Reps. Square Off at Hearing Over Online Censorship

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep James Hines (D-CT) testified before the House Judiciary Committee about alleged online censorship of conservative speech. The hearing was on "Filtering Practices of Social Media Platforms" and stemmed in part from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress recently.  The first two panelists were members of Congress, and as such only presented statements and were not questioned afterward.

And for more than three hours, Republican leaders and mega-popular conservative bloggers such as Diamond and Silk sought to make themselves heard, loudly, at a hearing on what Democratic Reps described as a grand conspiracy theory. At times yelling at lawmakers, Lynnette Hardaway, known as Diamond, alleged at the hearing that “Facebook along with other social media sites have taken aggressive actions to silence conservative voices like ourselves.” Diamond and Silk also testified, claiming under oath that they were never paid for their consulting work by President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Federal campaign finance filings show otherwise. "We have never been paid by the Trump campaign," Lynette Hardaway, who goes by Diamond, told Rep Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX). Filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show that the campaign paid the duo $1,275 on Nov. 22, 2016, for "field consulting." The two later backtracked under questioning from Rep Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), explaining that the Trump campaign had reimbursed them for airfare after they traveled to a campaign event. They insisted that they had never been paid for consulting work. "We are familiar with that particular lie, we can see that you do look at fake news,” said Rochelle Richardson, the other half of Diamond and Silk, when the New York Democrat brought up the FEC receipt. "I’m just trying to figure out who is lying here,” Rep Jeffries said.