House Republicans Push Moratorium on DOJ Payments to Social Media Websites

The growing evidence that the federal government is trying to silence Americans online has caused the House Republicans to unleash their first legislation to stop Big Tech from censoring content.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (Republican from Colorado) introduced the ELON Act. This month, nine others supported it. It would impose a 1-year moratorium upon taxpayer payments from Justice Department to social media companies. Also, an audit would be required on how much money was transferred between DOJ firms and Big Tech firms since the beginning of 2015.

This legislation follows weeks of the shocking revelation that the FBI paid Twitter more than $3,000,000 to cover its handling of large numbers requests for censorship dating back to 2020.

“Who would ever have thought that the FBI would be paying Big Tech companies, you know, for their ‘advice’ or their counsel to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars?” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga. was interviewed by Just the News.

“What they’re doing is what the government cannot do directly,” He added. “And that is they are doing government by proxy, or censorship by proxy. And this is 100% a violation of the Constitution.”

Boebert claimed that evidence from the Twitter Files, released by Elon Musk, shows that the FBI has engaged in far more censorship then just the October 2020 blockade of Hunter Biden stories.

“Big Tech is in bed with the FBI and other agencies to the point where Congress can’t tell where one ends and the other begins,” Boebert said. “The millions of dollars that were sent to Twitter during an election cycle while they were simultaneously censoring the Hunter Biden laptop is extremely concerning.

“We must expose the incestuous relationship between Big Tech and the federal government. My bill does exactly that.”

Ex-Twitter executives stated that it was a grave mistake to have censored true stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop at a hearing earlier in the month. Musk’s censorship of Hunter Biden’s laptop has been exposed long before he became the company’s chief executive.

“Government paid Twitter millions of dollars to censor info from the public,” Musk Tweetreferring to a [a href=”]https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1604908670063906817″>bombshell Report by independent journalist Michael Shellenberger that exposed an internal Twitter email with the subject line “Run the business – we made money!” Jim Baker, the then-Twitter deputy general counsel, received the message informing him that Twitter was being paid by FBI $3.42million between October 2019 & February 2021.

The FBI Confirmed They claimed they were payments “reimbursement” For the “reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process … For complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.” Officials from the FBI also said that Twitter wasn’t the only social media company that received tax dollars. “We don’t just reimburse Twitter,” According to the bureau.

The Exposing Lewd Outlays for Social Networking Companies Act (or ELON Act) requires that the U.S. Comptroller General submits a report to Congress about all taxpayer payments made to Twitter, Meta Google, Microsoft and Apple by DOJ between Jan. 1, 2015 and Jan. 1, 2015. 

Proposed legslation also places a one year moratorium on all new DOJ payments to these businesses.