Former President Donald Trump has called on Congress to immediately hold hearings and use subpoenas to investigate the role of the FBI and other federal agencies in censoring free speech.
He issued the demand Wednesday, in the latest of his campaign videos.
‘We need a free press, we need free speech, we need fair elections, and we need borders,’ he said in the video obtained by DailyMail.com.
‘The new Congress should immediately hold hearings to investigate the role of the FBI and other federal agencies in censoring lawful speech.
‘Congressional leaders should promptly issue subpoenas in furtherance of this goal.’
His call comes a day after the House voted to set up a committee to probe national security agencies, and what Republicans said was a plot to silence conservatives, including Trump.
Presidential hopeful Donald Trump called on Congress to immediately hold hearings and use subpoenas to investigate the role of the FBI and other federal agencies
Trump has placed free speech and the dangers of Big Tech at the heart of his 2024 election campaign.
So far, he has steered clear of his trademark rallies, and instead used scripted video messages to set out his agenda.
Last month he used one to promise to ‘ban federal money from being used to label domestic speech as “mis-” or “dis-information.”‘
The ‘Twitter Files’ have provided a rich trove for conservatives intent on claiming a conspiracy against them.
With the latest releases of internal Twitter communications, the platform’s owner Elon Musk claimed the FBI paid it millions of dollars to censor information before it reached the public.
His evidence came from an email screenshot showing that the FBI had paid $3.4million as part of a ‘reimbursement program’ for the platform’s work responding to information requests.
House Republicans led by Kevin McCarthy voted to set up a subcommittee to investigate the ‘weaponization’ of the federal government under Joe Biden. Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan will lead the panel probing how the administration gathers information on citizens
An email sent to Twitter’s legal counsel confirming the payment of nearly $3.5million made to the company for services as part of a reimbursement program
The FBI is in the sights of Republicans, as they hunt for what they say is a conspiracy
‘The now-famous “Twitter Files” have proven beyond all doubt that the corrupt officials at the FBI have been coordinating a massive censorship, surveillance, and propaganda campaign against the American People, and frankly against me,’ said Trump.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have been seting out their priorities for the new Congress.
The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government passed the House largely along party lines in a 221-211 vote on Tuesday.
It will be led by Trump ally and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, and will look into how the Biden administration and executive branch has gathered information on private citizens.
The panel will look into how government agencies – such as the FBI, Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security – ‘collect, compile, analyze, use, or disseminate information about citizens of the United States, including any unconstitutional, illegal, or unethical activities committed against citizens of the United States.’
And on Wednesday, the new chairman of the powerful Oversight committee wrote to the US Treasury and Twitter asking for information on Biden family business deals.
The latest Twitter releases also showed how Jim Baker, Twitter’s top lawyer and a former FBI general counsel, was key in deciding that a story about Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop should be banned. The platform decided that it amounted to ‘Russian disinformation.’
Those connections have joined the dots for conservatives.
In the video, Trump said: ‘In the most recent and notorious example, the FBI worked to stop the truth from being told about the Biden Family’s criminality — they worked so hard to stop it from coming out — and the corruption prior to the 2020 election.
‘They didn’t want any bad information to come out about the Biden family. The fix was in, the election was rigged.
‘But the censorship of the Laptop from Hell is only the beginning of the story about the weaponization of government against free speech. We must have free speech in our country. We must have a fair and free press.’
Users who shared a story about the laptop by the New York Post in October 2020 found themselves locked out of their accounts.
DailyMail.com and other news organizations have since confirmed the authenticity of data from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Yoel Roth, who was Twitter’s head of trust and safety until November, recently admitted that the platform made the wrong decision in suppressing the story.
