New Report Details How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans' Speech

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an interim staff report titled, “The Weaponization of 'Disinformation' Pseudo-experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans' Free Speech.”

The report reveals how the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Global Engagement Center (GEC, within the State Department) coordinated with Stanford University and other entities to create the Election Integrity Partnership to censor Americans' speech in the lead-up to the 2020 election. It outlines how the Election Integrity Project (EIP) was created in the summer of 2020 to provide a way for the federal government to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny. The report also reveals for the first time internal emails from EIP members stating that the EIP was created "at the request of DHS/CISA."

The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained documents showing that CISA had access to the inner workings of the EIP, including incoming misinformation reports. The report discloses hundreds of the nonpublic "misinformation" reports from the EIP's centralized reporting system, known as "Jira tickets." During the EIP's operation, the Jira ticketing system was accessible only to select parties, including federal agencies, universities, and Big Tech. The EIP targeted true information, jokes, and political opinions of Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives. This includes candidates such as President Trump and Senator Tillis, entities such as Newsmax and the Babylon Bee, and conservative commentators such as Sean Hannity, Mollie Hemingway, and Charlie Kirk.

Read the full interim staff report here.

Read the one page summary of the interim staff report here.

Read the Jira ticket data here.

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