As far as I know all he has to do is put @anon_de_plume on ignore to keep him from sending him PMs instead of throwing hours long tantrums like a toddler who's lost his binky.

 

Yes, yes, it's those pesky handlers. As if anyone would care what is said about politics on an anonymous porn forum. You give us all too much credit in being able to influence anything.

But there is still the possibility that you only claim I've got handlers because that's what your handlers tell you to say...

Or not, I don't care. I know I'm just some Yahoo that claims to be from the planet earth, living in the vicinity of Chicago.

I'm not sure what you claim to be, you contradict yourself over and over... Not do I really care, space alien.

Now, dance for our amusement!

 

Translation; get fucked you bunch of corrupt phony lying treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans. You don't get to abuse your congressional powers to be rump's personal defense attorneys.






DOJ responds to Jordan’s demands for more information on Trump docs probe

2.8k
Jared Gans
Fri, June 16, 2023 at 8:14 PM MDT




The Justice Department (DOJ) has responded to demands from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) for information on the documents investigation into former President Trump.

Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte sent letters — obtained by The Hill — to Jordan on Friday in response to requests he made for information about the August FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for classified and sensitive documents taken there after his presidency ended and the staffing and scope of the probes that Special Counsel Jack Smith is leading.

Jordan asked Attorney General Merrick Garland in the original letter to provide information on which personnel are working on the case, the scope and the Mar-a-Lago search earlier this month.

The requests came after the release of a report last month from John Durham, a special counsel appointed during the Trump administration, that criticized the FBI’s decision-making process for opening an investigation into alleged ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.


The request on personnel also concerned the report from Durham. Uriarte noted that Durham is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee next week, and the deputy attorney general plans to brief the committee after that.

On the personnel request, he also said staffing for Smith’s investigations into the documents and Trump’s role in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election have fluctuated over time based on their statuses and the resources needed.

He said the DOJ plans to issue a statement of expenditures in the coming weeks to detail the special counsel’s office’s financial activity, including personnel compensation expenditures. It will include financial activity through March.

Uriarte said the statement will show expenditures for about 26 special agents who worked full time or part time on Smith’s investigations in some capacity at some point. He added that additional agents have been used at times for specific, discrete tasks related to the investigations.

The assistant attorney general said on Jordan’s request for information on the scope of the investigations by Smith and Robert Hur — who is investigating the classified documents found at President Biden’s office and residence — that their scopes were provided in the orders that Garland issued appointing them to their positions in November and January, respectively.

He included copies of those orders in his response.

Smith is authorized to investigate if any person or entity violated the law in relation to efforts to interfere with the transfer of power after the 2020 election or the certification of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, 2021, and to conduct the probe into the classified documents and other records and any efforts to obstruct the investigation, Garland said at the time he appointed Smith.

Uriarte said Jordan’s request asks for non-public information about an ongoing criminal investigation, and the DOJ has longstanding practices to protect that information’s confidentiality to maintain the integrity of its work. He argued that disclosing this information could violate statutory requirements or court orders and interfere with the DOJ’s ability to gather facts, interview witnesses and bring criminal prosecutions.

“Judgments about whether and how to pursue a matter are, and must remain, the exclusive responsibility of the Department,” Uriarte said.

He pointed to the indictment against Trump as providing detailed information about the investigation and charges filed against him.


https://www.yahoo.com/news/doj-responds-jordan-demands-more-021411307.html

 

What possible legislative need would they require the names of the people that worked these cases?

I can think of one. It would help Donald go after then on his first day as a lame duck!

 

First and foremost they want to try and protect Trump any way they can. One by trying to muddy the waters. But also hoping to get any inside information they can to relay to Trump and his legal team But so stupid and ignorant beaus any idiot should know the DOJ never reveals anything like that until they get into court.

 

'They literally lack all substance': Boebert and MTG buried by Dem over committee antics

Tom Boggioni
June 17, 2023, 2:22 PM ET



Lauren Boebert and Majorie Taylor Greene (Composite by Raw Story; Photos by Gage Skidmore)


During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday afternoon, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) was asked what it is like to work with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Lauren Boebert (R-CO) behind the scenes in congressionalcommittees, and she indicated that it is a waste of everyone's time.

