Republican Senators on the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee challenged Joe Biden’s nominee for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to explain her history of offensive, anti-police Tweets and donations to Senate Democrats.
Gigi Sohn, a far-left lesbian, sat through her third nomination hearing Tuesday after she failed to earn enough votes in the last Congress due to revelations about her radical activism.
In the 15 months since Sohn’s initial nomination, she has reportedly made a dozen donations to Democrat senators who will be ultimately be voting on her nomination.
Sohn has faced criticism for sharing race-baiting tweets, including one calling former President Donald Trump a “raggedy white supremacist president” in June of 2020.
Amid the violent unrest following the death of George Floyd, Sohn retweeted a post from actress Issa Rae characterizing the former president as a white supremacist who would rather “kill everybody” than to make progress on racial justice issues.
“Your raggedy white supremacist president and his cowardly enablers would rather kill everybody than stop killing black people,” Rae said in the post later shared by Sohn.
In 2018 she tweeted that then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh was “an angry white man.”
Angry white man. Not a good look, Judge Kavanaugh.
— Gigi Sohn (@gigibsohn) September 27, 2018
The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) and the Fraternal Order of Police both come out to publicly oppose her nomination after her anti-police views became known. Sohn has reportedly liked a tweet suggesting “a few bad cops” represent all cops, is in favor of defunding the police, and is supported by a group that claims police are “agents of white supremacy.
She also sits on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization that vehemently has opposed bipartisan legislation designed to protect sex trafficking victims, Fox News reported.
The FCC works in tandem with law enforcement in a number of ways, by establishing and enforcing rules that enable law enforcement to conduct surveillance of internet and telephone networks when necessary, and rules for the delivery of emergency alerts over communications networks. The FCC also secures and protects communications networks from national security threats.
Last year, a coalition of advocacy and business groups wrote to the committee leadership to argue that it’s important to have all points of view represented on the FCC as it does its work.
During the hearing Tuesday, Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) referenced her offensive tweets, but instead of repeating them verbatim, he replaced the names and races of those mentioned in the Tweets.
“‘President Obama is a raggedy black supremacist president and his cowardly enablers would rather kill everybody than stop killing white people.’ Do you think a person who said that should be appointed or confirmed to the FCC?” Vance challenged Sohn.
“I didn’t quite get that, could you just re-read that, would you mind,” the nominee replied.
Vance re-read the Tweet and asked Sohn the same question.
“I would need to know more of the context,” she replied, before Vance declared he personally does not believe that type of person should be nominated or confirmed.
“You retweeted the exact same thing, only with ‘President Trump’ instead of ‘President Obama,’ and the races [were] reversed,” the senator responded. “Let me read you another Tweet and let me ask you if this is an acceptable thing for an FCC commissioner. ‘Angry black woman, not a good look, Judge Brown Jackson.’ Would a person who tweeted that pejoratively be deserving of the position that you’re seeking?” he demanded.
“Seeing it has nothing to do with the position that they’re seeking so not necessarily,” Sohn replied.
Vance said he found her answer to be preposterous, and explained why he thinks her racialist tweets are relevant.
“We live in a country that’s very diverse—people come from very different backgrounds—and one of the things that preserves what little racial comity and harmony we have in this country is that our leaders don’t use that racial comity and harmony like a toddler who discovered their daddy’s gun. You talk about racial issues in a way that will inflame the very worst things in our country. And I fear that if you’re given this position of authority, you will use that authority to continue to inflame and to continue, potentially even, to censor, based on some of these ideas,” Vance said.
Senator @JDVance1 slams Biden's leftwing FCC nominee Gigi Sohn over radical racial rhetoric
"You talk about racial issues in a way that will inflame the very worst things in our country." pic.twitter.com/V1t7jTkNPk
— Senator Vance Press Office (@SenVancePress) February 14, 2023
Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) brought up a tweet in which Sohn referred to the police as “armed goons.” In her defense, the activist said that it was only one out of 18,000 tweets.
President Biden's nominee for the FCC, Gigi Sohn, tangled with Republicans today over some of her past tweets. Asked by Sen. Dan Sullivan R-AK about retweeting a post that called police 'armed goons' – Sohn said, 'That's one tweet out of 18,000.' pic.twitter.com/801TnFHEX5
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) February 14, 2023
Sohn insisted that her tweets and retweets attacking conservatives were “as banal and basic as you can imagine.”
Here's Gigi Sohn claiming her tweets and retweets attacking conservatives, and calling to defund the police were no big deal.
"…As banal as basic as you can imagine." pic.twitter.com/GY4eP5tQfQ
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) February 14, 2023
Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas)asked Sohn about the donations she has made to the Democrat senators deciding her fate.
“I’ve been in the Senate ten years. I have never seen a nominee make contributions to senators while your nomination is pending. I’ve never seen that once,” Cruz said. “I had my staff search the records. If we could find anyone in the Trump administration who had done that. My staff was unable to find that.”
Cruz then asked Sohn if she thought it was “poor judgment” on her part to make donations to Senate Democrats during her nomination process.
“Senator, I’m a citizen who just wanted to participate in the Democratic process,” Sohn responded. “The answer is no.”
She went on to argue that the amounts of her donations were relatively small, “with a total of $1,000 split between 12 senators.”
Sen. Ted Cruz to Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn: "Do you believe it was poor judgment to give 12 separate political contributions to Democrat Senators while your nomination was pending?"
Sohn: "The answer is no." pic.twitter.com/D59XFyVS0h
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) February 14, 2023
Sohn’s nomination in 2021 went down in flames in 2021 after two confirmation hearings. In addition to her past online radicalism, members of the Senate Commerce Committee also scrutinized her work as a director at the now-defunct online streaming service called Locast. A judge reportedly ruled that Locast “violated copyright law after broadcasters sued the company for retransmitting local broadcasts.”
While Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, it’s unclear if Sohn will receive the votes she needs to get confirmed, as the radical has reportedly faced opposition from moderate Dems.