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Elon Musk endorses Church-style committee to probe FBI's engagement in social media censorship

The so-called Twitter Files have revealed federal law enforcement's questionable involvement in suppressing news stories.

Published: December 20, 2022 1:01pm

Updated: December 20, 2022 2:17pm

New Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday endorsed the idea of creating a commission, similar to the historic Church Committee, to probe why the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community are involved in online censorship.

"Hear, hear!!" Musk tweeted in response to a tweet from venture capitalist David Sacks, who said: "We need a new Church Commission to investigate why the FBI and Intelligence Community are engaged in social media censorship, including the suppression of the Hunter Biden story."

The so-called Twitter Files have revealed federal law enforcement's questionable involvement in suppressing news stories, such as the one about Hunter Biden's laptop.

Sacks' tweet was in response to a video from 1975 posted by Blaze Media CEO Tyler Carditis. The video showed Idaho Sen. Frank Church telling NBC's "Meet the Press" that "The United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. ... Now that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies we must know. At the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left."

Politicians, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), have supported the idea of a new Church Committee to probe corruption allegations in federal law enforcement. 

The original bipartisan Church Committee was created after the Senate Watergate Committee discovered that the executive branch had ordered questionable surveillance operations.

The committee ultimately made nearly 100 recommendations and Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requiring the executive branch to request surveillance warrants.

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