Earlier the week, Crockett was forced to apologize to a House Oversight Committee witness after she was bullied and talked over by Boebert.

After MSNBC host Alex Witt showed the video of the Texas lawmaker telling the witness, "First of all, let me apologize because that was uncalled for, so let me do what she would never do, which is to be an adult in this room or in this chamber,” and then adding, "I’m also going to start with some nonsense that she was trying to spew and, unlike Ms. Boebert, I am legally trained and I’ve passed a few bar exams and I also legislated before I got here ...” Witt asked her what is like behind the scenes working with the Colorado Republican and her like-minded far-right colleague from Georgia.

"They literally lack all substance," Crockett laughed. "It is not just in committee, it's just generally speaking."

Referring back to the video she explained, "I saw exactly what happened, you saw it, you saw someone who decided that 'I don't have anything of value to offer, so what I'm going to do is be disrespectful and overtalk you and somehow that will be perceived as I know something.'"

"I laid out my credentials, not so much to clap back on her, but it had more so to do with her not understanding what it was that she was trying to spar with our witness about," she elaborated. "So I was laying down that I understood and she didn't, and maybe she needs to do a little research before she came to committee trying to clap back on people."

Watch below or at the link.



https://www.rawstory.com/lauren-boebert-committee-2661470603/

 

When we see Rep Jamie Raskin calling the treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republican's bluff we know for sure they've got nothing. Raskin has also seen all the material and knows the allegations were investigated by the Bill Barr's DOJ and they couldn't find anything. And if Barr could have found something he would have screed it from the roof tops.



Jamie Raskin Asks FBI To Release More Details About Its Assessment Of Biden Bribe Rumor

779
Arthur Delaney
Fri, June 16, 2023 at 12:43 PM MDT


WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee wants the FBI to tell the public what it really thought of a mysterious bribery allegation against President Joe Biden.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Friday asked the FBI to make public its analysis of a tip submitted to the bureau in 2020 that a foreign national claimed to have paid Biden $5 million when he was vice president.

Publicly, the Justice Department has said nothing about the allegation ― and Republicans have run with the rumor, claiming that Biden’s been caught on tape in a corrupt scheme and that the FBI has protected him while going after former President Donald Trump.

Officials from the FBI privately briefed Raskin and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) last week. The two lawmakers have offered wildly divergent accounts of what the officials said, with Comer claiming that the allegation “has not been disproven” and that the president remained “under investigation for bribery.”

“It is deeply concerning that recent public statements are plainly inconsistent with statements made by the FBI in the June 5, 2023, briefing,” Raskin said in his Friday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Raskin has said that the derogatory material was brought to the Justice Department’s attention by former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani in 2020, and that U.S. Attorney General William Barr assigned Scott Brady, then the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, to assess the material ― which Brady later determined wasn’t worth investigating fully.

“The FBI explained that the assessment was closed because Mr. Brady’s team found insufficient evidence to warrant escalating their probe of Mr. Giuliani’s allegations from an assessment of the allegations to a preliminary or full investigation,” Raskin said in his letter. “The FBI read an excerpt from a memorandum closing down the assessment with the concurrence of both Mr. Brady and high-level officials at DOJ.”

Barr has said in recent weeks that the Pittsburgh office wasn’t authorized to open an investigation and that the Justice Department passed the material along to prosecutors in Delaware, who are reportedly weighing tax-evasion charges against Hunter Biden.

In his letter, Raskin asked the FBI to “reiterate in writing the non-classified information” that FBI officials had provided to him and Comer by the end of next week.

The letter marks something of a role reversal, since Republicans have been demanding that the FBI release the bureau’s tip sheet and explain their investigative efforts. It comes after Republicans have dribbled out details from the document on a near-daily basis for the past several weeks, while occasionally admitting they don’t know if any of it is true.

When Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) first asked the FBI to hand over the form memorializing the tip at the beginning of May because they had somehow independently learned of the document’s contents, they described it as alleging a “bribery scheme with a foreign national.” The following week, Comer added that the scheme involved a $5 million sum.

This week, in response to Trump’s indictment on obstruction of justice and other charges, Grassley revealed that the document alleged that the foreign national who spoke to the FBI informant claimed to have multiple recordings of himself speaking to Joe and Hunter Biden.

“These recordings were allegedly kept as a sort of insurance policy for the foreign national in case he got into a tight spot,” Grassley said on the Senate floor. Comer and others have cautioned that they don’t know if the recordings actually exist.

Giuliani, for his part, has said during several Newsmax TV appearances that he alerted the Justice Department to the allegation and that the foreign national involved is Mykola Zlochevksy, co-founder of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

“The document they’re talking about, the $10 million bribe from Mykola Zlochevsky, it really is the tip of the iceberg,” Giuliani said on Newsmax on Saturday. “That document was discovered because it was at least one FBI agent that went out and tried to corroborate what I gave them.”

Hunter Biden infamously served on Burisma’s board of directors while his father served as U.S. vice president and urged Ukraine to fire a prosecutor. Trump’s first impeachment stemmed from his effort to coerce Ukraine into announcing a bogus investigation into the Bidens, despite no credible evidence of wrongdoing by the elder Biden.

Comer has insisted that Giuliani, who faces disbarment for his role in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is not the reason the FBI looked into the bribery allegation.

Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), an Oversight Committee member who has seen a redacted copy of the form, suggested lawmakers were able to infer the source’s identity themselves.

“One of the sentences where the name was redacted in the same sentence, it referred to him and said ‘he/Burisma,’” Greene told HuffPost.

Zlochevsky fled embezzlement charges in Ukraine, and his whereabouts are unknown.

In 2020, when Barr acknowledged that the Justice Department was looking at Giuliani’s material, he said it warranted skepticism.

“There are a lot of agendas in the Ukraine, a lot of cross currents. And we can’t take anything we received from Ukraine at face value.”



https://www.yahoo.com/news/jamie-raskin-asks-fbi-release-184317058.html

 

Comer reveals plans to bring in more witnesses for 'Biden family influence-peddling' probe (msn.com)

1945
Did the Biden Family Get $30 Million in Foreign Money?
Story by John Rossomando • Yesterday 2:37 PM


Former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden speaking with supporters at a town hall hosted by the Iowa Asian and Latino Coalition at Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 33 in Des Moines, Iowa. Image Credit: Creative Commons.© Provided by 1945

Members of the Biden family including President Joe Biden may have received between $20 to $30 million from foreign sources, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.

“We have more bank records coming in, we’re going to exceed $10 million this week. And I think we’ll get up to between $20 and 30 million,” Comer said.

The House Oversight Committee released a report last month detailing a network of LLCs that allegedly were used by the Biden family to launder money and hide its sources. The recently obtained FBI FD-1023 document suggests that Joe Biden was involved in a $5 million bribery scheme to get him to pressure Ukrainian President Poro Poroshenko to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

Shokin was investigating the corrupt Ukrainian energy firm Burisma and its owner Mykola Zlochevsky.

Comer identified nine members of the Biden family as allegedly having been involved in the corrupt moneymaking scheme. They include the president’s brother James Biden; his sister-in-law Sara Biden; his daughter-in-law Hallie Biden; Hunter Biden’s current wife Melissa Cohen Biden; and Hunter Biden’s former wife Kathleen Buehle.

“We’re going to continue to follow the money,” Comer said.

Comer told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the committee has “already tracked down a little over $10 million.” He told Hannity that the source of the information about the alleged payment from Burisma has not been heard from in at least three years.

“You know, MSNBC makes fun of me when I said that there are a lot of people that were involved in the Biden shenanigans that are currently missing,” Comer said of the high-ranking Burisma executive who allegedly made 17 recordings of Hunter Biden and Joe Biden. “But, with respect to this oligarch, we think we know where he is. He just hasn't been seen in public in a long time, but we're following the money.”

