WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, America First Legal (AFL) launched an investigation into the Biden-Harris U.S. Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Developments (USAID), and U.S. Department of Commerce’s role in social media censorship by Brazil’s leftist government.
In June 2021, the Biden-Harris White House released a first-of-its-kind National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, declaring war on “disinformation” (citing 2020 election fraud “narratives” as a cause for domestic terrorism) and promised to engage in “a global, multi-stakeholder setting in which we can collaborate on addressing terrorist [sic] content online with partner governments … as well as with technology companies and civil society organizations.”
In July 2021, leading up to the 2022 Brazilian election, CIA Director William Burns delivered a “message carried from the White House” to then-Brazilian President Bolsonaro. They warned him to stop casting doubts about Brazil’s electronic voting system and repeated allegations of voter fraud. Ten days before Brazil’s 2022 election, Alexandre de Moraes, Brazil’s election chief and a justice on Brazil’s Supreme Court, obtained the power to unilaterally order tech companies to remove any online post that the electoral court had deemed to be misleading, and Justice Moraes ordered social media platforms to remove some of Bolsonaro’s posts. Reportedly, the “[t]argeted U.S. pressure on key Brazilian officials was likely decisive in guaranteeing the eventual outcome.” Subsequently, the Biden-Harris Administration sent a new U.S. Ambassador to Brazil: Elizabeth F. Bagley, a Democrat mega-donor and a Department of State veteran from the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations.
On August 30, 2024, Justice Moraes issued an order blocking American social media platform X across Brazil and fining Brazilians caught accessing the platform $8,900 per day—more than what the average Brazilian makes a year. The Biden-Harris Administration has tacitly supported this persistent assault on free speech in Brazil, where Judge Moraes has demanded that X suspend or remove over 150 accounts of government critics, conservative members of the federal legislature, journalists, members of the judiciary, and even a gospel singer and a pop radio station — in other words, anyone with a platform to criticize the ruling leftist government — for allegedly spreading “disinformation.”
Beyond Brazil, the Biden-Harris Administration’s left-wing government and civil society organization partners have frozen bank accounts of anti-COVID mandate protestors, threatened to extradite American citizens for violating British hate speech laws, and, most recently, arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov. AFL has launched a parallel investigation into the State Department’s possible involvement in the arrest of Mr. Durov.
The American public needs to know whether the Biden-Harris Administration supported — or even partnered with — the Brazilian government’s censorship of a growing and successful American social media platform. AFL will continue working to expose and combat the Biden-Harris Administration’s assault on free speech.
Statement from Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Executive Director:
“The American people know first-hand the dangers associated with the censorship of free speech online–particularly given our collective experience living through such things happening here during the COVID experience. Censorship advances tyranny and oppression, and the American people deserve to know what, if anything, the Department of State, USAID, and the Department of Commerce are doing to protect American businesses and individuals from the whims of foreign governments–and whether any taxpayer resources are being used to encourage or facilitate the actions of governments engaged in censorship of American businesses,” said Gene Hamilton.
Read the FOIAs here, here, and here.
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Photo credit: adobe stock images / Bettina
