The FBI and Disinformation A worthy inquiry for a Republican House.By James Freeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fbi-and-disinformation-11668550298?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
Now that Republicans appear poised to capture a House majority, what should they do with it? This column is largely in agreement with those urging the GOP to focus on thoughtful legislative proposals to advance individual liberty and fiscal sanity, rather than partisan investigations. But there is at least one issue at the heart of individual liberty that demands investigation, even if Democrats aren’t eager to participate. U.S. citizens will not continue to enjoy foundational constitutional liberties if the FBI is permitted to abuse its powers as it did in targeting the 2016 Trump campaign and may have done in assisting the 2020 Biden campaign. A responsible defense of our First Amendment freedoms requires a thorough inquiry to determine to what extent the FBI and other federal agencies lean on social media companies to suppress government-designated “disinformation.”
The need is even more urgent given an exchange between a reporter and President Joe Biden at a White House press conference last week. Here’s an excerpt from the official transcript:
Q … Mr. President, do you think Elon Musk is a threat to U.S. national security? And should the U.S. — and with the tools you have — investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?
THE PRESIDENT: (Laughs.) I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I’m not suggesting that. I’m suggesting that it wor- — worth being looked at. And — and — but that’s all I’ll say.
Q How?
THE PRESIDENT: There’s a lot of ways.
Sunshine is especially needed here because with those words President Joe Biden is encouraging his executive branch to investigate Twitter’s new owner. It happens that this new owner is determined not to repeat Twitter’s disgraceful censorship of the New York Post’s accurate 2020 reporting on Biden family enrichment schemes.
Were government actors behind the 2020 social media blackout? Joseph Wulfsohn of Fox News noted in August:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the FBI approached Facebook warning the platform about “Russian propaganda” ahead of the bombshell Hunter Biden laptop story leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
Appearing on Thursday’s installment of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Zuckerberg was asked about Facebook’s suppression of the New York Post’s reporting that shed light on the shady foreign business dealings of the son of then-candidate Joe Biden.
Zuckerberg began by stressing how Facebook took a “different path” than Twitter, which completely censored the Post’s reporting while Facebook limited its reach on the platform.
“Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us- some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,’” Zuckerberg told host Joe Rogan.
Over at Twitter, it seems there will be no more censorship of Biden scandals, and now in Washington there is eagerness for an investigation of the company. The Saudi relationship can hardly be a reason for Mr. Biden to now become interested in Mr. Musk’s stewardship of Twitter. As the Journal’s Allysia Finley noted recently, a Saudi stake in the business is nothing new:
Democrats are raising a new bogeyman. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy on Oct. 31 called for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, to investigate the “national security implications of Saudi Arabia’s purchase of Twitter.”
… The Saudi government didn’t “purchase” Twitter. A Saudi prince’s conglomerate, Kingdom Holding Co., held a roughly $1.89 billion stake in Twitter as a public company that it is rolling over in Mr. Musk’s deal to take it private. Mr. Murphy says the Saudis have a “clear political motivation” because they could have cashed out of Twitter as many public investors did, which “would have been the financially sound thing to do.”
Not if the Saudis, like former CEO Jack Dorsey and U.S. venture funds that kept or acquired stakes, believe Mr. Musk will turn the challenged company around. Democrats may struggle to comprehend this, but not everyone agrees that Mr. Musk is destined to fail.
Haisten Willis writes at the Washington Examiner:
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, went even further than the president on Thursday, suggesting the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, should investigate Musk’s Twitter ownership because that is where “transactions that might have a national security nexus get reviewed.” CFIUS includes the Justice Department as well as Treasury and other executive departments.
Americans may never learn what exactly foreign plutocrats received in return for the millions of dollars they have sent to Biden entities. But a careful examination of federal action to discourage reporting of this scandal is likely to yield valuable information, and perhaps build the case for reform of the FBI and other serial abusers in the federal bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang wrote recently at the Intercept that while an infamous government censorship scheme has been abandoned, the desire to control discourse has not:
The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.
The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.
Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt… discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.
Now that Mr. Schmitt, a Republican, has been elected to the Senate, perhaps he can be a helpful colleague to House investigators.
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