Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Congress needed to “look seriously” at possible collusion between members of the press, big technology companies and members of the national security establishment to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story.

Partial transcript as follows:

TAPPER: One voice that I have heard people express concern about is a guy named Kash Patel. He was on the NSC. He served briefly as the chief of staff in the Pentagon. Here is what he said on Steve Bannon’s podcast earlier this week.

KASH PATEL: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you.

VANCE: So look, I know Kash very well. Let me talk about what I think he was talking about, though I didn’t see the full context of the clip.

TAPPER: You Sound like a University of Pennsylvania president.

VANCE: We know in 2020 that there were massive pieces of evidence that were suppressed by collusion between the national security state in this country –

TAPPER: You’re talking about the Hunter Biden laptop?

VANCE: The Hunter Biden laptop story.

TAPPER: It was out there.

VANCE: The reason it was suppressed on social media.

TAPPER: For like a day or two on Twitter.

VANCE: Jake, millions of Americans, there have been studies on this, didn’t see that story that would have seen it if there hadn’t been that collusion between these technology companies and members of the media who had security clearances. These people were using the trust acquired over a lifetime of public service and lying to the American people.

TAPPER: So you agree with Kash Patel?

VANCE: I agree we need to look seriously at how there was collusion between members of the press and big technology companies and members of national security. Jake, that’s not journalism. It is not journalism to take your security clearance, lie to the American people, and then persuade the big technology companies to censor anti-Joe Biden stories. That’s not journalism. That is cooperation between the government and journalism. It’s the opposite.

TAPPER: Donald Trump was president at the time that any censorship was going on so nobody in government, any Biden people that were asking that were not in the government at the time. But I will just say as somebody that tried to see the laptop, Rudy Giuliani won’t let us see the laptop. He wouldn’t let us. So we weren’t able to report on it because he wanted us to go by his word.

VANCE: I’m much less concerned about what you’re reporting on and much more concerned about the fact that millions of Americans get their news through social media and we know that the FBI was working with the social media companies to censor a troubling story. Take a look at threats to democracy. That is crazy. The FBI encouraging private companies to censor journalists.

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN