CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE – On Sunday January 10th New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut tweeted 2 images claiming companies like Apple, Google, and Twitter, in suspending from their sites accounts posing credible threats, are violating Americans’ right to free speech.
House Education committee member Rep. Linda Tanner (D-Georges Mills) released the following statement:
“Commissioner Edelblut’s tweets, defending the right for violent insurrectionists and those who embolden them to plan their attacks using private social media sites, is an affront to our state.
The businesses he references simply do not want their technology to be used to enable terrorists to organize attacks on the United States. Scores of companies like them have pulled their financial support from political action committees and from politicians who promote conspiracy theories and disinformation to attack our democratic institutions, institutions that Commissioner Edelblut has sworn to uphold.
Yesterday, the FBI released a bulletin confirming the threat of armed attacks on state capitols and the US Capitol, plans which originated on the social media site, Parler. Conspiracy to attack the United States is not protected by free speech. It is a criminal activity called sedition and the heinous act to attack the Capitol is not free speech either, it is called treason. The state’s top education official should know the difference. The people of New Hampshire deserve an explanation from Commissioner Edelblut.”