The House Judiciary Committee was due to vote on contempt of Congress charges Thursday against Facebook (now Meta) founder Mark Zuckerberg, but Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said 11th-hour documents put that vote on hold.
Facebook's documents "prove" unconstitutional pressure from President Joe Biden's White House and administration put on the social media website to censor Americans, a First Amendment violation on behalf of government, Jordan alleged in a Twitter Files-like thread Thursday. You can read the full thread here.
"These documents, AND OTHERS that were just produced to the committee, prove that the Biden admin. abused its powers to coerce Facebook into censoring Americans, preventing free and open discourse on issues of critical public importance," Jordan tweeted.
"Only after the Committee announced its intention to hold Mark Zuckerberg in contempt did Facebook produce ANY internal documents to the Committee, including these documents, which PROVE that government pressure was directly responsible for censorship on Facebook," Jordan continued in a tweet.
"Based on Facebook's newfound commitment to fully cooperate with the Committee's investigation, the Committee has decided to hold contempt in abeyance," Jordan concluded.
"For now.
"To be clear, contempt is still on the table and WILL be used if Facebook fails to cooperate in FULL."
Jordan is now alleging a full-fledged abuse of White House and government power to censor dissent on Facebook, working through pressure and government actors tight with Facebook officials to block constitutionally protected freedom of speech.
"Never-before-released internal documents subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee PROVE that Facebook and Instagram censored posts and changed their content moderation policies because of unconstitutional pressure from the Biden White House," Jordan tweeted as the start of the Facebook Files: Part 1.
The White House declined to comment on the allegations of pressure to censor Americans through White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the daily press briefing.
"So what I can say, honestly, on this because it's an ongoing case," Jean-Pierre said, referring to a federal court ruling earlier this month that the Biden administration cease communicating with private Big Tech companies on its content moderation agenda.
"We're going to be very careful about speaking about this," she added, before flipping to a prepared statement on the matters.
"As I have repeated many times from here, we have promoted responsible actions to protect public health safety and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections," her statement concluded, before speaking further to reporters.
"And we have consistently made clear that we believe social media companies have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects of their platforms that they have on the American people, while making independent decisions about the content of their platforms.
"That continues to be the case. That has not changed on what we believe here."