Jim Jordan Reveals 'Smoking Gun' Against Biden

Representative Jim Jordan unveiled his "smoking gun" evidence that the Biden administration collaborated with Meta company leaders to remove information about COVID-19.

Jordan, an Ohio Republican who chairs the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led its Republican members in filing an amicus briefing in the case State of Missouri v. Biden. The lawsuit, filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, accuses President Joe Biden's administration of government overreach, including attempting to suppress information they do not agree with online.

Jordan, a staunch Biden critic, has for weeks said the committee uncovered "smoking gun" evidence showing that members of the administration collaborated with Meta, Facebook's parent company, to remove information related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the lab leak theory and vaccine misinformation.

The Biden administration, however, has previously defended efforts to coordinate with social media to mitigate the spread of misinformation, arguing that doing so would protect public health as social media platforms became a breeding ground for misinformation and conspiracies related to the pandemic.

House Republicans presented their evidence that the Biden administration pressured Facebook to stifle COVID-19 posts in the Monday night briefing.

Newsweek reached out to Jordan's office via phone call, as well as the White House and Meta via email, for comment.

In one instance presented in the briefing, the Biden administration allegedly requested for Meta officials to take down information that the COVID-19 virus could have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Many scientists initially rejected the notion that the virus could have originated from the lab, dismissing the theory as a conspiracy. But more research has reignited the debate as to the pandemic's origins. Biden's own Department of Energy concluded in February that the virus likely stemmed from a lab leak.

The briefing includes an alleged email from Meta employees stating that the company was "under pressure" from the "administration" to suppress posts related to the lab leak theory.

"This pressure was direct and coercive. For example, the Administration tried
to suppress discussion of COVID's origins: when a Facebook executive asked in
July 2021 why the company censored the COVID lab leak theory, an executive in
charge of content policy development said, '[b]ecause we were under pressure from the [A]dministration' to do so. The same Facebook executive confessed that the company 'shouldn't have done it,'" the briefing reads.

In a separate email, an employee allegedly told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg that the company was "facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the White House and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine discouraging content," the briefing alleged.

When reached for comment on Tuesday, a White House spokesperson referred Newsweek to previous remarks from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

"We have promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections," she said during a July 27 press briefing.

"And we have consistently made clear that we believe social media companies have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects of their platforms that they have on the American people while making independent decisions about the content of their — of their platforms. That continues to be the case. That has not changed, on what we believe here," Jean-Pierre said.

The Biden administration previously said they were in touch with social media companies to combat misinformation about the virus, which has taken the lives of more than 1.1 million Americans, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.

The Biden administration announced an effort in July 2021 to notify Facebook about posts that spread COVID-19 misinformation. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who has since left that position, at the time described these efforts as part of a "new campaign" to fight virus-related misinformation, which Murthy said was an "imminent and insidious threat to our nation's health."

"We've increased disinformation research and tracking within the surgeon general's office," Psaki said at a press conference announcing this campaign. "We're flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We're working with doctors and medical professionals to connect medical experts who are popular with our audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content—so we are helping get trusted content out there."

Update 08/08/23, 1:51 p.m. ET: This story was updated with a response from the White House.