On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report titled “The FBI’s Collaboration with a Compromised Ukrainian Intelligence Agency to Censor American Speech.” Based on a subset of subpoenaed documents, the report details how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) colluded with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)—an agency widely known to be infiltrated by Russian-aligned forces—by routinely sending social media platforms spreadsheets and other documents containing thousands of accounts to take down. In so doing, the FBI and SBU flagged authentic American accounts for removal, including a verified U.S. State Department account and those belonging to American journalists. The report also exposes how the FBI offered Facebook and Instagram legal cover to remove the SBU’s flagged accounts.
The new information highlights the FBI’s unconstitutional role in enabling the SBU’s censorship regime and raises grave concerns about the FBI’s credibility, reliability, and competence as the nation’s premier law enforcement organization. The coordination between the FBI, SBU, and American social media companies is substantial, and the full extent of the FBI’s involvement with the SBU remains the subject of ongoing investigation.
Read the full report here.
