January 11, 2023

In Brief: Schiff’s Personal Censorship Vendetta

“Did you know Adam Schiff’s staff … asked Twitter to have you banned?”

Investigative journalist Paul Sperry does his job well. People who have something to hide don’t like that. People like California Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff. As a recent Twitter Files exposé reveals, Schiff took that dislike to the level of censorship. Sperry explains:

Back from holiday vacation, I found an interesting email waiting for me in my inbox from Matt Taibbi, the independent journo Elon Musk tasked with reviewing and releasing internal Twitter documents about decisions to censor content and ban users from the platform.

“Paul,” Taibbi wrote, “just found a crazy email on Twitter — did you know Adam Schiff’s staff … asked Twitter to have you banned?”

I was gobsmacked. This would explain why Twitter could never give me a reason for suspending my account, even though I had broken none of its rules.

Schiff, the powerful Democratic chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, made his “request” to ban me through his staff in a November 2020 memo to Twitter. Three months later, in early February 2021, I was kicked off the platform.

Why would a congressional leader sworn to protect the Constitution and First Amendment want to muzzle a veteran journalist? Like authoritarians everywhere, Schiff did not like critical reporting. The man who vowed to “protect our Democracy” from Donald Trump wanted to censor a free press.

In articles for RealClearInvestigations, I outed his anonymous “whistleblower” from the first impeachment of President Trump. It was Eric Ciaramella, a Democrat who had worked in the Trump White House as an Obama holdover. I also exposed Ciaramella’s prior relationship with one of Schiff’s top staffers on the impeachment committee, Sean Misko.

My reporting cast fresh doubts on Schiff’s claims that the 2019 impeachment process happened organically. The New York Times had already busted Schiff lying about prior contacts with the whistleblower. Initially, Schiff publicly stated his office never spoke with the whistleblower before he filed his complaint against President Trump, when in fact a Schiff staffer had huddled with him, something Schiff’s spokesman Patrick Boland was forced to admit after the Times broke the story. (The staffer was never identified.) The prior contacts led to suspicions Schiff’s office helped the whistleblower craft his complaint as part of a partisan operation.

In the censorship demands Schiff’s office sent Twitter, Misko and the “impeachment inquiry” are mentioned. It’s not clear if Ciaramella is, too, since some names are blacked out. Schiff demanded Twitter “remove any and all content”‘ related to them.

Schiff even falsely alleged that Sperry was promoting “false QAnon conspiracies” in an obvious bid to trigger Twitter’s censors. As Sperry notes, someone should ask Schiff about false conspiracies given his dogmatic dedication to spreading the one about Trump and Russia colluding to steal the 2016 election.

He trumpeted them as if they were fact. But they were false — every one of them — as Special Counsel John Durham has proven in court documents, expanding on what Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz found in his earlier report.

Schiff has been caught lying about plenty of other things, yet Twitter never silenced him. By contrast, Schiff participated in what amounts to a clear violation of the First Amendment:

If a powerful government official prevented me from promoting my stories, including my New York Post columns, on the nation’s digital town square, how is that not state censorship?

Read the whole thing here.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.