House Judiciary panel subpoenas Google, YouTube parent company

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Thursday subpoenaed Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, demanding the tech giant turn over its communications with the executive branch.

The panel also requested that Alphabet hand over internal communications about its interactions with the previous administration and third parties working with the executive branch.

“The Committee’s oversight has revealed that YouTube, a subsidiary of Alphabet, was a direct participant in the federal government’s censorship regime,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

Jordan cited a committee report featuring a series of emails between Google and the White House under former President Biden about content moderation in 2021, largely related to COVID-19 misinformation.

“To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan added.

He also noted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent criticism of the Biden administration’s approach. Zuckerberg said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee last August that he regretted not being more outspoken about pressure his company faced to take down COVID-related content in 2021.

“Alphabet, to our knowledge, has not similarly disavowed the Biden-Harris Administration’s attempts to censor speech,” Jordan said Thursday.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement that the tech firm will “continue to show the committee how we enforce our policies independently, rooted in our commitment to free expression.”

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the Biden administration’s communications with tech companies last year. However, the justices did not get to the First Amendment question at the heart of the case — whether the government’s communications crossed the line into coercion — instead finding the parties lacked standing to bring the case.

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