Senator Schmitt Chairs Commerce Committee Hearing on Government Censorship, Need to Protect Free Speech

'We Must Hold Big Tech and Government Censors Accountable'

WASHINGTON - Today, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) chaired a Senate Commerce Committee hearing to examine how government agencies under the Biden Administration pressured Big Tech into censoring and silencing Americans and urged Congress to act to protect free speech from government and Big Tech censors.

Watch Senator Schmitt's opening remarks HERE

"Our Founding Fathers recognized freedom of speech as vital, protecting it first and foremost in the Bill of Rights. While some argued that free speech was already protected because the Constitution did not give the government power to censor, the Framers went further, affirmatively restricting government intrusion. The First Amendment is the beating heart of our Constitution. Free speech is not just instrumental but an end in itself. In the digital age, with all the peril and possibility that accompanies it, the struggle for free speech is the struggle for civilization itself," Senator Schmitt said during his opening remarks.

Senator Schmitt on How Government Colluded with Big Tech to Censor Conservatives:

Senator Schmitt: "I mean, the truth of the matter is, what was uncovered [when] we took their deposition [during Missouri v Biden], the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] had approved words and phrases that social media companies could use. The secret portal that was established between the government and these social media companies convey this. And if people utter this phrase - I mean, this is sort of like prior restraint - this is what you will take down ahead of time. CISA [the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency] was very much involved in this. You have an alphabet soup of agencies most people have never heard of that were weaponized against millions of voices in this country. We talk about President Trump a lot, but there's just a lot of people who were online, who had questions about forced masking of kids, or the vaccine mandate, all those sorts of things, and they were throttled or taken down. So, given what you know about organizations, like the Election Integrity Project, that's another one, in collaboration with CISA and receive taxpayer funding. How are these NGOs [non-governmental organizations] still working currently to harm individuals from speaking their mind, particularly conservatives?"

Sean Davis, Chief Executive Officer of The Federalist: "Yeah, it's a great question. The thing about these censorship tools and technologies and efforts is they're a little bit like injecting something into the body's bloodstream. They inject it in. It's in there. It's working its thing. And just because you pull the needle out doesn't mean the effects are gone. A lot of these organizations are still out there using technologies and tools that were deliberately funded and distributed by the federal government for the purpose of censoring people like me, people like Alex Berenson, people like my colleague Molly Hemingway. I don't know if we will ever actually be free of the effects of this censorship industrial complex that the previous administration created. I don't know if we will ever be free of the horrible effect that it created, the horrible dampening and abridgment of our speech that we were forced to endure secretly for years, and the extent of which we still don't fully know."

Senator Schmitt: "Okay, in limited time, I want to [ask] Mr. Berenson, it's clear now that during the Biden administration, CISA, which is mentioned a lot in this report obviously, operated kind of a switchboarding mechanism during this period, flagging disfavored content from domestic sources for social media platforms. Based on what you've seen, how is CISA specifically doing this? What was the abuse really all about?

Alex Berenson, Independent Journalist and Author: "Well, again, I think you laid it out. They redefined infrastructure, you know, so it wasn't actual physical infrastructure or software infrastructure. It was things people were saying. And, there was a period very early in 2022 when they actually tried to redefine terrorism as quote, unquote 'misinformation'. There's a bulletin from February 2022, which, I think, DHS put out and then retracted under pressure. Once you start saying that people's speech is terrorism, you're going down a bad path. And I don't think that's something that either party should do, honestly."

Watch Senator Schmitt's first line of questioning HERE.

Watch Senator Schmitt's second line of questioning HERE.

Background:

• During his tenure as Missouri's Attorney General, Senator Schmitt filed the landmark Missouri v. Biden lawsuit, which uncovered the vast censorship enterprise perpetrated by the Biden administration during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Senator Schmitt introduced the COLLUDE Act, which would strip Section 230 protections from social media companies that censor speech at the behest of government actors.
• Senator Schmitt introduced the Censorship Accountability Act, which would allow citizens to hold individual bureaucrats accountable if they collude with social media companies to censor speech.

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