House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has subpoenaed FBI Agent Elvis Chan after he and the FBI tried to outmaneuver the committee as he was scheduled to testify.
On Friday, the Ohio Republican released the subpoena against Chan, in which he says that the executive branch colluded with social media companies to censor a story about Joe Biden’s son’s laptop, which Hunter Biden had dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop in 2019 and never retrieved.
The Department of Justice, in a last minute attempt to take control of the hearing, said that agent Chan would only testify if he could have a second lawyer with him.
The committee is investigating how the Hunter Biden laptop news was downplayed and even censored by social media companies. Chairman Jim Jordan, in his investigations, believes that Chan lied about the computer.
Get caught up on the Hunter Biden laptop story and how social media giants suppressed it before the election at this link:
“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote. “As the primary liaison between the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF) and social media companies, you are uniquely positioned to aid the Committee’s oversight.”
Jordan noted that a trove of documents now publicly available “reflect the weaponization of the federal government’s power to censor speech online directly and by proxy. It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which FBI agents coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech. The scope of the Committee’s investigation includes understanding the extent and nature of the FBI’s involvement in this censorship. For example, through its investigation, the Committee has uncovered evidence that appears to contradict several statements in your deposition in Missouri v. Biden, particularly as they relate to your communications with social media platforms.”
Of interest to the committee is how the FBI labeled “disinformation” reporting by the New York Post, which aggressively covered the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 and was “deplatformed” by Twitter, which means it lost access to its account at the social media company on Oct. 14, just before the 2020 presidential general election.
“The Committee was ready and willing to proceed with your transcribed interview under the Committee’s established protocols. After the Committee repeatedly requested that you voluntarily appear for a transcribed interview, the FBI agreed to schedule your interview for September 15, 2023, with full knowledge of the Committee’s longstanding protocol for conducting transcribed interviews. Then, only three days before your scheduled interview, you and the FBI requested special treatment to deviate from this protocol, which the Committee repeatedly and clearly denied. Just one day before your scheduled transcribed interview, you threatened to withdraw your appearance due to this disagreement and today you failed to appear for your interview,” Jordan wrote in his explanation of the subpoena.
“It is necessary for Congress to gauge the extent to which FBI agents coerced, pressured, worked with, or relied upon social media and other tech companies to censor speech. The scope of the Committee’s investigation includes understanding the extent and nature of the FBI’s involvement in this censorship,” he wrote.
The FBI says the Department did not block Chan from testifying.
“Agent Chan chose to be represented by both agency and personal counsel. He went to the Capitol this morning to testify and, instead of asking him questions, Committee staff turned him away and threatened to throw agency counsel out of the room,” the FBI reported to the Daily Mail.
By bringing in an additional counsel to the hearing, Chan and the FBI likely knew that they would trigger a conflict with the committee as they attempted to set their own rules of engagement for the congressional committee hearing.
Earlier this year, Rep. Matt Gaetz has entered the entire contents of the Hunter Biden laptop into the Congressional Record, making it a public document. The documents show the FBI took possession of the laptop in December of 2019. Read about that here:
