As if the funneling of billions of taxpayer dollars wasn’t enough, the U.S. government also assisted a controversial Ukrainian government assault on Americans’ free speech.
A scathing new report by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government unveiled how the FBI colluded with a foreign government entity to pressure Big Tech to censor Americans on social media platforms. The FBI, according to the report, collaborated with the compromised Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The SBU is reportedly “infiltrated by Russian-aligned actors.” The 27-page report, released on July 10, detailed a troubling fact: “[T]he FBI violated the First Amendment rights of Americans and potentially undermined our national security.”
In a press statement, the Weaponization Subcommittee torched the FBI for their blatant violation of the First Amendment. “The new information highlights the FBI's unconstitutional role in enabling the SBU's censorship regime and raises grave concerns about the FBI's credibility, reliability, and competence as the nation's premier law enforcement organization,” the subcommittee said on Monday. “The coordination between the FBI, SBU, and American social media companies is substantial, and the full extent of the FBI's involvement with the SBU remains the subject of ongoing investigation.”
The report noted that the SBU sought to muzzle accounts it claimed were tied to Russian influence operations on social media. In doing so, the foreign intelligence agency regularly sent lists of social media accounts to the FBI, which then transmitted the lists to Big Tech platforms to censor. SBU blacklisted the profiles of U.S. journalists among the targeted accounts. A graph featured in the report highlights the frequency in which the FBI funneled these types of requests to Big Tech platforms, which included Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
“The Committee’s analysis of these ‘disinformation’ registries revealed that the FBI, at the request of the [Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)], flagged for social media companies the authentic accounts of Americans, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists,” the report read. “At times, the FBI would even follow up with the relevant platform to ensure that ‘these accounts were taken down.'”
The links between the Russian government and SBU are vast, the interim report highlights. For instance, in July 2022, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ousted the agency’s chief amid suspicions of Russian infiltration. According to Politico, Ukraine unleashed a “purge of double agents” in SBU, accusing those traitors of laying the groundwork for Russia’s deadly invasion of Ukraine. “The network is much wider,” Ukrainian State Investigations Bureau Spokesperson Tetiana Sapian told Politico on April 20.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
