The House select committee has subpoenaed leading social media companies for records related to the Jan. 6 insurrection as it seeks to review data that could potentially implicate the Trump White House.
The subpoenas were issued on Thursday to Twitter, Meta, Alphabet and Reddit. Facebook is part of Meta and Google is part of Alphabet.
In a statement released by the committee, Chairman Bennie Thompson said::
“Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps—if any—social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence.
“It’s disappointing that after months of engagement, we still do not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions. The Select Committee is working to get answers for the American people and help ensure nothing like January 6th ever happens again. We cannot allow our important work to be delayed any further.”
In his subpoena letter to Twitter, Thompson said the select committee was interested in obtaining key documents House investigators suspect the company is withholding that could shed light on how people used the platform to plan and execute the Capitol attack.
The letter added:
“Finally, Twitter has failed to produce any documents that fully explain either its decision to suspend President Trump’s account on January 8, 2021, or any other decisions the company made regarding President Trump’s account relating to the events of January 6th.
After over four months of good-faith negotiations on the part of the Select Committee, it has become clear that Twitter is unwilling to commit to voluntarily and expeditiously complying with the Select Committee’s requests.
The letter addressed to Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal said the committee believes that Twitter “has failed to fully comply or even commit to a timeline” to provide critical information requested by the committee.
In his letter to Reddit CEO Steven Huffman, Thompson said the select committee was interested in records relating to the “r/The_Donald” subreddit community, which eventually migrated to a website TheDonald.win, which contained “a significant amount of online planning and discussion” related to the Jan. 6 attack.
According to lawsuits filed by Capitol Police officers against Trump, the Donaldwin.com website included posts calling for violence and executions after Trump posted his Tweet on Dec. 19 calling for a “wild” protest on Jan. 6.
A user named “EvilGuy” posted: “I will be open carrying and so will my friends. We have been waiting for Trump to say the word. There is [sic] not enough cops in DC to stop what is coming.”
A Reddit spokesperson acknowledged receipt of the subpoena, and told Huffpost that it “will continue to work with the committee on their requests.”
Thompson’s letter to Alphabet CEO Sundan Pichal said the committee was seeking material because the video platform hosted communications by people who played key roles in the Capitol attack, including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
YouTube was a platform for significant communications by its users that were relevant to the planning and execution of January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. For example, Steve Bannon live-streamed his podcast on YouTube in the days before and after January 6, 2021, live-streams of the attack appeared on YouTube as it was taking place. To this day, YouTube is a platform on which user video spread misinformation about the election.”
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The Huffington Post reported that a spokesman for Google said that it has been “actively cooperating” with the committee since its start and has been “responding substantively to their requests for documents.”
“We have strict policies prohibiting content that incites violence or undermines trust in elections across YouTube and Google’s products,” the spokesperson said, “and we enforced these policies in the run-up to January 6 and continue to do so today.”
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Thompson said in the subpoena letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the social media giant “has failed to provide critical internal and external analyses conducted by the company regarding misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation relating to the 2020 election, efforts to challenge or overturn the election, and the use of Meta by domestic violent extremists to affect the 2020 election.”
A Meta spokesperson told HuffPost: “As Chairman Thompson said recently, ‘Facebook is working with [the committee] to provide the necessary information we requested.’ Since then, Meta has produced documents to the committee on a schedule committee staff requested ― and we will continue to do so.”
The Guardian said that the select committee has been examining digital fingerprints left by the Trump White House and other individuals connected to the Capitol attack since the start of the investigation. The committee issued data preservation requests to 35 telecom and social media companies in August.
The select committee gave the social media companies a Jan. 27 deadline to comply with the subpoenas.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has threatened that if the social media companies comply with the committee’s order to turn over private information they will be violating federal law and will be held “fully accountable” should the Republicans regain a House majority in the mid-term elections.