Last week, Republicans on the U.S. House Judiciary and the Oversight and Reform Committees wrote Mark Zuckerberg, insisting Facebook suppressed the allegations about the Biden family before the 2020 election.
They pointed to a recent podcast in which Zuckerberg talked about Facebook’s handling of a New York Post’s story about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop. The Republican lawmakers are seeking all documents and communications between Facebook, the FBI, and the Democratic National Committee about the Post’s reporting on the Biden family.
Florida Republican U.S. Reps. Byron Donalds, Scott Franklin, Matt Gaetz and Greg Steube signed the ltetter.
“Recently, you described how Facebook’s censorship of the allegations about the Biden family before the 2020 election followed a message from the Federal Bureau of Investigation that Facebook ‘should be on high alert’ for ‘Russian propaganda.’ You acknowledged that this official alert from the FBI is what led to Facebook reducing the circulation of the Post’s reporting on its platform, preventing Americans from fully understanding highly relevant allegations about President Biden’s awareness of and involvement in his family’s influence-peddling scheme. Accordingly, we write to request additional information about Facebook’s actions to interfere in free and fair election-related public discourse,” wrote the Republican lawmakers.
“We have seen in recent months how some in government have sought to use Big Tech to censor divergent viewpoints and silence opposing political speech. Government-driven and Big Tech-implemented censorship suppresses freedom of speech and free thought online in ways that harm public discourse. Facebook’s suppression of the Post article—and allegations of Biden family corruption highly relevant to the 2020 presidential election—following guidance from the FBI is highly troubling,” continued the Republican lawmakers.
