FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: Facebook staffers were leaking to the White House as the tech company and the Biden administration battled over COVID-19 vaccine content and whether Facebook should be censoring it, according to emails obtained by The Daily Signal.
In an April 18, 2021, email that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, produced to the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, executive Nick Clegg told Facebook colleagues that Andy Slavitt, then a White House senior adviser on the COVID-19 response, said Facebook employees were leaking to the White House.
Clegg, who said that he had just had a long call with Slavitt, wrote that “Andy told me in confidence … that internal FB employees are leaking to his team (I assume via Rob F[laherty] accounts of disobliging remarks made about both Andy and Rob by FB decision makers.”
Flaherty was then the digital director at the Biden White House.
Clegg, who is the president of global affairs at Meta, also wrote that Slavitt said Facebook employees suggested that Facebook leadership was planning to manipulate the White House with the data it shared.
“Those remarks [by Facebook decision-makers] are coupled with suggestions about how FB should ‘snow’ the White House with info/data about authoritative Covid info in order not to share the most telling/helpful data about content which contributes to vaccine hesitancy,” he added about what Facebook employees were allegedly leaking to the Biden administration.
The leaks occurred at a time when Facebook faced heavy pressure from the Biden White House to censor content on the COVID-19 vaccine. Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the government weaponization subcommittee, has been revealing the extent of the pressure in the “Facebook files” posts he releases on Twitter, sourced from documents and emails Meta shared with the subcommittee.
“These newly subpoenaed meeting notes continue to show the Biden White House’s desire to direct and control content on Facebook,” writes Jordan.
These newly subpoenaed meeting notes continue to show the Biden White House’s desire to direct and control content on Facebook.
More evidence of the censorship-industrial complex.
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 3, 2023