Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has demanded that Big Tech companies disclose details about their interactions and business with federal agencies that he said violated First Amendment rights.
Cruz’s office sent letters to Google, Meta, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Medium, Reddit, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Wikipedia on Tuesday asking them to detail their coordination and communications with federal agencies over misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter builds on revelations from the Twitter Files, a series of dispatches from journalists who reviewed internal Twitter communications and found the platform regularly speaking with the FBI regarding misinformation.
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The practice went well beyond Twitter to other companies.
“The Twitter Files continue to reveal the extent to which U.S. government employees, acting in an official capacity, applied pressure to, as well as coordinated with, social media companies in an effort to restrict Americans’ speech,” wrote Cruz in one of the letters to the companies, which were provided exclusively to the Washington Examiner.
“This is not only a shocking abuse of government power, but also a blatant infringement on Americans’ First Amendment rights,” Cruz added.
Cruz specifically requested details about communications with 23 federal agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and several other agencies. He asked whether the tech companies sent lists of users to federal agencies for review or if they received requests to monitor accounts.
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Cruz also requested information on whether the companies had any contact with several named government officials, including FBI agent Elvis Chan, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Chris Krebs, and former Department of Defense General Counsel William Castle.
Twitter Files authors Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi specifically detailed information about government interactions during a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on March 9. Taibbi himself was visited by the Internal Revenue Service the same day as his hearing.
