Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University testified before the House Committee on Weaponization this week. Turley was there to offer analysis as a legal expert on Twitter and the revelations of the TwitterFiles.His testimony was calm and reasoned, as usual, but when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz had a chance to question him, all she did was try to discredit him.Turley recently wrote at The Hill:
Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. historyThis coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold its first hearing on the FBI and the possible “weaponization” of government agencies. A variety of such controversies have contributed to plunging public trust in government and the FBI in particular.The role of the FBI in prior scandals will remain a point of heated debate in Congress. However, members of both parties should be able to agree on the need to investigate one of the most serious allegations: Censorship by surrogate.Many of the allegations of FBI bias are worthy of investigation. Some of those allegations are problems of personnel who can be removed. But a far more menacing problem has emerged in recent months with the release of information from Twitter.The “Twitter files” revealed an FBI operation to monitor and censor social media content — an effort so overwhelming and intrusive that Twitter staff at one point complained internally that “they are probing & pushing everywhere.” The reports have indicated that dozens of FBI employees worked on the identification and removal of material on a wide range of subjects and that Twitter largely carried out their requests.
In his opening remarks, which you should watch below, Turley points out the fairly recent public distrust of the FBI, which he says is dangerous.
He also comments on what the Twitterfiles have exposed, saying “This may be the largest censorship system in the history of our country.”
After all of that eloquent and reasoned commentary, enter Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Mike Miller writes at RedState:
Here’s how Wasserman-Schultz kicked off her line of questions of the legal expert:
So essentially your answers to questions yesterday were your own opinion and pure conjecture.
As is his style, Turley politely responded, “No, I wouldn’t say that, I try to base them on what we know from the Twitter Files—” before DSW interrupted with the same nonsensical premise: “But this is only just your opinion, would you say, as a Twitter account user?” Is it possible Debbie’s unaware of the role of legal expert, or any expert witness?
Turley tried again: “No, I’ve come to give legal advice based on facts that are in the public domain and I would really refer to—” but Wasserman Schultz again butted in, telling Turley he was using up her time. So, that’s how that went. Wasserman Schultz was simply in way over her head, and Turley refused to agree with her silly premise, so she continued to interrupt him.
Turley addressed her line of questioning on FOX News:
JONATHAN TURLEY: The congresswoman was asking if I’ve ever worked at Twitter as a condition for my talking about what the Twitter Files say. It’s like saying you have to work at the Pentagon if you want to testify about the implications of the Pentagon Papers. The point of witnesses before committees is often to give legal analysis based on what is known and what could be found in this investigation. The exchange she was referring to was a member who expressly asked me about the Twitter Files and what this suggests about what I’ve called censorship by surrogate. And then she went into this issue of, ‘Well, you’ve never worked at Twitter.How do you know what goes on at Twitter?,’ which is completely absurd. The whole premise of my testimony was that Twitter has now authenticated and confirmed these facts. These facts are coming from Twitter. These are Twitter files. And the facts indicate that they had weekly meetings with the government. They indicate that the government would send long lists of citizens and others to be targeted, censored, to be in some cases, banned. Those are very serious allegations that raise constitutional questions, which is why I was there to discuss it.
Watch the video below:
Democrats do not want to discuss this issue. That’s rather telling, isn’t it?
Featured image via YouTube.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY