FLASHBACK: Unreleased federal report says there is “no evidence” online free speech “causes hate crimes”

An unreleased federal report has said there is no evidence online free speech causes hate crimes offline. The January 2021 report sent to the U.S. Congress has yet to appear on any government website, but Breitbart News managed to get a copy of it. Government sources have expressed bafflement as to why the report, typically made public after being sent to lawmakers, had not been released.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) under the Department of Commerce prepared the report. NTIA is responsible for advising the U.S. president on all things related to telecommunication and the internet. While the report was prepared under the Trump administration, the request to revise it came from the 116th Congress with a Democrat majority. The report included revisions to a 1993 NTIA paper titled The Role of Telecommunications in Hate Crimes. While the 1993 document is still available, the latest edition of the NTIA report is not.

Sources in close proximity to the drafting and approval process surmised that bureaucrats and establishment politicians are trying to suppress the report. This is because its conclusions challenge popular media narratives that internet-inspired hate crimes are on the rise. These same personalities trying to suppress the report also have a vested interest in the “hate crimes” panic.

According to a source who was formerly with the Trump administration, the Department of Justice (DoJ) Civil Rights Division was at the helm of efforts to oppose the report. The division in charge of prosecuting hate crimes is also at the forefront of “efforts to drum up hysteria” over white nationalist extremism in the country, the sourc