Stanford researcher minimized DHS role for 2020 election ‘censorship’ group in private testimony
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EXCLUSIVE — A “misinformation” researcher’s testimony behind closed doors to Congress on his group’s suppression of speech before the 2020 election appears to contradict documents unearthed by lawmakers.
Alex Stamos, who previously held senior roles at Facebook and Yahoo, was the director until 2023 at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a group at Stanford University under congressional investigation over it teaming up in 2020 on the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP, with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The EIP coordinated with the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to pressure social media companies on addressing “misinformation” on platforms in the lead-up to the presidential election, according to internal emails and since-released Stanford data on the EIP’s Jira system used to flag alleged misinformation reports to platforms.
But presented with many of these records last year by the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee during a June 23 transcribed interview, Stamos appeared to downplay repeatedly the role that the DHS seems to have actually played in the EIP, according to a copy of the transcript, which was reviewed by the Washington Examiner and has not been reported on until now.
Due to their roles with the EIP, Stamos and University of Washington researcher Kate Starbird, who leads the school’s Center for an Informed Public, have faced heightened scrutiny from the House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee. The subcommittee accused CISA in a June 2023 report of having “colluded with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans” in the lead-up to the 2020 election. The EIP focused on “misinformation” posts by various high-profile Republicans, including Trump, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), as well as right-of-center media outlets and commentators, according to a report released by the subcommittee in November of last year.
That report included an email by senior director Graham Brookie for the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, a left-wing think tank that was a founding partner of the EIP, to his colleagues in July 2020. In the email, which Republicans obtained through a subpoena, Brookie said the EIP was created “at the request of DHS/CISA.” Stamos claimed in testimony last year that neither DHS nor any other agency proposed the idea to him to form the EIP, which Stamos testified was “my idea.”
Congressional investigators presented Stamos in the transcribed interview with apparent evidence that CISA had close access to a system called Jira that the EIP used to gather “misinformation” posts and flag them to social media platforms. Stamos, who is now a top employee at a California-based cybersecurity company with ex-CISA Director Chris Krebs, testified he didn’t “believe” CISA ever asked for access to the system, nor that it had “the ability to see what was on a Jira ticket,” according to the transcript for the interview.
“So to be clear, no agencies had direct access to everything,” Stamos testified, noting “the only two” entities with close Jira access were the State Department-housed Global Engagement Center and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, or EI-ISAC, a group under the CISA-funded Center for Internet Security nonprofit organization.
Key software records and emails call into question what exact role CISA had in the EIP, including an exchange between Stamos and Reddit official Jessica Ashooh, a former Atlantic Council fellow.
In November 2020, Stamos pressed Ashooh on the idea of Reddit joining the platform, though she was reluctant, according to emails reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
“There is a widely watched YouTube livestream replaying old videos and claiming they are of live violence in the streets between Biden and Trump supporters,” Stamos wrote to Ashooh on Nov. 3, 2020, along with links that were later “removed by Reddit’s Anti-Evil Operations team,” according to the since-deleted posts. “YouTube is looking into it, but here are the Reddit links we found.”
Stamos added in the email, “It would be great if we could get somebody from Reddit on the JIRA, just like Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, CISA, [and] EI-ISAC.”
“Thanks,” Ashooh replied one minute later, on Nov. 3. 2020. “Unfortunately as we mentioned at the beginning of this project we are unable to participate in external jiras, but we are happy to receive info over email.”
Presented with this exchange, Stamos told Congress he likely made a spelling error and didn’t mean to mention CISA, the DHS agency, according to the transcript.
To Republicans, the idea of CISA seemingly having direct access to Jira would be indicative of the U.S. government overtly participating in widespread censorship in violation of the First Amendment.
“As I said, in my thousands of emails, I’m sure I misrepresented — made a mistake somewhere,” Stamos testified, noting Ashooh “possibly” interpreted the email as reading “that CISA was on Jira.”
One day later, on Nov. 4, 2020, a ticket was created in the Jira system by a staffer in Georgia’s Secretary of State office, data show. The system, by design, was intended to allow various stakeholders to offer insights on types of “misinformation” worth addressing with platforms.
The ticket pertained to a post on Twitter, now X, on Nov. 4, 2020, about mail-in ballots in Georgia. It was later taken down by Twitter, data show.
According to a redacted Jira notification reviewed by the Washington Examiner, the ticket was “shared with TikTok, Facebook, EI-ISAC, Twitter, CIS Misinformation Reporting, and CISA CFITF.”
