On Tuesday, lawyers from the office of Missouri’s Attorneys General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Jeff Landry deposed FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan as part of their lawsuit. The lawsuit against Biden’s administration accuses high-ranking officials of colluding with giant social media companies “under the guise of combating misinformation” to push through censorship.
Chan works in the FBI’s San Francisco bureau. He was questioned under oath by court order about his “critical role,” “coordinating with social-media platforms relating to censorship and suppression of speech on their platforms.”
Missouri AG Eric Schmitt tweeted,
“BREAKING: In our deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan on Tuesday, we found that the FBI plays a big role in working with social media companies to censor speech – from weekly meetings with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election to ask for account takedowns.”
🚨BREAKING: In our deposition of FBI agent Elvis Chan on Tuesday, we found that the FBI plays a big role in working with social media companies to censor speech – from weekly meetings with social media companies ahead of the 2020 election to asks for account takedowns.
— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) December 2, 2022
This is clearly both a violation of the First Amendment and election interference. Apparently, the meeting went from quarterly to monthly to weekly as the presidential election neared. Allegedly the FBI told social media companies to be aware that Russians could try operations to “hack and dump” or hack and leak.”
On Aug 26th, during an interview between Joe Rogan and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO said, “the FBI basically came to us,” telling Facebook to be “on high alert” regarding “a lot of Russian propaganda.” Zuckerberg noted the FBI said, “there’s about to be some kind of dump… that’s similar to that, so just be vigilant.”
Rogan asked Zuckerberg how they handle controversial stories. Zuckerberg then discussed how the FBI approached Facebook about the potential Russian propaganda over Hunter’s laptop. He went on to say people were still able to share the story, but the distribution of the story was decreased, limiting the number of viewers who could see it.
One Twitter user posted the surprising exchange between Zuckerberg and Rogan, saying, “Here I’ll do your research for you.”
Here I’ll do your research for you
— Max walker (@Maxwalk08486620) November 29, 2022
Louisiana Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty ordered Chan’s deposition on Nov 14, writing,
“Chan had authority over cybersecurity issues for the FBI in the San Francisco, California region, which includes the headquarters of major social media platforms and played a critical role for the FBI in coordinating with social-media platforms related to censorship.” He continued, “Even if Chan played no role in the Hunter Biden laptop communication issue, he may have knowledge of who did, and his deposition is nonetheless warranted,” the judge said. “If Chan played no role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, then such information will be made clear in his deposition.”
According to Fox News, more evidence of interference and censorship has been discovered during the investigation. AG Schmitt said that,
“Since filing our lawsuit, we’ve uncovered troves of discoveries that show a massive ‘censorship enterprise.’ Now, we’re deposing top government officials, and we’re one of the first to get a look under the hood — the information we’ve uncovered through those depositions has been shocking, to say the least. It’s clear from Tuesday’s deposition that the FBI has an extremely close role in working to censor freedom of speech.”
AG Schmitt tweeted, “Chan stated that the FBI regularly sent social media companies lists of URLs and social media accounts that should be taken down because they were disinformation from “malign foreign influence operations.” The FBI then inquired whether the platforms had taken down the content.”
https://twitter.com/AGEricSchmitt/status/1598729851187261440?s=20&t=667AfPkZC8IMZVJXqS8X5w