Jim Jordan drops 'Facebook Files' showing Biden admin pushed platform to censor COVID-19 content

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan on Friday released a second string of documents showing that the Biden administration pressured the social media platform to censor critics and police vaccine-related content.

"In sum­mer of 2021, the White House was mount­ing a na­tion­wide push for Amer­i­cans to get vaccinated for Covid-19," Jordan tweeted. "Part of that push in­cluded a pub­lic and SECRET campaign to get Facebook to more ag­gres­sively po­lice vac­cine-re­lated con­tent, including TRUE information."

In a dump of internal communications, Jordan highlighted exchanges suggesting that the White House had pressured the platform to censor information related to the idea that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a claim now increasingly believed by government agencies to have been true.

The documents also show that the administration explicitly demanded that "humorous or satirical" content questioning vaccine safety or efficacy be removed from the platform. One communication states that the surgeon general also wanted the platform to remove "true information about side effects."

Jordan acknowledged that Facebook initially balked at the administration's demands but that platform leadership "relented in August [2021] and agreed to change the company’s content moderation policies because of the Biden Admin’s continued pressure."

"These subpoenaed documents continue to reveal the Biden administration’s efforts to censor speech," the Ohio Republican declared.