Citizens’ Oversight Submission

I. Method

Every factual assertion in this submission and its annex is labeled Documented (a primary document, public filing, or official record identified by source), Alleged (a contested assertion from our pleadings, presented as such), or Open Question. We assert no violation of law by any party. We ask the Committees to obtain records, take testimony, and publish findings. Our interest is disclosed: we were named targets, and our civil action ended without any examination of the facts.

II. What happened to us Documented Alleged

In March 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate published a report naming twelve individuals, including the six of us, and urging platforms to deplatform the named individuals, their organizations, and their backup accounts Documented. The report’s quantitative claims — 65 percent of anti-vaccine content across two platforms, repeated as 73 percent for one platform — were cited by United States Senators and the White House Documented. A senior platform executive later stated that the platform’s own data did not support the claim, placing the named group at approximately 0.05 percent of vaccine-content views, while the platform penalized the named accounts and domains Documented. A May 6, 2021 White House email in the record discusses the “disinfo dozen” and platform demotion and reach-mitigation efforts Documented. A platform record identifies GreenMedInfo.com as an associated domain receiving a 60 percent distribution reduction Documented.

We allege that each of us suffered account removals, restrictions, demonetization, domain penalties, payment-processing terminations, and consequent professional, reputational, and business injury Alleged. Those allegations were never tested in any forum.

III. What the court decided, and did not Documented

Our federal action was dismissed with prejudice on July 28, 2026, as an impermissible shotgun pleading, following a March 2026 dismissal on the same grounds and what the court termed a final opportunity to replead. The July order issued on the court’s own review, terminated all pending motions without ruling on them, and stated that the pleading’s structure prevented the court from reaching even the threshold jurisdictional issue of standing. (Exhibits A–B.)

Accordingly: no discovery occurred; no witness testified; no factual allegation was adjudicated; no defense was adjudicated; no party was exonerated; and no court has examined whether the censorship system we allege operated as we contend. The dismissal with prejudice ends our claims. It does not answer the questions. The records that would answer them sit inside the agencies, platforms, processors, and intermediary organizations — and the judicial route to them is closed.

IV. Why this Committee, and why now Documented

This Committee’s own record is the foundation of this submission:

1. In April 2023, the Committee subpoenaed the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, among other agencies, for communications with private companies and third parties concerning content moderation.
2. On August 30, 2023, the Committee subpoenaed the Center for Countering Digital Hate for its communications with the Executive Branch, expressly to gauge whether the government or its proxies “worked with or relied upon CCDH to censor speech.”
3. On November 7, 2023, the Chairman wrote that CCDH’s compliance remained incomplete.

The intersection of those two subpoenas — what the Global Engagement Center’s records show about CCDH and the named individuals, and what CCDH’s complete production shows about the Executive Branch — is precisely the gap our dismissed case could not reach. Executive Order 14149 has since declared that federal resources may not be used against Americans’ protected speech and directed review of prior conduct; the Department of Justice has since settled litigation alleging government-induced censorship. The policy question is settled by the government’s own words. The factual accounting is not.

VI. The trap, stated plainly

The July 28 order required defendant-by-defendant specificity — which official, at which agency, did what, to whom — and dismissed for its absence before discovery could begin. We will be plain about our own side of the ledger: our complaint also contained drafting errors, and we do not hide behind them. But the errors do not answer the structural question. The information the court required is the information only compulsory process can now produce. That is not an argument about our case alone. Any American — of any viewpoint — who alleges covert public-private suppression will face the same wall unless Congress acts.

VII. Annex and exhibits

Annex A sets out the documented record, open questions, and specific records requested concerning the Center for Countering Digital Hate, including the two formal filings — a §501(h) lobbying election signed under penalty of perjury and litigation papers characterizing the organization as an independent publisher of research — whose consistency the Committees are positioned to examine.