FLASHBACK: A current top campaign adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris was instrumental in pushing Facebook to suppress “misinformation” in order to control the political narrative on COVID and other issues.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a letter on Monday while expressing regret that his company, Facebook, was pressured by the Biden-Harris administration to censor Americans, particularly regarding COVID-19 content, highlighting the actions taken by Harris’ deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty as part of that pressure campaign.

Flaherty, who previously served as White House director of digital strategy, helped lead the campaign to combat alleged “misinformation” related to the COVID-19 virus and its vaccines, according to FOX Business previously reported.

According to the documents, Flaherty sent an email to Google team members in April 2021 asking them to “share (…) your work to combat vaccine hesitancy, but also to combat misinformation about vaccines.”

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Flaherty continued to inquire about trends related to vaccine misinformation on the site, while also offering government support in the form of COVID experts at the White House who would collaborate with YouTube on product work.

Google noted in an internal email that after a subsequent meeting with Flaherty, the White House official was “particularly critical of our decision-making regarding borderline content” – according to YouTube, this is content that does not violate community guidelines but only comes closest to them.

A week later, Google confirms that it provided the White House with the total number of videos removed due to COVID vaccine misinformation, while also discussing the administration’s desire for even more data.

“Flaherty is genuinely interested in what we see and what is NOT removed,” said an internal Google email between employees, apparently referring to videos that had not yet been removed.

According to internal company memos seen by FOX Business, and reported in 2023Flaherty asked Facebook whether the company could give government agencies special access to tools in 2021 that would allow them to target users.

“Because this is a global pandemic, can we give agencies access to targeting parameters that they wouldn’t normally have access to?” asked Flaherty.

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The idea came up in a conversation about how to convince people who are concerned about side effects of the COVID vaccine to take it.

In a phone call on April 5, a Facebook employee mentioned that if someone was concerned about nosebleeds as a side effect of the vaccine, Facebook would ideally direct them to information on the topic. Flaherty asked the Facebook team, “Can you provide resources?”

Another Facebook employee responded that showing people a targeted resource that addresses their concern, for example, could provoke them. The Facebook employee said they need to “be careful about how we proceed.”

Flaherty asked, “If people are having the conversation, it’s a given that we encourage them to do so. Refer them to the CDC. Then what?”

A Facebook employee responded: “We all know people who have had the experience of believing that Facebook is listening to them.”

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The Facebook employee told Flaherty that while an instantly generated message about a nosebleed could create a “Big Brother feeling” among users, he suggested delaying the display of the content to avoid setting off alarm bells for users.

“We should pay attention to these conversations and make sure people see the information, even if it is not relevant at the time,” the Facebook employee said.

Flaherty was involved in a tense exchange with Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio during a hearing on Capitol Hill earlier this year when Flaherty claimed: Elon Musk In response to the change in the broadcaster’s censorship policy, there were “no adverse measures by the government”.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and the Harris-Walz campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

“Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to remove content, and we are accountable for our decisions, including the COVID-19-related changes we made to our enforcement in response to that pressure,” Zuckerberg wrote in his letter to the House Judiciary Committee this week. “I believe the government’s pressure was wrong, and I regret that we did not talk about it more openly.”

Hillary Vaughn and Chase Williams of Fox News Digital contributed to this report