Jim Jordan invites controversial media figure to testify at new censorship hearing: report
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has decided to invite an eyebrow-raising witness to testify at his hearing on online censorship: far-right talk show host Ben Shapiro.
The move was initially reported by Punchbowl News' Max Cohen.
Jordan's hearing is taking aim at the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a group under the umbrella of the World Economic Forum tasked with trying to mitigate the effects of harmful digital content. Jordan, an ally of former President Donald Trump, has accused GARM and groups like it of trying to censor conservatives from the internet, and has launched an investigation into the group under the guise of it supposedly violating antitrust laws.
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It's part of a broader campaign of attacks House Republicans have waged against any attempt to police misinformation on the internet as a supposed threat to conservative speech and content creators, which has involved intimidation tactics against business and universities trying to do so.
Shapiro, who has previously worked with Breitbart, has generated extensive controversy over the years, from blaming actor Philip Seymour Hoffman's death on "leftist culture," to accusing Meghan Markle of lying about racist backlash she received from the British royal family, to performing a racist gesture while speaking to a crowd of students at Florida State University.
This comes at the same moment that Jordan, who also helped head up the failed President Joe Biden impeachment attempt alongside Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY), is trying to use his position in the House to push conspiracy theories that "CIA contractors" collaborated with Biden's campaign to bury stories about his son Hunter. Former CIA officer Brian Greer has broadly debunked these claims, saying that, "It doesn't appear to even have a good theory about what the CIA did wrong. But it assumes that randomly quoting some internal emails will give Fox News what it needs."