EXCLUSIVE — A “misinformation” researcher’s testimony behind closed doors to Congress on his group’s suppression of speech before the 2020 election appears to contradict documents unearthed by lawmakers.

Alex Stamos, who previously held senior roles at Facebook and Yahoo, was the director until 2023 at the Stanford Internet Observatory, a group at Stanford University under congressional investigation over it teaming up in 2020 on the Election Integrity Partnership, or EIP, with the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. The EIP coordinated with the U.S. government, including the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to pressure social media companies on addressing “misinformation” on platforms in the lead-up to the presidential election, according to internal emails and since-released Stanford data on the EIP’s Jira system used to flag alleged misinformation reports to platforms.