White House Objects to 'Baseless' GOP Subpoena Requests

House Republicans are again issuing “baseless subpoenas” to appease their “far-right base,” the White House said Thursday after the House Judiciary Committee sought to compel testimony in its investigation over claims the Biden administration colluded with Big Tech to censor social media content.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, announced subpoenas for Andrew Slavitt, former White House senior adviser-COVID Response Team, and White House Director of Digital Strategy Robert Flaherty. Slavitt and Flaherty have “refused to sit for interviews” despite being “directly implicated in emails between the White House and tech companies,” said Jordan during a House Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee hearing Thursday. Jordan noted that within three days of President Joe Biden's taking office, Slavitt emailed Twitter asking the company to “take down this tweet ASAP.” The tweet in question, about COVID-19, was written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Yet again, extreme House Republicans are issuing baseless subpoenas just to play to their far-right base with positions way outside the mainstream," said Ian Sams, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations. The administration "has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections." Platforms "have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present," he said.

Republicans said Thursday that the FTC, FBI and Department of Homeland Security are stonewalling committee efforts to uncover documents related to what they term censorship by the Biden administration of social media content and intimidation of tech companies like X. The agencies have shared public-facing and uninformative documents, they said, while withholding specific communication between administration officials and tech companies. “It’s impossible to get a full accounting of the government’s censorship efforts when the government actors will not participate with our constitutional duty to do oversight,” said Jordan.

FBI and DHS officials engaged in a “regular stream of communication” with the biggest U.S. tech companies to create an “organized system” for flagging and removing social media content, Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi told the subcommittee. His colleague, Michael Shellenberger, testified that a former FBI general counsel and a former FBI deputy director were hired at then-Twitter, where they formed internal working groups to focus on the issue. That group, along with another internal group formed by ex-CIA officials, had access to government documents the agencies have so far redacted in response to committee requests, he said.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., noted that Republicans invited the same two witnesses to a hearing in July on the same topic. This is an investigation of the federal government and yet no government employees were present to testify, Lynch said. Republicans have conveniently ignored testimony from 29 government employees who say there’s no evidence of officials colluding with tech companies to censor speech, said House Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee ranking member Stacey Plaskett, D-V.I.

The House Accountability to Oversight Subcommittee held a separate hearing Thursday in which officials from the FTC, FBI and State Department answered questions about compliance with committee requests. The FTC has provided wide-ranging, “clear” responses to requests regarding allegations the agency harassed Twitter employees after Elon Musk bought the platform (see 2304120052), FTC Congressional Relations Director Jeanne Bumpus told committee members Thursday. The agency has received “15 letters with 76 specific requests” from the House Judiciary Committee since a March oversight hearing, she said. The agency has responded with “29 letters, 20 productions, five transcribed interviews, two non-public briefings, hearing testimony, and more than 8,500 pages of documents.”

The FTC’s responses have been inadequate, House Accountability to Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Ben Cline, R-Va., said during his opening remarks. Citing Chair Lina Khan’s “radical agenda,” he accused the FTC of withholding key materials without any “sound basis.”

Ranking member Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., criticized Republicans for pulling government employees away from their daily work to testify at “insane” hearings at the request of former President Donald Trump. Swalwell noted Jordan has spent nearly 600 days evading a subpoena about his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The committee is “indulging in fantasy detached from reality,” Olivia Troye, former homeland security adviser and counterterrorism adviser in the Trump administration, testified. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., accused Troye of giving false testimony. He provided an example of a tweet from his official congressional account, which the government-funded Stanford Virality Project flagged for removal. The tweet referenced an Israeli study claiming natural COVID-19 immunity is as effective as vaccination. He accused the administration of working to censor official “communication with my constituents.”