Millions From China to Biden Family?
Of particular interest besides the Burisma transactions has been the money received by the Biden family from accounts related to CEFC China Energy.

Its former head Ye Jianming and Hunter Biden business served as deputy secretary general of the China Association for International Friendly Contacts (CAIFC).

The U.S.-China Security Review Commission says CAIFC “performs dual roles of intelligence collection and conducting propaganda and perception management campaigns.” CAIFC also serves as a platform for deploying undercover intelligence gatherers.”

Hunter Biden and Ye were involved in a Louisiana project. Joe Biden, allegedly identified as “the Big Guy” in a May 13, 2017 email discussing the transaction, notes that he was supposed to have received 10% of the proceeds from the project.

In April, bank records obtained from Cathay Bank, a Chinese-American bank with offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing, showed that CEFC Energy wired millions of dollars to Hudson West III. This company was a joint operation between Hunter Biden and Gongwen Dong, a close associate of Ye’s.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, connected Gongwen with “United Front” groups that have close ties to Chinese intelligence.

Grassley noted that CEFC Energy provided Hudson West III with a $5 million transfer in August 2014.

Hunter Biden personally referred to Patrick Ho, another associate of Ye’s, who he was working with as the “spy chief of China.”

James Biden the Next Target of Interest
Comer told Hannity that transactions involving James Biden will be the next focus for the House Oversight Committee.

“We’re pretty confident from other sources that that number will grow to beyond $20 million and it could be more if you factor in the president’s brother, who dealt mainly in the Middle East. We haven’t even gotten to him yet,” he explained.

 

Comer reveals plans to bring in more witnesses for 'Biden family influence-peddling' probe (msn.com)

FOX News
Comer reveals plans to bring in more witnesses for 'Biden family influence-peddling' probe
Story by Charles Creitz • 2h ago

CNN$200 'Jeopardy!' clue stumps guests, stuns viewers
0:55
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told Fox News there are more witnesses and sources to come forward regarding his panel's probe of alleged bribery and influence peddling on the part of President Biden and members of his family.

Comer told "Life, Liberty & Levin" he and fellow involved lawmakers have done more than expected given their narrower purview than the Justice Department or executive branch Cabinet offices to investigate information relevant to the probe.

"I think we've done as much as we could do with the obstacles we've had to overcome," he said. "No one thought I would get bank records. No one thought we would get access to the Treasury, Cabinet's suspicious activity reports, but we would not take no for an answer."

"We kept fighting and we prevailed. When we got access to the suspicious activity reports, the mainstream media said there was nothing there."

He alleged the wires were made via shell companies to nine Biden kin, and that the discovery of an FBI 1023 form has even further deepened the investigation, with the lawmaker alleging the Justice Department sat on the bribery allegations laid out by a source in the document.

"Even though they will tell you and you heard in the testimony when Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley grilled the deputy FBI director as to why they wouldn't release the Form 1023, they said, 'Well, we don't want to endanger the life of our paid informant who's one of our most trusted, highest paid, most credible FBI informants,'" Comer said.

"So if this is the case and the FBI informant's that credible and the FBI informant tells the FBI that the vice president of the United States took a bribe from a foreign national in exchange for foreign policy and foreign aid, then why did the FBI not investigate it?"

He said the 1023 form saga is emblematic of a pattern his committee has encountered when trying to dislodge information from government sources.

The IRS would only investigate tax evasion-related claims against first son Hunter Biden, Comer claimed.

"They didn't want to investigate the shell companies. They didn't want to investigate the money laundering. And then we know the Department of Justice hasn't done anything, so there's a pattern here where the federal government, the deep state bureaucracies, have turned a blind eye to Joe Biden."

"Our job in the House Oversight Committee is to follow the money, and we have more bank records coming in."

He said there is a lot more to come as his panel investigates further.

"We're going to start bringing in key figures in the Biden family influence-peddling schemes for depositions, and I think we're on the right track, even though we're having to fight the FBI, fight the DOJ, fight the Democrats in Congress and fight the mainstream media."

