The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, has subpoenaed communications from the FBI and the Department of Justice related to the federal government’s contact with social media companies. 

“Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan issued subpoenas to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland of the Department of Justice related to the Committee’s ongoing censorship investigation,” the Judiciary Committee said in a statement. “Specifically, the Committee is seeking communications between the FBI and DOJ, private companies, and other third-party groups related to content moderation and the suppression of disfavored speech online.”

Mr. Jordan says these subpoenas are meant to help the committee consider new legislation that would curtail the government’s ability to “collude” with Silicon Valley.

The committee has been probing successful efforts by federal agencies to have social media firms suppress dissenting content about Covid as well as about Hunter Biden’s laptop, among other topics the government considered “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

“For the Committee to inform potential legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with social media platforms and other companies to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand the nature of this collusion and coercion between the federal government and Big Tech companies,” the statement continues.

The FBI agent who took a leading role in contacting social media companies about taking down posts, Elvis Chan, has been one of the main targets of the investigation. While working at the FBI, Mr. Chan was often in contact with companies such as Twitter, now known as X, so he could flag online posts that were deemed to be “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

Mr. Chan was deposed in a lawsuit — Missouri v. Biden — in which the state challenged the Biden administration’s practices in contacting social media companies for the purposes of flagging online posts so they could be taken down. Mr. Jordan alleges in his letter that there is new information that “contradicts” Mr. Chan’s deposition in Missouri. 

Mr. Jordan requested the information in April, though the FBI and DOJ failed to turn over the communications voluntarily. “This production is woefully inadequate and omits voluminous responsive material, including communications between FBI and tech companies, internal communications, and communications between FBI and other executive branch entities,” Mr. Jordan wrote to Mr. Wray of the original request for information. 

Mr. Jordan, who also sits atop the select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government, is likely to continue his fight with the executive branch throughout his time as the Judiciary Committee chairman. In July, Mr. Jordan invited three witnesses to testify before his weaponization subcommittee on the issue of “big tech censorship” — the politics editor of Breitbart News, Emma-Jo Morris, attorney John Sauer, and a Democratic presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 

During the hearing, Mr. Jordan questioned the witnesses about their personal involvement with Silicon Valley tech companies shutting down their online profiles. A video of Mr. Kennedy was removed from YouTube because of claims he made about the Covid vaccine being dangerous. Ms. Morris was one of the authors of the October 2020 New York Post article that disclosed the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop — an article that was removed from Twitter and had limited reach on Facebook. Mr. Sauer worked as the deputy attorney general in Missouri when the state sued the Biden administration.