Rep. Kevin McCarthy on Sunday called for an investigation into other Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google following the damning revelations about how top Twitter executives censored The Post’s 2020 expose on Hunter Biden’s laptop.
McCarthy — who is running to become House speaker when Republicans take control of the lower chamber in January — also said the security clearances of intelligence officials should be removed if they are using their positions to influence politics.
“Now we need to start looking at Facebook, at Google. These now have become arms of the Democratic Party, arms of the Biden administration,” the California Republican said on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“But they also used the intel community as well to lie to the American public. Should those people keep their clearances? Should those people still be allowed to have information? If they’re going to be political individuals then no, they should not. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of what we need to investigate going forward,” he continued.
Former CIA Director John Brennan and ex-National Security Council Director James Clapper were among a group of former intelligence officials who signed a statement days after The Post’s bombshell October 2020 report, claiming it “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Elon Musk on Friday released through the journalist Matt Taibbi details of Twitter’s internal deliberations on how a small group of top executives “took extraordinary steps to suppress” The Post’s reporting.
McCarthy said all Musk has done since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October is “put out the truth.”
They kept their deliberations secret from then-CEO Jack Dorsey and concluded without evidence that the reporting may have included “hacked materials.”
Twitter’s censorship happened just weeks before the 2020 election when Hunter Biden’s father, Joe Biden, was running against then-President Donald Trump, the House minority leader noted.
“Ninety-five percent of all searches go through Google. Twitter, withholding a newspaper article, saying you can’t. Then an intel community coming out and saying it’s a lie. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the [House Intelligence Committee] saying it’s not true to Wolf Blitzer,” McCarthy said.
“They used every arm not only of the government, but they had taken over businesses to lie to the American public. This is just the beginning. And this is why we got to be ready to go on Jan. 3. All this will be held up,” he said.