House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the Biden administration’s spy chief, on Thursday as part of an investigation into alleged government collusion with Big Tech companies, The Daily Wire can confirm.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has so far provided a “woefully inadequate” response to multiple requests by the judiciary panel and its Weaponization subcommittee for communications with “private companies, and other third-party groups such as nonprofit organizations, in addition to other information,” Jordan wrote in a cover letter for the subpoena.
Jordan contended that it is “necessary” for Congress to “gauge the extent to which ODNI officials have coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech.” He stressed that the scope of the inquiry includes ODNI, and the result could be legislation that could exact “new statutory limits” on the Executive Branch being able to work with companies to restrict content and deplatform users.
“Publicly available information regarding the ODNI’s Foreign Malign Influence Center makes clear that records related to the Center’s activities fall within the scope of the Committee’s request for documents,” Jordan wrote, citing a report from The Intercept. “Moreover, the Committee is in possession of documents that demonstrate that ODNI personnel were invited to meetings between major social media companies and federal government agencies, often referred to as ‘USG-Industry Sync’ meetings. ODNI has yet to produce any records related to these or any other meetings.”
In concluding his cover letter, Jordan wrote that “given ODNI’s woefully inadequate voluntary compliance,” he was attaching a subpoena “for the Committee’s highest priority documents and information.” The Daily Wire has reached out to ODNI seeking comment on the subpoena to Haines, which features a deadline of 9 a.m. on February 9.
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Jordan’s congressional inquiry has also led to subpoenas against Big Tech executives and other federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice and FBI, over the past year.
In the same vein as the “Twitter Files,” Jordan has released “Facebook Files” that claim to show how the Biden administration pressured the social media giant to stifle speech the White House didn’t like, including limiting The Daily Wire’s reach on the platform and boosting the reach of legacy media outlets.
Other parts of the GOP-led House are separately looking into alleged government censorship, including the Small Business Committee pressing the State Department over suspicions that the agency’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) funded private entities to discredit small businesses and their owners over their political speech and views.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, joined with The Daily Wire and The Federalist last month in suing the State Department, accusing the government agency of funding censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions. The lawsuit seeks to put a stop to the alleged effort to boost censorship organizations that regularly target conservative media outlets with the stated goal of limiting ad revenue.
Amid a separate social media censorship case brought by the GOP attorneys general from Missouri and Louisiana, a White House official told the Associated Press that the Biden administration “has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections.”