'A mockery and a disgrace': Key takeaways from House GOP hearing on social media censorship

House Republicans held their third hearing Thursday regarding what they claim is the “weaponization” of the federal government by Democrats.

The hearing featured three Republican witnesses who alleged that the Biden administration has “coerced” social media companies to remove information it does not like, but Democrats protested when two of the witnesses left the hearing before taking any questions from committee members.

Here are the key takeaways:

Allegations of “censorship” by the Biden administration

Former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and former Louisiana solicitor general, John Sauer, all presentedopening statements that alleged what Schmitt called "the largest speech censorship operation in recent American history."

Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate last fall,filed a lawsuit last year — during his campaign for Senate — against the Biden administration. The lawsuit has enabled Schmitt to obtain and releaseinternal communications between Biden administration officials and employees of Facebook and Twitter that Schmitt said show Biden officials asking and pressuring the social media companies to decrease the reach or remove content that they said was false, much of it regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. Similar governmental pressure was revealed in the Twitter Files,which demonstrated that before the Biden administration asked Facebook and Twitter to restrict "misinformation" around the pandemic, the Trump administration did as well.

Schmitt, like committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and many Republicans, have portrayed these requests from government officials as First Amendment violations.

"If the government engages in activity to stop media outlets from speaking, that's a First Amendment violation," Missouri attorney Bevis Schocktold St. Louis Public Radio in an October interview.

The question, then, is whether the Biden and Trump administrations blocked or coerced these companies from engaging in protected speech. The communications from government officials were typically appeals to the social media companies to find that the contested content violated the companies’ own policies. This route of appeal to the social media companies is available to all Americans, not just presidential administrations, and the companies receive requests from many different people and institutions.

Nonetheless, government officials have significant power, and analysts and experts have expressed concern about the lack of transparency regarding government communications with private social media companies. The Twitter Files raised "a valid question on what the role of the government should be in identifying and reporting people and content,"Katie Harbath, a former public policy director for Facebook who began her career as a Republican political operative, wrote in January.

On the other hand, analysts and experts have made clear that social media companies have a responsibility to limit the spread of information that is false or could incite real world violence. "Anyone who's honest will say that these platforms shouldn't just let actual lies and misinformation rip and that they should have some moderation policies,"Bari Weiss, one of the independent journalists who was allowed access to the Twitter files by Twitter CEO Elon Musk, said in a January podcast.

In the past, however, when social media companies engaged in speech that former President Trump did not like — affixing fact-checking labels to his messages — hethreatened to "close them down."

Republican witnesses left the hearing and avoided questions

Schmitt and Landry both gave opening statements in which they made sweeping accusations about the Biden administration, but then left the room before Democrats could question them. Since the normal procedure for congressional hearings is for witnesses of fact to receive questions from members of the committee and to provide answers, Democrats protested vigorously.

“These two witnesses presented evidence that I believe is false, and I would like the opportunity to cross-examine those witnesses,” Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass.

“Those witnesses aren’t here, Mr. Chairman,” Jordan responded before the committee devolved into verbal squabbling.

“They have scurried away!” Lynch said to Jordan following a prolonged debate. “This is a mockery and a disgrace.”

Lynch asked the committee to strike the testimony of Schmitt and Landry. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., said this would be"censorship." Lynch responded that cross examination of witness testimony "ensures that we can test the veracity of their statements."

“We eviscerated the very process here that would … protect the integrity of this hearing, to elicit the truth,” Lynch said.

Jordan said that Schmitt was allowed to leave the hearing without undergoing questioning because he is now a U.S. Senator. But Democrats noted that Schmitt was giving testimony about a lawsuit he filed as a state attorney general.

Democrats pointed to the Republican witnesses’ involvement with the plot to overturn the 2020 election

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., showed a phone message sent out by a nonprofit arm of the Republican Attorney General Association (RAGA) on Jan. 5, 2021, urging Trump supporters to go to the U.S. Capitol the next day to “stop the steal” of the 2020 election.

"At 1 p.m., we will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal. We are hoping patriots like you will join us to continue to fight to protect the integrity of our elections,"said the robocall of the Rule of Law Defense Fund.

Under questioning from Wasserman-Schultz, Sauer acknowledged he had attended RAGA meetings. The Democrat then said the robocalls were a use of state resources to “collude with political groups” to block the peaceful transfer of power, and that Sauer’s attendance at Rule of Law Defense Fund meetings in the fall of 2020 made him complicit.

“Thank you for bringing a witness before us who has actually weaponized the government,” Wasserman-Schultz said to Jordan, the committee chair.

Sauer denied the characterization by Wasserman-Schultz, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Ca., dismissed the inquiry by the Democrat as “personal accusations.”

But Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., also noted that all three Republican witnesses signed their names to the lawsuit after the 2020 election that relied on a bevy of easily disproved allegations about the election to seek to stop its certification.