During an appearance on Thursday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Hannity,” Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) acknowledged the impact of the Department of Justice and FBI on the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
According to the two Republican congressmen, it was clear the agencies were using pressure tactics to force censorship of some political views.
“Exit question, Chairman, I’ll ask you first,” host Sean Hannity said. “Was there a well-designed and orchestrated censorship campaign to influence the 2020 election? Is that a fact at this point?”
“Yeah, and I like the term that Professor [Jonathan] Turley used, censorship by surrogate. Here’s a fundamental question, Sean, why is the FBI sending a list of accounts to Twitter and telling Twitter we think these accounts, we think these tweets violate Twitter’s terms of service?” Jordan replied. “Why are they doing that? If that’s not pressure, if that’s not coercion to take down free speech, to take down political speech, I don’t know what it is. So I like that term ‘censorship by surrogate’ because that’s what took place, and we know that because of the Twitter files.”
“Matt Gaetz, do you agree censorship influenced the outcome of the 2020 election?” Hannity asked.
“Undeniably, on the laptop story alone,” Gaetz replied. “But we are just starting to learn all of the different features of shadow banning and trying to shape political thought for people in this country. I just want an FBI that goes and stops the bad guys from committing crimes and holds them accountable when they do, not an FBI and Department of Justice that’s trying to shape the political thought of our fellow Americans. We can do that for ourselves. We can decide who we want to vote for without the FBI and the DOJ trying to manipulate the digital marketplace of ideas.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor