushed by the Biden Administration, correct.
    Mr. Shellenberger. Absolutely, correct. That's why we use 
the language of disfavored ideas and disfavored people, because 
it doesn't fall neatly among left and right lines. If there's 
anything going on here, it tends to be more of a 
disproportionate blacklisting of more populist voices, or just 
ideas that we would consider slightly outside of the Overton 
window, the mainstream opinion at the time. The Overton window 
moves--
    Ms. Cammack. Right.
    Mr. Shellenberger. --and so, the idea that you're just 
going to narrow the entire--what's acceptable on social media 
to what is mainstream at the time would basically freeze us and 
not allow the society to progress and for knowledge to grow and 
for the democracy to function.
    Ms. Cammack. With the 14 seconds that I have left, Mr. 
Taibbi, you would like to weigh in on any of this that we have 
talked about and why this is a direct threat to Americans 
today, I would appreciate it.
    Mr. Taibbi. Yes, just quickly, again, we yesterday 
discovered this email talking about the suppression of people 
telling their own stories of true vaccine side effects. So, 
these are people who are telling about their own experiences, 
things that happened to them that are true. They're being 
suppressed because what anti-disinformation does is the 
opposite of what the press does. They are aiming for what the 
narrative is. They already know in advance what they're looking 
for. Whereas a journalist goes into a story, does not know what 
the truth is. We often find that the thing we expect to find 
turns out to be completely different. They know in advance what 
they're looking for, and that's why this is so dangerous.
    Ms. Cammack. My time has expired. I yield back. Thank you 
two.
    Chair Jordan. The gentlelady yields back. I want to thank 
our witnesses for being here today. I think maybe if we can get 
this right and stop this--and what I read--with legislation, 
appropriators, whatever it takes, we can stop this. I think in 
the future, people will look back and look at your courage as 
people in journalism, in the press, to come here with what 
you've been facing, what you've had to endure. Now, with the 
idea that the FTC is coming after you, that's something that I 
think is present darn important and certainly noteworthy. So, 
we appreciate you sitting here for 2\1/2\ hours, taking the 
questions you did, but giving so much valuable information to 
this Committee who is--certainly on our side--committed to 
protecting the First Amendment and peoples' right to speak.
    So, that concludes today's hearing. Again, we thank you 
both for being here. Without objection, all Members will have 
five legislative days to submit additional written questions 
for the witnesses or additional materials for the record. 
Without objection, the hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:42 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

    All materials submitted for the record by Members of the 
Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal 
Government can be found at: https://docs.house.gov/Committee/
Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=115442.