Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes the US government’s pressure on his social media platforms to remove certain Covid-19 content in 2021 was “wrong” and said he would fight against similar attempts in the future, according to a letter to a US congressional committee.

In the letter, addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and released by Republicans on the committee, Zuckerberg addressed a number of controversies surrounding content moderation on his platforms.

He also assured that he had no plans to repeat his efforts to fund US election infrastructure ahead of this year’s presidential election, donations that drew sharp criticism from Republicans.

Zuckerberg’s submission to the committee on Monday comes nearly two months before the hotly contested U.S. presidential race, which has spotlighted widespread misinformation about the candidates online.

Referring to the pandemic, the Facebook founder said that President Joe Biden’s administration “repeatedly pressured our teams over months in 2021 to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”

“I believe the government’s pressure was wrong and I regret that we did not take a clearer stance on this,” Zuckerberg wrote.

“I firmly believe that we should not compromise our content standards because of pressure from any government from any quarter – and we are ready to fight back if it happens again.”

Republicans viewed the letter as a victory, with the House Judiciary Committee’s account on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) calling it a “major victory for free speech.”

The White House defended its actions during the pandemic, which has killed more than a million people in the United States amid bitter political battles over vaccines and attempts to contain the spread of the virus.

“In the face of a deadly pandemic, this administration has called for responsible action to protect public health and safety,” a White House spokesman said Tuesday.

“We believe that technology companies and other private actors should consider the impacts of their actions.”

Zuckerberg said he would not repeat his Covid-era push to fund nonprofits that support U.S. election infrastructure because Republicans view such donations as partisan.

“My goal is to be neutral and not to play a role one way or the other – or even to give the appearance of playing a role,” he wrote.

The letter also touched on the controversy over Facebook’s handling of a story about Hunter, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, published by the New York Post in 2020.

Zuckerberg said the story, which allegedly exposed corrupt dealings within the Biden family, had been “temporarily downgraded” while Facebook fact-checkers investigated the possibility that it was “a potential Russian disinformation operation.”

Meta’s CEO said they ultimately determined the story was not part of such an operation and that the platform changed its policies so that posts in the US would no longer be downvoted while they were being investigated by fact-checkers.

Republicans in Congress have targeted social media and technology companies in recent months, accusing them of suppressing or censoring conservative views.

Donald Trump, who is seeking to return to power in November after losing his re-election campaign to Biden in 2020, claimed Zuckerberg’s statement supported his conspiracy theory that the election was stolen.

“This is what everyone has been waiting for – THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGID!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.