The subcommittee, operating within the House Judiciary Committee, said today’s hearing was intended to “examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans,” “Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech” and the ongoing Missouri v. Biden lawsuit alleging government censorship.
Other witnesses who testified today included D. John Sauer, special assistant attorney general for Louisiana, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Missouri v. Biden case, Breitbart journalist Emma-Jo Morris, who in 2020 first revealed the now-infamous “Hunter Biden laptop story,” and Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Government censorship and alleged First Amendment violations on the part of the federal government featured prominently in today’s hearing. “We need to be able to talk,” Kennedy told the committee. “And, the First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for.”
In his testimony, Sauer referred to the July 4 ruling by Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, which barred the White House and federal agencies from censoring social media posts. He said:
“The government likes to claim that social media platforms acting on their own would apply their policies and censor all this content. … The Louisiana Court found that the platforms would not have suppressed this speech, but for the fact that the federal officials were pushing for it.”
Calling the scope and reach of the federal censorship efforts “staggering,” Sauer added:
“Millions of social media posts and speakers [were censored] all across America. It affects virtually every American who reads, listens, engages, or posts on social media about great disputed political and social questions that federal censors have stuck their fingers into …. Federal officials’ censorship efforts are in full swing and they’re expanding to new frontiers.”