The ticket appeared to be referring to CISA’s Countering Foreign Influence Task Force under the DHS. The cohort was led by Brian Scully and repeatedly flagged alleged misinformation to social media companies before and after election day on Nov. 3, 2020, according to emails obtained by America First Legal, a group suing Stamos, Brookie, Starbird, and others tied to the EIP and Stanford Virality Project.
During the June 2023 interview, the House Judiciary Committee asked Stamos why CISA’s CFITF was listed on the ticket, an exchange that only further underscored how the researcher seemingly expressed confusion or a lack of awareness of how the EIP, which he led, appeared to operate.
“I don’t know why that’s listed here,” Stamos testified. “It’s perhaps that it was individually forwarded or they were cc’d, but that they were added specifically to this ticket. I’m not sure.”
Stamos was then asked by the committee, “And, to your understanding, how could CISA be specifically added to this ticket?”
“I’m not sure,” Stamos replied.
Scott McConnell, a spokesman for CISA, told the Washington Examiner the agency “did not found, fund, or have any role in the management of the EIP.”
Stanford declined to comment.
A spokesperson for the university pointed the Washington Examiner to an amicus brief it filed in December 2023 in Murthy v. Missouri, a landmark case, now at the Supreme Court, examining the legality of the federal government’s communications with social media platforms. The brief asserted that “CISA did not coordinate EIP’s flagging of potentially violative material to the platforms, never gave EIP instructions about how the project should be conducted, and never pressured or directed EIP’s conduct in any way.”
Meanwhile, other EIP Jira tickets mentioned CISA — including a ticket created in October 2020 and logged by an email account associated with the state of Washington’s secretary of state office.
The post was by then-President Donald Trump. It is still available on Twitter, now X, and reads, “Strongly trending (Google) since immediately after the second debate is CAN I CHANGE MY VOTE? This refers changing it to me. The answer in most states is YES. Go do it. Most important Election of your life.”
At the time, the Washington secretary of state’s office wanted Twitter to “take steps to stop” the alleged disinformation from spreading on the platform, according to the Jira ticket. Trump made the same post on Facebook, which is still available and was also referenced in the ticket.
In a 2020 fact check about the post, CNN called the post “misleading at best,” though the outlet went on to note that in several swing states, there are certain laws potentially permitting people to change their votes.
In late October 2020, the EIP concluded in the ticket, “We heard back from Twitter through CISA,” with the platform asserting the post in question “was not in violation of our Civic Integrity Policy,” according to data.
Still, Republicans asked Stamos in the June 2023 transcribed interview why the EIP was not informed of Twitter’s decision directly from the platform but rather by CISA, a government body.
“They, generally companies, it was a crap shoot whether or not they would tell us what they were doing,” Stamos testified.
Another example in which CISA was mentioned on the software was in connection to a 2020 Jira ticket logged by a top staffer for the office of Connecticut’s secretary of state, data show.
The staffer took issue with “misinformation related to absentee ballots and fraud,” and the EIP raised the ticket to Facebook. The post was later removed, with Facebook providing confirmation “by way of CISA” that the platform “took action on this case,” according to data.
Stamos did not reply to a Washington Examiner request for comment.
“We did no censorship, we had no power to have censorship, and we did not have CISA sending us those requests,” Stamos testified to the House Judiciary Committee, according to the transcript.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Starbird said her team at the Center for an Informed Public “did not communicate directly with social media platforms” for the EIP.
“That was not our role,” Starbird said. “Instead, we analyzed data and drafted publicly-available reports and academic papers on harmful rumors and disinformation.”
News of the transcribed interview with Stamos comes days after the Washington Examiner first reported that Starbird testified in June 2023 on her previously advising social media platforms about content moderation policies.
Starbird claimed in a statement this week that she “did not consult with platforms around content moderation of specific pieces of content or accounts.”
But discussing content moderation policies before Congress, Starbird testified, “I’ll have a conversation sometimes with the platforms or, like, a representative of the platform, and they’ll say: ‘You know, this is what we’re thinking. You know, what do you think?’ And I’ll say: ‘Oh, that might work. That’s probably going to backfire or whatever.’”
“Those are the kinds of things that I’m happy to have a conversation with a platform about: Like, how you might want to go about labeling, which accounts you might want to not bother labeling. Maybe you really only want to label — you know, I might advise, like — you know, you focus labels on the people that, you know, are verified accounts or have large audiences, those kinds of things,” Starbird also testified to Congress in June 2023.
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Reacting to news of Starbird’s testimony, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) posted on X, “Big Government. Big Tech. Working together. To censor you.”
“Nothing to see here — just Big Brother working with Big Tech to silence your voice,” Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) also said in response to the testimony’s release. “The Left’s on a quest to turn America into an Orwellian dystopian nightmare.”
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