Mark Zuckerberg personally told Jim Jordan's committee the Hunter Biden censorship was a mistake he would not repeat.
The IRS agents who exposed Hunter Biden's corruption just found out what that promise was worth.
What Facebook said to them is something Zuckerberg cannot explain to Congress.
Facebook and Google Blocked Every Ad for the Hunter Biden Whistleblower Documentary
Empower Oversight – the watchdog group that represented IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler – is crowdfunding a documentary called Shielded by Power: The Whistleblowers vs. The Big Guy.
The film covers how two decorated federal investigators blew the whistle on political interference in the Hunter Biden tax probe, got punished for it, and were ultimately proven right when Hunter plead guilty to nine tax offenses.
Empower Oversight launched digital ads on Facebook, Google, and X to drive viewers to the documentary's website.
Not a single ad has run.
"We have met every condition required," Empower Oversight President Tristan Leavitt wrote in a letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and three House committee chairmen. "But Meta simply suspended the ad account. Google also suspended our ads account. To date, not a single ad has run on any of the three platforms – and even their customer service representatives can't explain why."
One Meta customer service specialist did manage an explanation of sorts.
The platform doesn't "support the scope of this content," the specialist told Leavitt's team.
Facebook is blocking ads for a documentary that exposes Facebook's own censorship of this exact same story.
Zuckerberg Admitted Facebook Suppressed the Hunter Biden Laptop Story in 2020
In 2022, Zuckerberg admitted on The Joe Rogan Experience that Facebook suppressed the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story for five or seven days before the 2020 election – acting on an FBI warning about Russian disinformation – and later wrote to Jim Jordan's committee that doing so was a mistake he regretted.
The FBI had possessed Hunter Biden's laptop since 2019 and authenticated it months before the Post published. The bureau was warning tech companies to suppress a story it already knew was real.
Then he did it again.
Google blocked Empower Oversight's ad account and sent written notice that the ads were rejected as election-related content. When The Daily Signal contacted a Google spokesman who denied any account action had occurred, the spokesman went silent after being shown screenshots of the rejection notices.
X, now owned by Elon Musk, has also failed to run a single ad. Leavitt said he doesn't believe Musk wants to censor the film but can't get anyone at the company to explain the delay.
IRS Whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler Proved the Cover-Up Was Real
Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler spent years investigating Hunter Biden's failure to pay taxes on $8.3 million in income.
When they tried to follow the evidence – including WhatsApp messages in which Hunter appeared to discuss business with his father – prosecutors blocked them at every turn, barred them from asking witnesses about Joe Biden, pulled them off the case, and threatened them with criminal charges for reporting misconduct through proper channels.
Then they came forward to Congress anyway.
Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax crimes. The IRS and DOJ settled retaliation claims against both agents and required mandatory training to deter future misconduct. President Trump brought Shapley and Ziegler into the Treasury Department as senior advisers.
That's the story Meta doesn't support the scope of.
Grassley told The Daily Signal that Shapley and Ziegler "are honest and skilled investigators who did a patriotic thing by blowing the whistle" and that they've "suffered shameful smears and retaliation."
Big Tech Censorship Is Back and Congress Is Being Asked to Act
Zuckerberg flew to Mar-a-Lago after Trump won. The platforms ended fact-checking programs, put Republicans on their boards, and promised Washington they were done silencing conservatives.
That lasted about a year.
Empower Oversight has now asked Grassley, Jordan, Comer, and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith to investigate whether federal action is needed to stop tech companies from suppressing conservative political content – and whether other advocacy groups are hitting the same invisible wall.
They are.
Killing a story doesn't require a ban. Suspend an ad account. Flag content as election-related when no election is happening. Tell a nonprofit its documentary falls outside permitted content and wait for them to run out of money.
Facebook and Google did all of that to the men who proved they rigged the information environment in 2020.
Shapley and Ziegler didn't give up. The platforms are betting Empower Oversight will.
Sources:
- Fred Lucas, "Whistleblower Group Says Big Tech Blocking Ads for Documentary Alleging Biden Corruption," The Daily Signal, April 12, 2026.
- Tristan Leavitt, Letter to Senate Judiciary Committee and House Committee Chairmen, Empower Oversight, April 1, 2026.
- "Déjà Vu: Hunter Biden Whistleblower Documentary Ads 'Suppressed' by Big Tech," Just the News, April 2026.
- "U.S. Department of the Treasury Brings Back IRS Whistleblowers Wrongly Punished in Biden Probe," U.S. Department of the Treasury, March 18, 2025.
- "Hearing Wrap Up: IRS Whistleblowers Expose How Bidens Were Treated Differently," House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, July 2023.
- "Facebook Execs Suppressed Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal to Curry Favor with Biden-Harris Admin," House Judiciary Committee, October 2024.
