Republicans Claimed Biden Censored YouTube. 20 Employees Seem to Say Otherwise

in a letter To a House committee last month, legal counsel for Alphabet, YouTube The parent company, claims that President Joe Biden’s administration tried to “influence” the company to crack down On Covid-19 misinformation. Republicans celebrated the letter as an apparent admission democratic Censorship

But Democrats seem to be throwing cold water on the allegations. A New letter to YouTube CEO Neil Mohan As first reported by WIRED, Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, shared half a dozen portions of the transcript with 20 Alphabet employees. According to the letter, none of them claim they were pressured to suppress or remove their content at the behest of the Biden administration. The interviews came from several years of conversations with YouTube staff focusing on ethics and the role of health and trust and safety; They appear to play down years of GOP accusations of the Biden administration censoring social media platforms during the pandemic.

“As thousands of pages of transcripts of testimony make clear, no a unit “Alphabet employees testified to no coercion or undue pressure from the Biden administration,” the committee’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin, said in the letter. Perhaps all 20 of these witnesses conspired to commit perjury, or did you write an unsolicited letter against all of them to please President Trump and his minions?

A Democratic spokesman told Wired that release of the full transcript would have to be approved by committee Republicans. (Congressman Jim Jordan’s office did not respond to a request for comment. He is the committee’s GOP leader.)

“Jim Jordan’s attempt to find evidence of a censorship regime is well into its third year, and he continues to suppress the testimony of many, many witnesses who contradict his hypothesis,” claimed Georgetown University disinformation expert and associate research professor Renee DeResta.

A week after counsel for Alphabet sent a letter to the committee in September claiming they were pressured by the Biden administration, YouTube agreed to dismiss and settle a lawsuit involving the suspension of President Donald Trump’s account on the platform after the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riots (YouTube, which paid. $24.5 millionpleaded not guilty at settlement).