That the Biden administration, through multiple channels, schemed to suppress reports on social media and elsewhere that it disliked during the 2020 election season already has been documented.
Now testimony is coming out about how big the operation, which allowed administration officials to complain to various foundations and the FBI about disliked messages, and the foundations then would lobby Big Tech for censorship, actually was.
According to an investigative report at Just the News, FBI agent Elvis Chan's testimony in a lawsuit over censorship brought by officials in Missouri and Louisiana has become available.
His statements confirmed that the FBI "ran an operation during the 2020 election that requested social media companies remove the content as disinformation."
And he implicated the top levels of the bureaucracy.
The report explains Chan operated in the FBI's cyber branch in San Francisco, and confirmed he supervised a "command post" in his home city that pursued censorship of what the FBI claimed was "disinformation."
Among the topics that the FBI lobbied to suppress was accurate reporting about Hunter Biden's suspect international business deals that generated payments to the Biden family of millions from Russian and Chinese sources.
"He described a sprawling operation that at time enlisted the help of FBI field offices around the country, federal prosecutors, and FBI and Justice Department lawyers before his unit would make the final request to social media to block content deemed by the operation to be disinformation or in violation of each company’s term of service," the report said.
He recalled getting responses from social media companies, often with confirmation "they had taken down the posts."
Members of Congress already have expressed concern that the FBI's operations may have violated constitutional prohibitions on government shutting down speech. The Constitution disallows that, but in this case it apparently were the Big Tech companies who made the actual decisions, after being lobbied by various foundations at the behest of the Biden administration.
The report explained, "Several lawmakers interviewed Wednesday by Just the News said they were troubled to learn of the scope of the operation and FBI headquarters' significant role in it."
Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said, "Should be very concerning to everyone who cares about the First Amendment, who cares about civil liberties." His comments came in an interview on the "Just the News, Not Noise" television show.
He said if it's not already, it should be illegal for the FBI to meddle in an election to the benefit of one political party.
Chan also claimed he was not aware of FBI involvement in the biggest censorship scandal, that of the suppression of accurate reporting about Hunter Biden's international business dealings.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg already has said his platform blocked the story as disinformation at the urging of the FBI.
Chan also explained that he encouraged people to complain about "disinformation," complaints that were reviewed, then sent to field offices, sent to "headquarters" for approval and then sent to social media companies seeking censorship.
The report explained Chan's censorship plans, which he confirmed were successful in getting about half of its targeted reports removed, were "in addition to a separate censorship operation carried out by a private consortium known as the Election Integrity Partnership that worked closely with CISA and a State Department office. That operation, sanctioned by the federal agencies, targeted more than 20 news organizations, including Just the News, two dozen conservative influencers and 22 million social media posts, the group has admitted."
via unsilencednews