Republican Florida Sen. Rick Scott held Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ feet to the fire about “disinformation” spread by President Joe Biden’s administration during a Tuesday Senate hearing.
Scott paired his questioning of Mayorkas with a large poster board that listed several topics he alleges the Biden administration has lied about including border security, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Chinese spy balloon that traversed across the country in February, according to video from the hearing.
“There’s a whole bunch of people in the Biden administration who put out false narratives. They’ve said the border’s secure, they’ve said Hunter Biden’s laptop is not real. They’ve said the Afghanistan withdrawal was successful. They’ve said the Chinese spy balloon over the United States is not a threat,” Scott listed. “All that, as we all have found out, is untrue. Now we’ve learned from the Twitter Files is that government is working with and funds NGOs to censor millions of Americans via Big Tech in direct violation of our First Amendment rights.”
Scott also pressed Mayorkas about the DHS’ involvement with digital censorship, pointing several times to the Twitter Files saga that revealed how the U.S. government worked with social media companies to censor and monitor accounts (RELATED: Joy Reid Calls ‘Twitter Files’ Journos ‘Shills’ For Elon Musk’s ‘Narrative’ About Censorship)
Mayorkas pushed back that the DHS does not “censor speech” and that he wanted “to nip that misimpression in the bud,” according to the video.
“We don’t do that and, I should say, that the personnel of the Department of Homeland Security … not only have unflinching dedication to missions, but also have unflinching dedication to the law that they enforce,” he said.
“Let’s just go to the facts,” Scott said. “The Biden administration has said all those things, and now Elon Musk has been clear that the Biden administration has had access to private messages … Twitter messages.”
Scott then grilled Mayorkas about whether or not he believed the Biden administration’s claims about the several national security examples, according to the video. Mayorkas did not immediately answer the question, but denied that DHS has access to monitor private Twitter messages unless it is vital to a criminal investigation.
“I can assure you that it is not our job, nor do we do it, to censor speech. What we do is we assess the threat landscape that this country confronts so that we can secure the homeland and protect the American people,” he said. “That’s what we do, and our Office of Intelligence and Analysis has a responsibility which it fulfills to understand that threat landscape, to understand what the threats are that we face.”
Mayorkas “would be concerned” with DHS employees reading private Twitter messages outside of a criminal investigation, he told Scott while clarifying that his opinion “is not informed by the law.” Any employee who violates the law is held accountable and “do not represent the workforce of the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.
Tuesday’s hearing was held by the Committee on Homeland Security & National Affairs about the DHS’ Fiscal Year 2024 budget, according to the committee website.
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