“Such an array of crimes against the foundations of the state’s national security,
and the links recorded between Ukrainian security forces and Russian special services
raise very serious questions about their respective leaders.”
– Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, July 17, 2022.
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is the bedrock of our
political system and guarantees every American the right to speak his or her mind freely and
without interference from the government. It is predicated on the understanding that no
government official has a monopoly on the truth and that every American is capable of
evaluating competing claims and deciding what to believe.
On February 15, 2023, as part of its investigation into the federal government’s role in
censoring lawful speech on social media platforms, the Committee on the Judiciary issued a
subpoena to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, the parent
company of Google and YouTube. Documents obtained in response to those subpoenas revealed
that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), on behalf of a compromised Ukrainian
intelligence entity, requested—and, in some cases, directed—the world’s largest social media
platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online.
The Committee’s investigation has revealed that the FBI, the federal law enforcement
agency responsible for disrupting foreign malign influence, facilitated censorship requests to
American social media companies on behalf of a Ukrainian intelligence agency infiltrated by
Russian-aligned actors. In so doing, the FBI violated the First Amendment rights of Americans
and potentially undermined our national security. In light of well-documented instances of the FBI’s civil liberties abuses, this new information raises grave concerns about the FBI’scredibility as the nation’s premier law enforcement organization.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) sought to identify and impair suspected Russian influence operations on social media. The SBU enlisted the FBI in support of this effort, transmitting to the FBI lists of social media accounts that allegedly “spread Russian disinformation.”
The FBI, in turn, routinely relayed these lists to the relevant social media platforms, which distributed the information internally to their employees in charge of content moderation and enforcement. The graphic above illustrates the FBI’s intermediary role in the SBU’s censorship operation; the graphic below illustrates the remarkable frequency with which requests were sent by the FBI and SBU to American social media platforms.
(Read more: House Judiciary Committee Report, 7/10/2023) (Archive)