House GOP Grill Mayorkas on ‘Inconsistent’ Testimony

In a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee quizzed Homeland Security Secretary and open borders enthusiast Alejandro Mayorkas over what they say are contradictions in his testimony over the Department’s “censorship” efforts.

Chairman Jim Jordan, along with Reps. Mike Johnson, R-La., Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Dan Bishop, R-N.C., wrote to Mayorkas about his testimony to the committee in July regarding the operation and scope of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and asking if he wishes to amend his testimony to the committee.

“Your testimony at the hearing contained a number of assertions about the Department’s censorship activities that are inconsistent with the findings of a federal court and information in the Committee’s possession. Accordingly, we write to provide you with an opportunity to correct your testimony to ensure it is accurate and complete,” they say .

Specifically, they highlighted a claim by Mayorkas that CISA, a cyber defense agency, “does not censor speech.”

Republicans on the committee have alleged that the CISA has expanded its mission to “surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public.” They have also released a number of tranches of documents they say are “smoking gun” evidence that the Biden administration and Big Tech companies ran afoul of the First Amendment on issues including COVID-19.

In their letter, they cite a recent court ruling, Missouri v Biden, in which a judge imposed a preliminary injunction on the administration communicating with social media heads after a lawsuit from Missouri and Louisiana.

The federal judge cited evidence that officials “met with social-media companies to both inform and pressure them to censor content protected by the First Amendment.”

“[T]he evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Judge Terry Doughty wrote.

The lawmakers say they obtained information that “misinformation” flagged by CISA included political speech of domestic origin and even social media posts by former President Donald Trump.

“The Department of Homeland Security, and especially CISA, are central to the Biden Administration’s censorship efforts and the censorship-industrial complex writ large. Your testimony to the Committee was either intentionally deceptive and misleading, or the result of an unacceptable ignorance on your part regarding the activities of your own department,” they say.