0:03

A bombshell new report from the House Judiciary

0:05

Committee details how the State Department

0:07

and Homeland Security outsourced a

0:09

misinformation program to quote, monitor

0:12

and censor Americans' online speech.

0:15

The project, called the Election Integrity

0:17

Partnership, became active before

0:19

the 2020 presidential election. And

0:22

the Judiciary Committee says it almost entirely

0:24

targeted conservative voices.

0:26

In this episode, we talk with House Judiciary

0:29

Chair Jim Jordan about the findings in

0:31

his committee's new report. I'm

0:33

Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley

0:35

with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, November

0:37

12th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.

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1:15

Joining us to discuss the new report from the House Judiciary

1:18

Committee is its Chairman Congressman Jim

1:20

Jordan. So first of all, thank you for joining

1:22

us. Your committee uncovered a bombshell

1:25

report this week that shows that the US government

1:27

partnered with universities to censor

1:30

speech in the lead up to the 2020 election and did this

1:33

through what's called the Election Integrity

1:35

Partnership. What did you find?

1:37

Yeah, big government and big

1:40

academia working

1:43

with big tech to

1:45

limit Americans' First Amendment liberties, First Amendment

1:47

free speech rights. It was disproportionately

1:50

an attack on conservatives, well-known

1:53

conservatives like President

1:55

Trump, like Mike Huckabee, like Molly Hemingway, like

1:57

outlets and things like you guys.

1:59

So that is, you know, that's scary

2:02

stuff, but it was done in a systematic fashion.

2:04

So American tax dollars going to universities

2:08

at the Department of Homeland Security, CISA,

2:10

the Cybersecurity Agency,

2:13

all doing this and creating

2:15

this like software where you could, they

2:17

would post, take down this, look at this,

2:19

limit the visibility on this, filter this. That's

2:22

scary stuff and it was going

2:24

on. And of course, this is in addition to what we've already

2:26

learned from the Twitter files and the Facebook files. So

2:28

scary attacks on our first

2:29

amendment rights. Yeah, can you explain that

2:32

a little bit more for us? How was the election integrity

2:34

partnership formed and who was involved?

2:37

Stanford and other universities,

2:40

particularly University of Washington, election integrity

2:42

project there, again, at the

2:44

sort of pushing of Stanford

2:46

University and in the government, this

2:49

election integrity project with, you know, the fancy

2:51

sounding name, became the

2:53

vehicle for posting

2:55

this information. I think the term is

2:57

this JIRA tickets, which is this

3:00

software where it's almost like, the

3:02

way I view it is like this dashboard where everyone

3:04

can see, oh, we should take down this, we should filter

3:06

that. That's how it was done, but it's

3:09

run through this EIP, the election integrity

3:11

project at Stanford.

3:13

And there were several of what they called stakeholders

3:15

involved. There's the academic teams, there's

3:17

a few federal agencies, and then there's also big

3:19

tech that's complicit in this, correct? Totally.

3:22

How would that work? How would this process work?

3:24

Well, they're getting this information

3:27

to big tech, posting it out

3:29

there on big tech for everyone

3:31

to see, and then big tech runs with

3:33

it. And it's sort of this, you know, it's

3:35

the old line, it's the chilling impact. When

3:38

big government is working

3:40

with big universities, and

3:42

they're suggesting that, oh, you may want to

3:44

look at this, you may want to take this down, you may want to filter

3:46

this, you may want to limit the visibility of this, when

3:49

that's all happening, that's the chilling impact

3:51

it has on speech, and we know it occurred. We

3:54

know that they limited the reach of

3:56

certain posts, certain tweets, information

3:59

put out.

3:59

there

4:00

and again well-known conservative

4:03

authors and elected officials were

4:05

impacted by this.

4:06

Now one of the things your report highlighted is that

4:08

this wasn't always misinformation necessarily

4:11

that was censored it was jokes political

4:13

opinions even correct information is that right?

