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--:-- John Bickley: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. Between two-factor authentication, strong passwords, and a VPN, you try to be in control of how your info is protected. But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com slash podcast for 40% off. Terms apply.
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--:-- John Bickley: A bombshell new report from the House Judiciary Committee details how the State Department and Homeland Security outsourced a misinformation program to, quote, monitor and censor Americans' online speech. The project, called the Election Integrity Partnership, became active before the 2020 presidential election. And the Judiciary Committee says it almost entirely targeted conservative voices.
--:-- John Bickley: In this episode, we talk with House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan about the findings in his committee's new report. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
--:-- Georgia Howe: It's Sunday, November 12th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the new report from the House Judiciary Committee is its chairman, Congressman Jim Jordan.
--:-- John Bickley: So first of all, thank you for joining us. Your committee uncovered a bombshell report this week that shows that the U.S. government partnered with universities to censor speech in the lead up to the 2020 election and did this through what's called the Election Integrity Partnership. What did you find?
--:-- Jim Jordan: Yeah, big government and big academia working with big tech to limit Americans' First Amendment liberties, First Amendment free speech rights. And it was disproportionately an attack on conservatives. Well-known conservatives like President Trump, like Mike Huckabee like Molly Hemingway like outlets and things like you guys So that is you know that scary stuff but it was done in a systematic fashion
--:-- John Bickley: So American tax dollars going to universities at the Department of Homeland Security, CISA, the Cyber Security Agency, all doing this and creating this like software where they would post, take down this, look at this, limit the visibility on this, filter this. That's scary stuff. And it was going on. And of course, this is in addition to what we've already learned from the Twitter files and the Facebook files. So scary attacks on our First Amendment rights.
--:-- Jim Jordan: Yeah, can you explain that a little bit more for us? How was the Election Integrity Partnership formed and who was involved?
--:-- John Bickley: [pauses] I think we can get into that. So Stanford and other universities, particularly University of Washington, the Election Integrity Project there, again, at the sort of pushing of Stanford University and the government, this Election Integrity Project with, you know, the fancy sounding name became the vehicle for posting this information.
--:-- Jim Jordan: I think the term is this gyra tickets, which is this software where it's almost like, the way I view it is like this dashboard where everyone can see, oh, we should take down this, we should filter that. That's how it was done, but it's run through this EIP, the Election Integrity Project at Stanford.
--:-- John Bickley: And there were several of what they called stakeholders involved. There's the academic teams, there's a few federal agencies, and then there's also big tech that's complicit in this, correct?
--:-- Jim Jordan: Totally. How would that work? How would this process work? Well, they're getting this information to big tech, posting it out there on big tech for everyone to see, and then big tech runs with it. And it's sort of this, you know, it's the old line. It's the chilling impact. When big government is working with big universities and they're suggesting that, oh, you may want to look at this. You may want to take this down. You may want to filter this. You may want to limit the visibility of this. When that's all happening, that's the chilling impact it has on speech.
--:-- John Bickley: and we know it occurred We know that they limited the reach of certain posts certain tweets information put out there And again well conservative authors and elected officials were impacted by this
--:-- Jim Jordan: Now, one of the things your report highlighted is that this wasn't always misinformation necessarily that was censored. It was jokes, political opinions, even correct information. Is that right?
--:-- John Bickley: Yeah. The focus initially was supposed to be on foreign actors, foreign influence, foreign quote misinformation, quote disinformation in our election process, but it was targeting Americans and it wasn't misdisc or malinformation. It was the truth or it was satire. It was humor. It was like, obviously anyone with half a brain could figure out that's a joke for goodness sake.
--:-- Jim Jordan: So again, just underscoring how pervasive this was. And remember, we got this great decision from the Fifth Circuit a few months ago, where they said that it was not only just DHS and CISA as a part of DHS, which we're highlighting in this report, but it was all these agencies. It was the Justice Department, it was the FBI, it was DHS, it was NIAID, it was HHS. All these federal agencies were in fact limiting the visibility and filtering and censoring American speech.
--:-- John Bickley: What does this tell us about how we need to reform government policies to protect free speech? It seems like this is a larger, more unwieldy issue than we initially understood.
--:-- Jim Jordan: Well, this Fifth Circuit case needs to go to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court needs to say, which I think they will, that this is totally, Professor Turley called it censorship by surrogate, where the government is pressuring big tech. And in this case that we're talking about through academia, pressuring big tech to limit American speech. It is censorship by surrogate is still censorship. Or as some of the authors who were part of the Twitter files have said, they call it the censorship industrial complex. It's a complex of big government, big tech, big academia, all working to limit speech.
--:-- John Bickley: So we need a decision from our highest court like what we got from the Fifth Circuit and what we got from the U District Court prior to that which says this in fact is censorship And this was again disproportionate There were some times where even people on the left got censored. But it was like, I think Elon Musk said it was like 10 to 1, you know, where it was conservative. So it's vastly focused on attacking conservative speech.
--:-- Jim Jordan: Now that we have this report and we've also had all the revelations from the Twitter files, how does the GOP plan to address this? What are possible remedies? You've talked about this case going all the way to the Supreme Court. Are there any steps Congress can take?
--:-- John Bickley: Senator Paul and I have introduced legislation which would have penalties for people in the government who pressure or in any way limit American speech. There's penalties for them. There can be like, you lose your job, you lose your pension, and maybe even civil penalties that you could bring as the aggrieved party that we're looking at in this legislation.
--:-- Jim Jordan: So we are looking at that, But the biggest thing we can do is just like talk about the wonderful thing we call the First Amendment and, you know, championing this idea that you can exercise your First Amendment liberties. That's what the Constitution is about. That's what the Bill of Rights is about. That's what the First Amendment is about. Just talking about this stuff helps.
--:-- John Bickley: So here's a great example. We had a hearing where we had Matt Taibbi come testify several months back. And while he's testifying about the Twitter files, while he's testifying about, you know, what was going on in this censorship, the IRS was actually knocking on his door. Now, since that time, the IRS has made the announcement that they will no longer be making unannounced visits to American citizens' homes. And Danny Warfall, the commissioner of the IRS, said, well, we're doing that because we're concerned about the safety of our agents. Baloney. They're doing that because we caught them trying to intimidate a journalist while he's testifying in front of Congress about sin.
--:-- Jim Jordan: So just sometimes highlighting it can make a huge difference in how these agencies function. Clearly, accountability is an effective tool.
--:-- John Bickley: Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Jim Jordan: You bet.
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--:-- John Bickley: That was House Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
