The recent release of Mark Zuckerberg’s regretful letter regarding Facebook and Meta’s role in censorship has sent shockwaves through the political landscape. The letter revealed that Rob Flaherty, who served as the White House Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy, was instrumental in pressuring Zuckerberg and other Big Tech platforms, like Google, to censor speech they disagreed with.
Now, Flaherty serves as Kamala Harris’ Deputy Campaign Manager. This raises serious concerns about how a potential Harris-Walz administration might handle freedom of speech. The answer seems clear, and it’s not encouraging.
A top campaign adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris, Flaherty played a significant role in pushing Facebook to suppress “misinformation” to control the political narrative on COVID and other issues. In a letter, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that his company, Facebook, was pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to censor Americans, especially concerning COVID-19 content. This admission highlighted the actions taken by Flaherty, now Harris’ deputy campaign manager, in this pressure campaign.
Flaherty, who previously held the role of White House Director of Digital Strategy, led efforts to target so-called “misinformation” related to COVID-19 and its vaccines. In April 2021, he even reached out to Google to discuss cracking down on vaccine misinformation, according to documents.
Republican VP candidate JD Vance has already zeroed in on this issue. If you’re on the Harris-Walz team, Vance’s attention is the last thing you want. Vance has the ability to effectively expose the Harris-Walz campaign’s hypocrisy on free speech. Should they win the White House, it could spell a significant blow to Americans’ First Amendment rights. One thing is certain: Trump’s upcoming rallies and press conferences are going to be electrifying.
With Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, known for instituting a COVID snitch hotline, and VP Kamala Harris, who hired the White House’s chief of censorship as her campaign manager, their strategy seems questionable. Do they really think they can ride on vibes and optimism all the way to the White House? This does not look good.
Flaherty was recently grilled by the House Committee on the Weaponization of Federal Government. When questioned by Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL), he couldn’t recite the First Amendment’s principles and seemed to suffer from selective amnesia when confronted with evidence of his role in censoring American speech and coercing social media companies. Flaherty also managed to dodge House subpoenas to testify.
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Like VP Harris, whose past statements as San Francisco DA, California AG, Senator, and 2020 presidential candidate have been well-documented, Flaherty’s views on misinformation and fake news have been widely recorded.
Flaherty continued to press Google for trends on vaccine misinformation while offering government assistance through White House COVID experts to collaborate with YouTube. In internal emails, Google staff noted that Flaherty was particularly concerned with “borderline content,” which refers to material that doesn’t technically violate Community Guidelines but comes close.
A week later, Google reported that it provided the White House with data on the number of videos removed for COVID vaccine misinformation, while discussing the administration’s demand for even more data. Internal Google emails indicated that Flaherty was especially interested in content that hadn’t yet been taken down.
According to a 2023 Fox Business article, Flaherty even asked Facebook in 2021 to grant government agencies “tools for special access” to target users more effectively.
