On Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to European Union (EU) Commissioner for Internal Markets Thierry Breton reiterating the Committee’s and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government’s concerns that the EU may be attempting to censor or suppress lawful speech in the United States, and for its threats of reprisal toward Elon Musk, an American citizen, and X Corp., an American company, for facilitating political discourse in the United States.
The Committee and Select Subcommittee are demanding a briefing and communications regarding the European Commission’s efforts to:
1. Intimidate, threaten, or coerce Elon Musk or X Corp. in connection with Mr. Musk’s interview of President Donald Trump;
2. Use EU law to force American companies to censor American speech; and
3. Communicate with the Biden-Harris Administration to use EU law as a way to bypass the First Amendment.
Excerpts of the Letter to Commissioner Thierry Breton:
“We received your response to our August 15 letter about your threats of reprisal toward Elon Musk, an American citizen, and X Corp., an American company, for facilitating political discourse in the United States. Your response, however, failed to alleviate our concerns that you may attempt to censor or suppress lawful speech in the United States using the European Union’s (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA). We write to reiterate our position that the EU’s burdensome regulation of online speech must not infringe on protected American speech, to note the inaccurate statements in your response, and to accept your offer of a European Commission (EC) staff briefing.
“First, your claim that ‘the DSA does not regulate content’ is contradicted by the text of the DSA and by your own actions. The DSA, as you admit in your letter, requires ‘Very Large Online Platforms’ (VLOPs), such as X, Facebook, and YouTube, to take ‘mitigation measures’ against alleged ‘disinformation.’ The DSA defines ‘disinformation’ as a type of ‘content,’ and because the DSA regulates disinformation, the DSA—contrary to your claims otherwise—regulates content. In fact, in your threat letter to Elon Musk, you made clear that the DSA obligates X to censor allegedly ‘harmful content’—i.e., content disfavored by the EU. In addition, according to reports, you and a team from the EU visited the headquarters of X (then-Twitter) in San Francisco last year to ‘review how the company responds to what EU regulators view as problematic tweets, both ones they flag from centers in Europe and ones they don’t’ and to ‘look at why certain content might slip through the cracks.’
“Your threats against free speech do not occur in a vacuum, and the consequences are not limited to Europe. The harms caused by EU-imposed censorship spill across international borders, as many platforms generally maintain one set of content moderation policies that they apply globally. Thus, the EU’s regulatory censorship regime may limit what content Americans can view in the United States. American companies also have an enormous incentive to comply with the DSA and public threats from EU commissioners like you. If these companies fail to censor content deemed by a European official to be ‘harmful’ or ‘disinformation,’ the DSA authorizes the EC to impose a punitive fine of up to six percent of the company’s global revenue—which, for many American companies, would amount to billions of dollars.
“Second, your assertion that you would ‘never interfere in the American democratic process’ is contradicted by your actions. You claim that you ‘decided to write to Mr. Musk to ensure that X’s trust and safety systems function properly to cope with a likely spike of online activity which could amplify dissemination in the EU of posts by users potentially containing illegal content, disinformation, or posts which run counter to the terms and conditions of the platform.’ However, to the best of our knowledge, you have not sent a similar unsolicited letter concerning ‘a likely spike in online activity’ for any other American political discourse that has been broadcast live on X and that could be alleged to include purported ‘disinformation’ or ‘harmful content.’ If you have sent such an unsolicited letter, you certainly did not do so in such a public manner as you did with your letter to Musk. The only logical inference from your actions is that your letter was intended as a threat to Musk that the EU would, as you warned, ‘make full use of [its] toolbox’ if he facilitated political speech with which you disagreed.
“Your letter, and for that matter the EC and the DSA, seems to miss a fundamental point about free speech—to oppose censorship of so-called ‘disinformation’ is not to defend or to endorse the content. It is to respect the right and the ability of citizens to consume content and to make decisions about what speech is persuasive, what is truthful, and what is accurate. To oppose censorship is to acknowledge that a government with the authority to define disinformation will inevitably do so in a way that benefits those in power at the expense of the truth. As demonstrated by your letter, EU officials are not above factual mistakes and misunderstandings. Dissenting voices matter because the ‘expert consensus’ is often wrong, as shown most recently by the devastating consequences of the government-imposed lockdowns.
“Accordingly, the Committee and Select Subcommittee accept your offer for EC staff to provide a briefing. As noted in our first letter, please have your staff prepared to provide additional information on (1) the European Commission’s efforts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce Elon Musk or X Corp. in connection with Mr. Musk’s interview of President Donald Trump; (2) efforts by the European Commission to use EU law to force American companies to censor American speech; and (3) any communications the European Commission has had with the Biden-Harris Administration to use EU law as a way to bypass the First Amendment.”
Read the full letter to Commissioner Breton here.
