Exhibit 1139 ยท Letter to a congressional committee
Letter from Daniel F. Donovan (King & Spalding, counsel for Alphabet Inc. and YouTube) to Chairman Jim Jordan, House Committee on the Judiciary
Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.
A 'statement of facts' in 28 numbered paragraphs submitted in response to House Judiciary subpoenas of 15 February 2023 and 6 March 2025. Paragraph 8 says senior Biden administration officials 'conducted repeated and sustained outreach' and 'pressed the Company' regarding COVID-19 content that 'did not violate its policies', while the company 'continued to develop and enforce its policies independently'. Paragraph 17 says YouTube never had guidelines prohibiting discussion of the origins of COVID-19, ended several COVID-19 policies in 2023 and the remainder by December 2024; paragraph 23 says it terminated channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 policies through 2024 and will let those creators rejoin; paragraph 25 says Alphabet publishes quarterly transparency data on content removal requests. Paragraph 28 says the representations are not exhaustive. Signed by counsel.
- Source
- Alphabet Inc. and YouTube (through counsel)
- Date
- 23 September 2025
- Quoted from
- Letter, para. 8, p. 2
- Grade
- Primary record
- Document
- https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2025-09-23-letter-to-hjc.pdf
- Accessed
- 2026-11-10
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- The PDF's text layer is garbled; the wording was read from rendered page images (pages 1 to 5) and checked by eye. SHA-256 of the PDF as downloaded: 71f37d18fdc85d6db5839bb345a3a61ae54d091e94a63ead7078b542276ea720. The date and the 'statement of facts' form are the letter's own.