The battle over free speech in America continues to rage in Washington.
Biden administration officials are still defending their censorship efforts.
And Matt Taibbi silenced Biden’s former disinformation czar with one brutal truth bomb.
Twitter Files journalist exposes government’s war on free speech
The “censorship industrial complex” that grew under Joe Biden’s administration came under fire during a heated Capitol Hill hearing Tuesday where journalist Matt Taibbi faced off against Nina Jankowicz, Biden’s short-lived “disinformation czar.”
The House Foreign Affairs South and Central Asia Subcommittee held the hearing to examine the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which was originally created to counter foreign disinformation but reportedly morphed into a domestic censorship operation.
Taibbi, who helped expose the “Twitter Files” after Elon Musk gave him access to internal documents, didn’t mince words when addressing what the GEC actually did.
“The American government has no role in protecting citizens from speech,” Taibbi declared, sending shockwaves through the hearing room.
“The whole idea of the system that was designed by Jefferson and Madison is that the American people view each other as adults who are capable of sorting out the truth for themselves,” he continued, hitting at the very premise of government-led “truth” commissions.
In his most devastating blow, Taibbi concluded: “We don’t need a truth squad — and that’s exactly what GEC was designed for.”
The journalist revealed that his investigation of Twitter’s internal documents showed GEC officials were primarily targeting everyday American accounts, not foreign threats.
“GEC officials were largely concerned with domestic, English-language accounts — people with no ties to terror groups or relationships with adversary nations like Iran, China or Russia,” Taibbi testified.
This disclosure directly contradicted the Biden administration’s claims that such efforts were only aimed at foreign disinformation threats.
Biden’s censorship machine targeted both sides of the political spectrum
While many conservatives believed they were the exclusive targets of government-Big Tech censorship partnerships, Taibbi revealed a much broader effort to control speech.
“Although many of the most controversial stories about the GEC involve their funding of commercial media-scoring operations that down-ranked conservative news outlets, I also observed the GEC pressuring Twitter about socialist accounts, left-leaning accounts, and independents, as well as conservatives,” Taibbi said.
This wasn’t simple fact-checking or countering actual misinformation, according to Taibbi.
“They weren’t looking for misinformation and disinformation,” he explained. “They were looking for orthodoxy and unorthodoxy, obedience and disobedience.”
The independent journalist didn’t hold back in characterizing what he viewed as the true purpose behind these operations.
“The idea behind GEC in particular was finding a way to propagandize American citizens and encourage acceptance of official policy, the way we’ve always done to foreign populations,” Taibbi told lawmakers.
Jankowicz still defending Biden-era censorship tactics
Jankowicz, who was appointed to lead Biden’s short-lived “Disinformation Governance Board” within the Department of Homeland Security before public backlash forced its closure, tried to dismiss the entire hearing.
“The so-called Censorship Industrial Complex is a fiction that has not only had profound impacts on my life and safety but on our national security,” she claimed in her opening statement.
She then tried to flip the script by accusing the Trump administration of committing “far more egregious violations of our Constitution” than “the imagined actions of the Biden administration.”
This came from the same official who had labeled The New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation” in October 2020 – a claim that has since been thoroughly debunked by multiple intelligence agencies.
Jankowicz’s Biden-era “Disinformation Board” was widely mocked for her cringe-worthy Mary Poppins themed TikTok video about fighting “disinformation.”
Twitter Files exposed coordinated efforts to suppress critical information
Taibbi highlighted how the “Twitter Files” exposed government pressure that led to the censorship of The Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story and the COVID-19 lab leak theory – both of which later proved to be credible.
The laptop story, which revealed Hunter Biden’s introduction of his father to foreign business associates, was throttled on social media platforms after pressure from government officials.
Similarly, the lab leak theory, now considered the most likely explanation for COVID-19’s origins by multiple intelligence agencies including the FBI and Department of Energy, was systematically suppressed as “misinformation.”
Benjamin Weingarten, an investigative journalist who also testified, noted that a federal district court judge described the federal censorship effort – which Taibbi had earlier dubbed “digital McCarthyism” – as “arguably the most massive attack on free speech in US history.”
“Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had that same view. Three Supreme Court justices did as well,” Weingarten told the subcommittee. “And while it’s been dismissed, that case, the fact of the matter is that the Supreme Court specifically did not rule on the underlying merits — the thousands of pages of discovery which blew the lid open on this entire regime.”
While the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the case against the Biden administration in a 6-3 decision, it did so on grounds of standing rather than ruling on whether the censorship practices were constitutional.
Subcommittee chairman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) noted that government agencies had been using their regulatory power as a “cudgel” against free speech.
The GEC, which was finally closed down by Congress, reportedly underwent a “rebranding” effort within the State Department during Biden’s final days in office – a sign that some elements of the censorship apparatus may still be trying to survive.
