Judicial Watch: Records Show Iowa State Officials Coordinated with Big Tech to Censor Election Posts
On February 3, 2020, at 5:19 p.m., Kevin Hall, the communications director for the Iowa Secretary of State, wrote in a February 3, 2020, email to Facebook official Rachel Holland:
Rachel,
We’ve been playing whack-a-mole with this false story all day. Is there anything you can do to help: [likely https://www.facebook.com/JudicialWatch/posts/10157583458431943]
We’ve told them is fake. They have it PINNED to the top of their page.
Here’s our rebuttal: https://sos.iowa.gov/news/2020_02_02.html
Holland responded at 6:11p.m., writing:
Hi Kevin,
Circling back with an update regarding the content posted by Judicial Watch. Our third-party fact checkers have rated this content false, and we have applied a filter over the content warning users before they click to see it that the content has been rated false by independent fact checkers.
Please continue to report violating content to us by emailing reports@content.facebook.com, and copying me (RachelHolland@fb.com), as I will be on an airplane for the next couple hours. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding this or any other matters.
A couple of hours later, Hall followed up, “Thank you! They have new posts up, doubling down on the false claims.”
And Holland responded, “Thanks for flagging- we’ve got a full team with eyes on this now and are applying the false filter to similar articles as well. I’ll send you an additional update shortly!”
That same day, Hall and Maria Benson, the director of communications at the National Association of Secretaries of State, both tried to convince Twitter to censor Judicial Watch’s posts but were ultimately unsuccessful.
Tom Fitton JUDICIAL WATCH