Mayorkas, Under Oath, Denies that Admin Pressured Social Media Companies to Censor Content

HAWLEY: “Now, you said earlier this year that you disbanded the disinformation governance board, which I thought was totally unconstitutional, but that turns out to be at best misleading. That’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what you’re doing. Your own quadrennial review, which was just reported in the press, says that this information is going to be the new focus at DHS.
The quad review says that DHS plans to target, I’m quoting now, ‘inaccurate information domestically on a wide array of subjects,’ including, quoting, ‘the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support for Ukraine.’ A federal judge has just found, as a finding of fact, Mr. Secretary, that your office, and I’m going to quote now, is supervising the nerve center of federally directed censorship. Here’s another email, August 20th, 2021, Facebook writes again to HHS and highlights that Facebook is ‘increasing the strength of our demotions for covert and vaccine-related content.’ April 16th, 2021, Rob Flaherty at the White House circulates as Zoom meeting invitation to Twitter employees stating White House staff will be briefed by Twitter on vaccine misinformation. We have example after example of this administration coordinated, apparently, according to a federal court, by your agency, pressuring, coercing social media companies to engage in censorship. Is that constitutional?”
MAYORKAS: “That is unequivocally false.”
HAWLEY: “It’s what the emails show.”
MAYORKAS: “It is unequivocally false, senator.”
HAWLEY: “You are not pressuring the Big Tech companies to take down accounts? You are not meeting with them to ask them to censor on your behalf?”
MAYORKAS: “That is correct. We are not.”
HAWLEY: “Mr. Secretary, it has been established for years in this country, as you very well know, because you’re a lawyer, that the federal government may not use private third parties to engage in activities that are unconstitutional. That’s exactly what you and this administration are doing. You are leveraging private companies to carry out censorship on your behalf. It’s dystopian. But worse than that, it’s unconstitutional.”
MAYORKAS: “It’s also false.”