 

Hey @shootersa what happened to the whistleblowers and tapes? Now even MTG is admitying they don’t have them.

And anyone can just look at this thread to see how many times Comer and the treasonous conservative American Hating Republicans have already proven themselves to non fucking liars.

They are like MyPillowGuy always making big promises and then never delivering. And only blind brainwashed parrots would not notice that

 

So wait. You don't support a full investigation of the serious allegations against our President?

Cause just the bank records raise some serious questions.
Like why does the Biden family have 20 corporations, not one of which produces or sells or offers any product or service and have no employees, but one way or the other, move MILLIONS between them? You understand that that is classic money laundering, right?
What did any of these corporations do that earned them their MILLIONS?
Why is money moving between them repeatedly?

And say, wasn't it you constantly demonizing Trump as a sex deviant for having hookers pee on the bed Obama slept in? You know, demanding a full investigation and his impeachment?
With no tapes?
No evidence?

We know it's now your man(woman) in the block, but even for you this is a bit overly hypocritical.
Really. If your man(woman) is indeed innocent, don't you want that proven conclusively?
Cause half of America is thinking there's something to the allegations now.

 

So wait, you don't support a full investigation into the events of Jan 6th? or Tramp's stolen election allegations?

Trumplican hypocrisy in full display.

 

Show where shooter has ever supported anything but a full investigation of jan.6.

You can't because shooter has said from the beginning full disclosure.

Its despicables who only want their version and evidence supporting their version, disclosed.

And you are one of the most vocal despicables pedaling only the despicable version.

 

Well when will we see a GOP run investigation? Any ideas?

 

Dismissed

 

That is not what they are doing. They have admitted that themselves.

Then do you agree there should also be investigations into Trump and his family? How many companies do they have? How many licenses and trademarks does Ivanka have from China? How many millions have they taken in from foreign countries? Hos did Jared Kushner secure a billion dollar loan from Qatar to bail out his 666 Fifth avenue property? How did Kushner get a $3 billion investment from Saudi Arabia? How much did Trump take in from Saudi Arabia and how much is he taking in now with the Saudi golf league? Where do Trump's get their money for their organization? How about all the Russians who buy Trump properties which many have described as a Russian money laundromat?

Shouldn't those be investigated as well? Don't we also have the right to know the answers to those questions?

No I have consistently said the pee pee tapes could be a false flag fed to Christopher Steele so Putin could spot the informants, tack them down and kill them.

But it looks like you need to be telling this to the Russians.


‘Of course we have it!‘: Russian lawmaker pushes Putin to reveal the pee tape

Sarah K. Burris
September 5, 2017, 8:09 AM ET



Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump (Photos by: Evan El-Amin and Shutterstock)


The leader of the far-right New Russia Movement, Nikita Isaev, wants to see his country's leader "hit Donald Trump with our kompromat," meaning the compromising material they have.

In a conversation with Russia-24, Isaev seemed to indicate Russia possesses incriminating information on the American president that he would like to see go public, The Independent reported.

When asked to verify if they have such material, Isaev exclaimed, "Of course, we have it!"

Shortly before Trump's inauguration, a dossier was published alleging, among other things, that the Russian government is aware of Trump hiring prostitutes to defile a bed once slept in by former President Barack Obama.

Trump is embroiled in a scandal that draws ties between his campaign and Russian hackers that stole information from the Democratic Party and its presidential candidates, and flooded social media with false information.

Trump was warned about the dossier by former FBI Director James Comey as a courtesy before it was published publicly by the media.



https://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/of...lawmaker-pushes-putin-to-reveal-the-pee-tape/

As proven by this thread I am thrilled by the treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans "investigations." For one and most important it is an opportunity for the Democrats to expose their lies and false propaganda once and for all. And also because they have been just fucking hilarious with them making lying fools of themselves.

