Republican Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt called out the Biden administration’s push to have social media companies remove posts from conservative users during Thursday testimony in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
Schmitt, who previously served as state Attorney General, sued the Biden administration in May 2022 over its reported interactions with social media giants. Documents produced during discovery showed that White House officials pushed Facebook, Twitter and Google to remove posts questioning the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and containing information from Hunter Biden’s laptop. Top Biden administration officials, including former chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci, have been ordered to give depositions. (RELATED: FBI Official Admits Agency Colluded Weekly With Facebook To Flag, Take Down Posts)
“Discovery obtained by Missouri and Louisiana demonstrated that the Biden administration’s coordination with social media companies and collusion with non–governmental organizations to censor speech was far more pervasive and destructive than ever known,” Schmitt told the committee. “Documents discovered by Missouri and Louisiana reveal multiple White House officials, from the former press secretary to the digital director, relentlessly pressuring social media companies to remove specific posts or accounts, or expand censorship practices.”
“Biden & his team colluded with social media to censor *truthful* info on a scale never before seen…. The FBI planted false info to deceive social media into censoring Hunter Biden laptop… FBI had a 50% success rate in getting info censored.” — Sen. @Eric_Schmitt pic.twitter.com/5T8ZqhtCpc
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) March 30, 2023
Schmitt noted Fauci’s push to have the lab leak theory censored from social media sites, despite the fact that his agency funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases gave more than $600,000 to WIV through a subgrant to the nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance.
“Dr. Fauci was aware early in the pandemic that his agency had funded dangerous gain–of–function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but he sought to discredit and suppress the theory that COVID–19 leaked from that lab to defect blame and avoid potential responsibility for the pandemic,” the senator testified. “Because of Dr. Fauci’s influence, social media platforms censored the lab-leak theory and other COVID-19 viewpoints that Dr. Fauci and his cabal of ‘experts’ disfavored.”