Church Committee Aides Warn Jordan to Eschew Partisanship

Paul Michel, a former federal judge appointed by former President Ronald Reagan who served as a Republican aide on the Church Committee, said many lines of inquiry the panel had pursued did not pan out.

“There were a lot of hints of some very bad conduct, but when we pursued all the documents and the witnesses, some of it turned out to be quite innocent,” he recalled. “So if the Jordan committee is evenhanded factually, they’ll do a good job and it’ll be credible. But if they pursue what some people might call conspiracy theories, and only look at things that seem to support that, it will eventually be viewed as not credible.”

A spokesman for the panel declined to comment.

The letter comes as the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has begun issuing subpoenas, seeking documents for an investigation into whether the government mistreated parents who were scrutinized after school officials endured threats and harassment over mask mandates and teaching about racism.

On Wednesday, Mr. Jordan issued more subpoenas, this time to the technology companies Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft for documents and communications relating to whether they had worked with federal government to block certain Americans from communicating through their platforms — something Mr. Jordan calls “censorship by proxy.”

The subpoenas require the chief executives of those companies, Sundar Pichai, Andy Jassy, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella, to turn over all requested documents and communications by March 23.

The committee did not issue a subpoena to Twitter or its owner, Elon Musk, who has at times aligned himself with the right, urging voters last fall to elect Republicans and saying he would welcome Mr. Trump back to his platform.

In the letters, the panel said such an action was unnecessary because Twitter “recently set a benchmark for how transparent Big Tech companies can be about interactions with government over censorship,” citing the release of the so-called Twitter Files, which showed how the company restricted some tweets after receiving requests to do so from government officials.