Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan accused Google parent company Alphabet of not complying with a House Judiciary Committee subpoena in a Monday letter.
Jordan initially subpoenaed Alphabet in February, requesting documents detailing the firm’s contacts with federal government officials who may have requested that the firms censor digital content. The Judiciary Committee also subpoenaed Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Jim Jordan Sends Final Warning Shot To Various Officials Before Subpoenas Fly)
Alphabet has not fully complied with the subpoena, Jordan wrote Monday, breaching the March 23 deadline for document production Jordan set in his letter. He is threatening to employ “one or more enforcement mechanisms” if Alphabet does not produce unredacted documents.
🚨 #NEWS from @Jim_Jordan:
“If Alphabet fails to comply in full with the subpoena’s demands, the Committee may be forced to consider the use of one or more enforcement mechanisms.”
cc: @Google, @YouTube pic.twitter.com/Tsy9U2WN2s
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 8, 2023
“Alphabet has produced just 4,049 pages of material in response to the Committee’s subpoena. Moreover, despite explicit instructions enclosed with the subpoena to produce unredacted documents, Alphabet has frustrated the Committee’s review of the responsive material by unilaterally redacting key information necessary to understand the context and content of the material,” the Ohio Republican wrote. “Alphabet’s rolling productions to date have not included material the Committee has reason to believe may be in the company’s possession and that is responsive to the subpoena.”
Intelligence officials maintained extensive contacts with social media employees in the run-up to the 2020 election. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan testified in December 2022 that a task force from his agency and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials regularly met with social media companies to urge them to remove certain accounts. FBI officials were also regularly in contact with Twitter ahead of the platform’s decision to ban links to a New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian business dealings.
Twitter banned the story under its hacked material policy, despite the fact that it could not produce evidence showing that Biden’s laptop was hacked.
“The release of the Twitter Files has shown just how extensively the Executive Branch communicated and coordinated with technology companies regarding content moderation. We are skeptical that Alphabet’s interactions with the federal government where pressure was applied were any less concerning than those of Twitter,” Jordan added.