The top Biden official who authorized the pardon of a controversial COVID-19 lockdown official is also accused of Covid-era censorship efforts.
Former White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients authorized a pardon for Anthony Fauci using an autopen replica of President Joe Biden's signature, according to internal government emails reported by The New York Times on Sunday. Zients, however, is no stranger to controversy. He was one of the chief architects of the Biden administration’s collusion with Big Tech companies to censor Americans, just as he approved COVID-19 lockdowns.
Zients’s anti-free speech activities have been cited in multiple investigations and cases. The Kennedy v. Biden lawsuit accused Zients’s team of participating in the campaign to label Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as part of the “disinformation dozen,” a COVID-19 blacklist that was also used to push for censorship by Big Tech companies.
Mike Benz, the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, accused Zients of having “encouraged, pressured and coerced” social media companies to enforce the government-approved narrative on the lab leak origin theory, masks and vaccines.
In 2023, the House Judiciary Committee called on Zients to testify regarding his alleged effort to flag so-called misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook.
“Any such effort undertaken by the Biden Administration, or at the Administration's behest, would have grave consequences for Americans' First and Fourth Amendment rights,” the Committee declared.
In May 2024, a report from the House Government Weaponization Select Subcommittee revealed that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor at the White House, communicated with Nick Clegg, the former head of global affairs at Meta. During their conversation, Slavitt mentioned that he was collaborating with Zients and requested a meeting with Clegg soon. The report was tellingly titled: The Censorship-Industrial Complex: How Top Biden White House Officials Coerced Big Tech to Censor Americans, True Information, and Critics of the Biden Administration.
Conservatives are under attack! Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