4:16

Yeah the focus initially was supposed to be on foreign

4:19

actors, foreign influence, foreign

4:22

quote misinformation quote disinformation

4:24

in our election process but it was targeting

4:27

Americans and it wasn't missed this

4:29

or malinformation it was the

4:31

truth or it was satire it was

4:34

it was humor it was like obviously anyone

4:36

with half a brain could figure out that's a joke

4:38

for goodness sake so again just

4:41

underscoring how pervasive this

4:43

was and remember we got this great decision

4:46

from the Fifth Circuit a

4:48

few months ago where they said that it was

4:50

not only just DHS and CISA as a part

4:53

of DHS which we're highlighting in this report

4:55

but it was all these agencies it was the Justice Department

4:57

it was the FBI it was DHS it was it

4:59

was NIAID it was HHS all

5:02

these federal agencies were in fact

5:04

limiting the visibility and filtering

5:06

and and censoring American

5:09

speech. What

5:10

does this tell us about how we need to

5:12

reform government policies to

5:14

protect free speech it seems like this is a larger

5:17

more unwieldy issue than we initially

5:19

understood.

5:20

Well this Fifth Circuit case needs to

5:22

go to Supreme Court and Supreme Court needs to say which I

5:24

think they will that this is totally

5:27

Professor Turley called it censorship by

5:29

surrogate where the government is

5:32

pressuring big tech

5:34

in this case that we're talking about through academia

5:37

pressuring big tech to limit American

5:39

speech it is censorship by surrogate

5:41

is still censorship or as some

5:43

of the authors who were part of the Twitter files

5:45

have said they call it the censorship industrial

5:47

complex it's a complex of big

5:50

government big tech big academia all

5:52

working to to limit speech so we need

5:54

a decision from our highest court like

5:57

what we got from the Fifth Circuit and what we got from

5:59

the US District Court prior to that, which

6:01

says this in fact is censorship. And this was, again,

6:04

disproportionate. There were some times where

6:06

even people on the left got censored, but

6:09

it was like, I think Elon Musk said it was like 10

6:11

to one, you know, where it was conservative. So

6:14

it's vastly focused on attacking

6:16

conservative speech.

6:17

Now that we have this report, and we've also had all

6:19

the revelations from the Twitter files,

6:22

how does the GOP plan to address

6:24

this? What are possible remedies? You've talked

6:26

about this case going all the way to the Supreme Court. Are

6:29

there any steps Congress can take?

6:31

Senator Paul and I've introduced legislation which have

6:33

penalties for people in the government

6:35

who pressure or in any way limit American

6:37

speech. There's penalties for them that can be like, you lose

6:39

your job, you lose your pension, and maybe even civil

6:42

penalties that you could bring as the aggrieved party that

6:44

we're looking at in this legislation. So we are looking

6:46

at that. But the biggest thing we can do is just like talk about

6:49

the wonderful thing we call the First Amendment.

6:51

And, you know, championing this

6:53

idea that you can exercise your First Amendment

6:56

liberties. That's what the Constitution is about. That's what

6:58

the Bill of Rights is about. That's what the First

7:00

Amendment's about. Just talking about this stuff helps. So here's

7:02

a great example. We had a hearing

7:04

where we had Matt Taibike come testify several months

7:07

back. And while he's testifying

7:09

about the Twitter files, while he's testifying about

7:12

what was going on in this censorship, the IRS

7:14

was actually knocking on his door. Now, since

7:17

that time, the IRS has made the announcement

7:19

that they will no longer be making unannounced visits

7:21

to American citizens' homes. And

7:23

Danny Warfault, the commissioner of the IRS said, well, we're doing

7:26

that because we're concerned about the safety

7:28

of our agents. Bologna, they're doing

7:30

that because we caught them trying

7:32

to intimidate a journalist

7:35

while he's testifying in front of

7:37

Congress about this. So

7:40

just sometimes highlighting it can make a

7:42

huge difference in how these agencies function.

7:45

Clearly accountability is an effective tool.

7:47

Congressman, thank you so much for joining us. You

7:50

bet. That was House Committee Chairman

7:52

Jim Jordan. And this has been an extra edition of House

7:54

Morning.

7:57

Thank you.