Earlier this week Judicial Watch announced it was in receipt of “540 pages and a supplemental four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California revealing how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election.”
The fact that California state officials would insert themselves in an attempt to oust President Donald Trump is not surprising. What is, however, is “included in these documents were ‘misinformation briefings’ emails that were compiled by communications firm SKDK, that lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020.”
The communications firm, SKDKnickerbocker, shared the “misinformation daily briefings” with California officials. Those officials then passed the information on to the social media giants for censorship. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said, “these new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech.”
Judicial Watch obtained the records through the California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests to the Office of the California Secretary of State “for records related to the Office of Election Cybersecurity’s database of social media posts; communications with social media companies; and other social media-related records regarding the 2020 elections.”
Judicial Watch made the request after a report surfaced in December of 2020 that “the Office of Election Cybersecurity in the California Secretary of State’s office monitored and tracked social media posts, decided if they were misinformation, stored the posts in an internal database coded by threat level, and on 31 different occasions requested posts be removed.”
Jenna Dresner, senior public information officer of the Office of Election Cybersecurity stated, “we don’t take down posts, that is not our role to play. We alert potential sources of misinformation to the social media companies and we let them make that call based on community standards they created.”
However, “In 24 cases, the social media companies agreed and either took down the posts or flagged them as misinformation, according to Jenna Dresner” Judicial Watch reported.
