Special prosecutor Jack Smith’s Tuesday indictment against former President Donald Trump over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election cites the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which coordinated with social media companies to crack down on “disinformation” during the election, as an authority “best positioned to know the facts.”
During the 2020 election, CISA engaged in “switchboarding” work, which involved reporting instances of online “disinformation” flagged by local election officials to social media platforms, according to court documents from the free speech lawsuit Missouri v. Biden.
The 45-page indictment, which levies four charges against the former president, includes CISA on a list of those who Trump ignored after they told him his claims were untrue.
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“The Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) — whose existence the Defendant signed into law to protect the nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure from attack — joined an official multi-agency statement that there was no evidence any voting system had been compromised and that declared the 2020 election ‘the most secure in American history,’” the indictment states. “Days later, after the CISA Director — whom the Defendant had appointed — announced publicly that election security experts were in agreement that claims of computer-based election fraud were unsubstantiated, the Defendant fired him.”
CISA election security agent Brian Scully stated in a January 2023 deposition that CISA sent the “potential disinformation” to social media platforms to “make [a] decision on the content that was forwarded to them based on their policies.”
The Center for Internet Security (CIS), a nonprofit founded by left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar, also collaborated with CISA during the 2020 election to develop a Misinformation Reporting Portal (MiRP), which a grant from Omidyar’s Democracy Fund supported, according to a document obtained by independent journalist Lee Fang. Sixty-one percent of the 209 cases the MiRP handled during the 2020 election were taken down or labeled, according to the document.
The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), an “information exchange” between researchers, election officials, civil society organizations, government agencies and social media platforms, also worked with CISA to “help them understand rumors and disinformation around the 2020 election.”
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After former CISA Director Chris Krebs was fired by Trump in November 2020 over the agency’s statement calling the election “the most secure in American history,” he joined the Aspen Institute as chair of its “Commission on Information Disorder” in January 2021.
The commission has urged tech companies to crack down on misinformation and recommended the White House create a “dedicated team to define the disinformation problem and to clearly articulate desired objectives, leadership, responsibilities, authorities, and capabilities.”
Legal experts pointed out Tuesday night that the indictment centers on protected speech. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called it “the first criminal indictment of alleged disinformation.”
The indictment states that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.”
Then it continues to note he “also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting election results.”
CISA didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
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