But shouldn't we also have investigations of Trump and his family?[/quote]

 

This is a matter of life and death to treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans. Their entire method of operation is dependent on lies, false propaganda, psychological projection, and misinformation. In fact that was actually the outrage behind social media companies trying to combat misinformation. The treasonous conservative/America Hating/Republicans were screaming no as a private company you must publish and broadcast our lies.




Jim Jordan leads GOP push to cripple 'fight against disinformation': report

Matthew Chapman
June 19, 2023, 10:54 AM ET



Jim Jordan (R-OH) -- (Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo for AFP)


Republican lawmakers are joining forces with far-right activists to attack universities and even private businesses that are investigating the spread of disinformation online — claiming that this amounts to an effort to silence conservatives on the internet, according to a report.

The New York Times posted a details of the actions they are taking on Monday.

"The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved," reported Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel.

"They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald J. Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election."

The House Judiciary Committee, under Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), has been leading the charge. Meanwhile, a group founded by far-right former Trump adviser Stephen Miller has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court going after the same entities.

"Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online," said the report.

"In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful."

The new push is part of a broader, years-long conspiracy theory among right-wing activists that the government and "big tech" companies are colluding to silence conservative speech on the internet. There is no evidence of any such conspiracy; in fact, research shows conservative content actually spreads more easily on Facebook and Twitter.



https://www.rawstory.com/jim-jordan-2661556363/

 

You cannot even study misinformation because without our lies, false propaganda, psychological projection, and misinformation we got nothing. Our only method of operation is to lie, lie and lie some more. And you must publish and broadcast our lies and not expose them.


GOP Targets Researchers Who Study Disinformation Before 2024 Election
670
Steven Lee Myers and Sheera Frenkel
Mon, June 19, 2023 at 11:31 AM MDT



Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chairs a hearing of the House Select Committee on Weaponization of the Federal Government, in Washington, May 18, 2023. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)

On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.

The effort has encumbered its targets with expansive requests for information and, in some cases, subpoenas — demanding notes, emails and other information related to social media companies and the government dating back to 2015. Complying has consumed time and resources and already affected the groups’ ability to do research and raise money, according to several people involved.

They and others warned that the campaign undermined the fight against disinformation in American society when the problem is, by most accounts, on the rise — and when another presidential election is around the corner. Many of those behind the Republican effort had also joined former President Donald Trump in falsely challenging the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.


Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times

“I think it’s quite obviously a cynical — and I would say wildly partisan — attempt to chill research,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, an organization that works to safeguard freedom of speech and the press.

The House Judiciary Committee, which in January came under Republican majority control, has sent scores of letters and subpoenas to the researchers — only some of which have been made public. It has threatened legal action against those who have not responded quickly or fully enough.

A conservative advocacy group led by Stephen Miller, the former adviser to Trump, filed a class-action lawsuit last month in U.S. District Court in Louisiana that echoes many of the committee’s accusations and focuses on some of the same defendants.

Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.

In a related line of inquiry, the committee has also issued a subpoena to the World Federation of Advertisers, a trade association, and the Global Alliance for Responsible Media it created. The committee’s Republican leaders have accused the groups of violating antitrust laws by conspiring to cut off advertising revenue for content researchers and tech companies found to be harmful.

The committee’s chair, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a close ally of Trump, has accused the organizations of “censorship of disfavored speech” involving issues that have galvanized the Republican Party: the policies around the COVID-19 pandemic and the integrity of the American political system, including the outcome of the 2020 election.

Much of the disinformation surrounding both issues has come from the right. Many Republicans are convinced that researchers who study disinformation have pressed social media platforms to discriminate against conservative voices.

Those complaints have been fueled by Twitter’s decision under its new owner, Elon Musk, to release selected internal communications between government officials and Twitter employees. The communications show government officials urging Twitter to take action against accounts spreading disinformation but stopping short of ordering them to do, as some critics claimed.

Patrick L. Warren, an associate professor at Clemson University, said researchers at the school have provided documents to the committee, and given some staff members a short presentation. “I think most of this has been spurred by our appearance in the Twitter files, which left people with a pretty distorted sense of our mission and work,” he said.

