Report reveals FBI-Ukraine–social media triangle

As the FBI faces a crisis of public trust, a new report from Congress reveals that the agency pressured social media companies to censor American speech at the request of the Ukrainian Security Service.

The Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released the report on Monday afternoon. It scrutinizes many of America’s largest social media companies and their relationships with the FBI and—in turn—the FBI’s cooperation with foreign intelligence.

“The FBI on behalf of a compromised Ukrainian intelligence entity, requested—and in some cases directed—the world’s largest social media platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online,” the report states.

It details how in March 2022, the month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) contacted Facebook (eight times), Instagram (five), Google (five), YouTube (six), and Twitter (once)—all through the FBI. For the better part of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, these requests have been commonplace. And they come in bulk.

Researchers for the committee viewed an email request delivered to FBI agents Elvis Chan and Mark Kellett on March 1, 2022.

“One spreadsheet contained a catalog with the timestamp, text, and URL for 15,865 individual items of content on Instagram, including posts, stories, and reels. The other spreadsheet contained a detailed registry of 5,165 Facebook accounts, ostensibly suspected of ‘spread[ing] Russian disinformation,’” the report states.

Not all the accounts were fake—or even anti-Ukrainian. The accounts included American journalists, an official State Department account, and many others in support of Ukraine’s defensive efforts.

That assessment led the authors of the report to note that either the FBI did not vet the accounts in a meaningful way or it knowingly demanded social media companies deplatform legitimate American-held accounts. The report did not specify how many accounts were subsequently removed.

“To be clear, the FBI’s participation in the SBU’s censorship enterprise was a willing and intentional choice by the FBI, involving no fewer than seven agents across the bureau,” the report states.

The report further noted that fissures in Ukrainian intelligence agencies could leave the door open to Russian influence. By the time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had removed the head of the SBU on suspicions of Russian influence, the SBU had already been in contact with the FBI for months about social media communications.

The report is the latest bump in a rocky relationship between the Republican-controlled House of Representative and the FBI. In recent months, frustrations about the bureau’s communication with Congress, suspicions that prosecutors had avoided investigating politically charged cases, and documented misuse of powerful surveillance policies have all soured the GOP outlook on the country’s chief domestic investigative organization.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing questioning FBI Director Christopher Wray about the agency’s oversight. Wray defended the agency’s actions, stating he believed the agency was acting in the interests of the country.

“The work that the men and women of the FBI do to protect the American people goes way beyond the one or two investigations that capture all the headlines,” Wray said.

With some of the FBI’s most-used surveillance policies up for renewal in December of this year, many congressional voices are calling for a crackdown on what they perceive as an agency that’s gone a step too far.

“When we provide so much authority to the FBI to do ostensibly good work, we expect we can trust that they are not going to abuse that trust and misuse the tools that we have given them to do that important work,” Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, said after the hearing. “And in the past six years, we have seen that has not been the case.”