(FreePressBeacon.com) – After a recent bombshell statement came to light, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is demanding Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas be fired for lying about an unashamed censorship scheme.
Mayorkas is under renewed scrutiny from Republicans after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that senior officials from the Biden-Harris administration “repeatedly pressured” Facebook to censor certain content during the pandemic.
Mayorkas had previously assured Senator Hawley in a Senate hearing that his department did not instruct social media platforms to suppress information regarding COVID-19 that they found misleading.
However, Zuckerberg’s recent statements disproved Mayorkas’ assertions.
“Zuckerberg finally admitted what everybody already knew: The Biden-Harris Administration coerced Big Tech to do its dirty work, censoring free speech about COVID and the 2020 election,” Hawley stated.
“We knew Mayorkas was behind this — even if he denied it to Congress. Add perjury to the list of reasons he should be fired,” the senator added.
In a November 2022 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Mayorkas firmly denied any allegations that his department pressured tech companies to censor content related to the pandemic.
“It is unequivocally false, senator,” Mayorkas said when Hawley questioned him.
“You are not pressuring the Big Tech companies to take down accounts? You are not meeting with them to ask them to censor on your behalf?” Hawley asked.
“That is correct. We are not,” Mayorkas responded.
The Mayorkas-led Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was criticized at the time for proposing a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which Republicans argued would violate free speech rights.
The board was planned under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), part of DHS, which has been accused of collaborating with Big Tech to censor conservative viewpoints.
In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg outlined interactions with government officials who urged Meta to restrict certain content during the pandemic.
“Senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree,” he wrote.
Zuckerberg regretted the decisions made under this pressure and vowed to resist governmental influence in the future.
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