GOP-Led House to Probe Alleged White House Collusion With Tech Giants

House Republicans are expected as soon as Tuesday to launch the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The panel is expected to seek to illuminate what some Republicans say have been efforts by the Biden administration to influence content hosted by companies such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.,

owner of YouTube and Google.

The panel will examine, among other things, how the executive branch works with the private sector, nonprofit entities or other government agencies to “facilitate action against American citizens,” such as alleged violations of their free-speech rights, according to a draft resolution to establish it.

A White House spokesperson dismissed the effort. “House Republicans continue to focus on launching partisan political stunts,” said spokesman Ian Sams, “instead of joining the president to tackle the issues the American people care about most like inflation.”

The prospect of any legislation that would stem from committee findings seems remote, given the slim GOP House majority, sharp differences with Democrats over what, if any, role the government should have in overseeing social-media platforms and the Democrats control of the Senate. Courts also have often proved hostile to complaints about alleged suppression of speech online.

Meta and Alphabet declined to comment.

“No government actor should prevent or compel speech; both are unacceptable,” said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents big technology and social-media companies. “However, if investigations are themselves another form of pressure on companies to insert government where it does not belong—into private companies’ decisions on what information to publish or not publish—then the treatment is as dangerous as the ailment.”

GOP investigations into government interactions with the tech industry began last year, when the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana filed a lawsuit in US District Court in Louisiana challenging what they termed the Biden administration’s “open and explicit censorship programs.”

Government lawyers have sought to have the case dismissed, saying it contains no plausible allegations of coercion and does not allege sufficient injuries to the plaintiffs.

The case was joined by several scientists who complained that their posts on Covid-related issues were unfairly treated by tech companies.

Lawyers involved in the case say they have uncovered evidence that more than 80 federal officials have been seeking to influence social-media companies to take down posts and remove accounts that conflicted with the government’s preferred point of view.

Much of the contact has come through the White House, which was concerned that Covid-19 misinformation on social media was discouraging people from getting vaccinated, according to emails obtained in the case.

White House digital strategy director Rob Flaherty said in an April 2021 email to Google officials: “We speak with other platforms on a semi-regular basis. We’d love to get into this habit with you. Perhaps bi-weekly?”

Other emails reflect that White House officials were closely monitoring what they viewed as misinformation on the platforms. In a July 2021 email to Google, Mr. Flaherty forwarded a post that he viewed as concerning.

“I think we had a pretty extensive back and forth about the degree to which you all are recommending antivaccination content,” he wrote. “You were pretty emphatic that you are not. This seems to indicate that you are. What is going on here?”

There is also evidence that the White House has put pressure on the companies over how the administration’s own commentary has been ranked or treated on social-media platforms, says Jenin Younes, a lawyer with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a right-leaning group that seeks to protect constitutional rights from government infringement.

For example, in July of 2021 an unidentified employee of Meta’s Instagram platform told White House officials that growth in followers for the White House’s @potus account had been slowed by a technical problem. The Instagram employee at first was reluctant to get into details.

“Are you guys [expletive deleted] seriously? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today,” Mr. Flaherty wrote in an email to the Instagram employee.

The White House declined to comment on specifics of the ongoing case.

The House is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday to create the new special committee. The panel would be part of the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) and a longtime critic of what many Republicans view as tech companies’ unfair treatment of conservatives.

Tech companies generally deny that they discriminate against conservatives in their content moderation.

As Republicans prepared last year to retake control of the House, Mr. Jordan wrote to Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft Corp.

Apple Inc.,

and Amazon.com Inc.

asking them to turn over communications with executive branch officials “relating to the moderation, deletion, suppression, restricting, or reduced circulation of content.”

So far the lawsuit by state attorneys general is proceeding separately from the nascent congressional inquiry, but House investigators are likely to tap into the documents that the attorneys general have obtained.

Write to John D. McKinnon at [email protected] and Ryan Tracy at [email protected]