Last year, the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana sued the Biden administration in U.S. District Court in Louisiana, arguing that government officials effectively cajoled or coerced Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms by threatening legislative changes. The judge, Terry A. Doughty, rejected a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit in March.

The current campaign’s focus is not government officials but rather private individuals working for universities or nongovernmental organizations. They have their own First Amendment guarantees of free speech, including their interactions with the social media companies.

The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.

If the lawsuit proceeds, they could face trial and, potentially, civil damages if the accusations are upheld.

Miller, the president of America First Legal, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement last month, he said the lawsuit was “striking at the heart of the censorship-industrial complex.”

The researchers, who have been asked by the House committee to submit emails and other records, are also defendants in the lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. The plaintiffs include Jill Hines, a director of Health Freedom Louisiana, an organization that has been accused of disinformation, and Jim Hoft, the founder of the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing news site. The court in the Western District of Louisiana has, under Doughty, become a favored venue for legal challenges against the Biden administration.

The attacks use “the same argument that starts with some false premises,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab, which is not a party to any of the legal action. “We see it in the media, in the congressional committees and in lawsuits, and it is the same core argument, with a false premise about the government giving some type of direction to the research we do.”

The House Judiciary Committee has focused much of its questioning on two collaborative projects. One was the Election Integrity Partnership, which Stanford and the University of Washington formed before the 2020 election to identify attempts “to suppress voting, reduce participation, confuse voters or delegitimize election results without evidence.” The other, also organized by Stanford, was called the Virality Project and focused on the spread of disinformation about COVID-19 vaccines.

Both subjects have become political lightning rods, exposing the researchers to partisan attacks online that have become ominously personal at times.

In the case of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the requests for information — including all emails — have even extended to students who volunteered to work as interns for the Election Integrity Partnership.

A central premise of the committee’s investigation — and the other complaints about censorship — is that the researchers or government officials had the power or ability to shut down accounts on social media. They did not, according to former employees at Twitter and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, who said the decision to punish users who violated platform rules belonged solely to the companies.

No evidence has emerged that government officials coerced the companies to take action against accounts, even when the groups flagged problematic content.

“We have not only academic freedom as researchers to conduct this research but freedom of speech to tell Twitter or any other company to look at tweets we might think violate rules,” Hancock said.

The universities and research organizations have sought to comply with the committee’s requests, though the collection of years of emails has been a time-consuming task complicated by issues of privacy. They face mounting legal costs and questions from directors and donors about the risks raised by studying disinformation. Online attacks have also taken a toll on morale and, in some cases, scared away students.

In May, Jordan threatened Stanford with unspecified legal action for not complying with a previously issued subpoena, even though the university’s lawyers have been negotiating with the committee’s lawyers over how to shield students’ privacy. (Several of the students who volunteered are identified in the America First Legal lawsuit.)

The committee declined to discuss details of the investigation, including how many requests or subpoenas it has filed in total. Nor has it disclosed how it expects the inquiry to unfold — whether it would prepare a final report or make criminal referrals and, if so, when. In its statements, though, it appears to have already reached a broad conclusion.

“The Twitter files and information from private litigation show how the federal government worked with social media companies and other entities to silence disfavored speech online,” a spokesperson, Russell Dye, said in a statement. “The committee is working hard to get to the bottom of this censorship to protect First Amendment rights for all Americans.”

The partisan controversy is having an effect on not only the researchers but also the social media giants.

Twitter, under Musk, has made a point of lifting restrictions and restoring accounts that had been suspended, including the Gateway Pundit’s. YouTube recently announced that it would no longer ban videos that advanced “false claims that widespread fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past U.S. presidential elections.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gop-targets-researchers-study-disinformation-173105146.html

 

Well, we know that as far as misinformation goes, the despicables have a corner on that market;

• The Steele Dossier
• The Biden laptop that was supposed to be mis information but wasn't that the "intelligence community" tried to tell us was misinformation when they knew is was legitimate.
• Now the FBI form 1023 that they're stepping all over themselves trying to discredit so they can protect their man(woman) while at the same time going after political opponents with every tactic they know of.