Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) subpoenaed an FBI agent accused of coordinating suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story after the Justice Department prevented the agent from appearing for a transcribed interview with lawmakers.
Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, issued a subpoena on Friday to Elvis Chan, an FBI agent based in San Francisco, who House Republicans say was “the main conduit” between the bureau’s Foreign Influence Task Force and Big Tech companies to suppress the story of Hunter’s scandalous laptop in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan said in a letter to Chan. “As the primary liaison between the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and social media companies, you are uniquely positioned to aid the Committee’s oversight.”
Chan previously told lawmakers that the FBI had not communicated with Facebook outside of a meeting that occurred the same day the New York Post published the Biden laptop article on October 14, 2020. But according to the Jordan, Chan was involved in a “secret ‘follow up’ call” with the social media giant the next day, allegedly contradicting a claim he made during a November 2022 deposition in the government censorship case Missouri v. Biden.
The federal agent also spoke with a Facebook employee that same day, who said, “Chan advised that he was up to speed on the current state of the matter within the FBI.” Chan also told the social media platform that “there was no current evidence to suggest any foreign connection … of the leaks,” according to the documents released by Jordan.
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In the letter, Jordan referenced the increasing evidence showing coordination between the White House and social media companies to suppress conservative content, outside of the Post’s story on Hunter’s laptop.
“Numerous documents that have been made publicly available reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online directly and by proxy. It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which FBI agents coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech,” Jordan wrote.
Documents released by Congress last month show that a White House official asked Facebook to promote legacy outlets and stifle The Daily Wire’s reach in order to accomplish the administration’s directives on suppressing content that clashed with its COVID vaccine agenda.