Originally Authored at TheFederalist.com
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray were grilled during a Tuesday Homeland Security Committee hearing by Sen. Rand Paul over their respective agency’s assault on the First Amendment.
The DHS and FBI were exposed by the now-famous Missouri v. Biden case for annihilating free speech in America, but instead of showing remorse or promising reform, Mayorkas and Wray were defensive and dishonest during the hearing.
Mayorkas insisted that DHS employees only ever met with Big Tech companies “to speak of the threats to the homeland so that those companies are alert to them.” When asked whether “threats to the homeland” include criticism of vaccine efficacy, Mayorkas said that it does not, suggesting that DHS never directed social media companies to censor vaccine-related content.
However, Missouri v. Biden revealed that during the years of Covid hysteria, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a subsidiary of DHS, did direct the censorship of speech critical of Covid vaccines and authoritarian lockdown measures implemented by the government.
“[Missouri v. Biden] lists time and time again, discussion of constitutionally protected speech that has nothing to do with national security,” Paul told Mayorkas, refusing to let the secretary lie.
To Wray, Paul asked whether the FBI is “still meeting with social media companies?”
“We’re having some interaction with social media companies,” said Wray. “But, all of those interactions have changed fundamentally in the wake of the court’s ruling,” he added, referring to two Missouri v. Biden court rulings, which put an injunction on the FBI and other agencies, preventing them from infringing on the First Amendment.
“That’s sort of an acknowledgment that perhaps you weren’t just talking about national security, child pornography, and human trafficking, right?” asked Paul. “You had other areas of discussion that did involve Constitutionally-protected speech?”
This put Wray on the defensive, and he quickly stated that it “was not an acknowledgment of that.” When asked how the FBI changed its behavior, all Wray could say was that the FBI was acting with more caution, which presumably means the agency has limited the brazenness of its speech policing to avoid more legal troubles.
“Did anybody from the FBI ever discuss Constitutionally-protected speech with social media organizations,” Paul continued. “Not to my understanding,” retorted Wray.
This is a lie. According to Missouri v. Biden defendants, among many instances of illegal censorship, the FBI played an integral role in the systemic suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Polling suggests suppression of this story helped Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election.
Mayorkas and Wray head agencies charged with what the initial Missouri v. Biden judge, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, described as arguably “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.”
This month, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Missouri v. Biden but blocked the lower court injunction preventing further speech policing until it can address the case. For now, Wray and Mayorkas are likely able to continue violating one of Americans’ most sacred and essential rights. The case is expected to be heard by the Supreme Court sometime before the end of June.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.